Bruce Hainley

With the publication of "Art -- A Sex Book" (Thames & Hudson), John Waters, who's collected such monikers as "Pope of Trash" and "Archangel of the Outrageous," can add "curator" to the list. The film director ("Hairspray," "Pink Flamingos") recently joined forces with curator and art critic Bruce Hainley to create an "exhibition in a book." The book unfolds through six "rooms" -- chapters introduced with a discussion between the men -- and features explicit images along with abstractions and pictures of installations that at first appear to have little to do with sex. (Artist Reiner Ruthenbeck's roomful of upended furniture, for example.

With the publication of "Art -- A Sex Book" (Thames & Hudson), John Waters, who's collected such monikers as "Pope of Trash" and "Archangel of the Outrageous," can add "curator" to the list. The film director ("Hairspray," "Pink Flamingos") recently joined forces with curator and art critic Bruce Hainley to create an "exhibition in a book." The book unfolds through six "rooms" -- chapters introduced with a discussion between the men -- and features explicit images along with abstractions and pictures of installations that at first appear to have little to do with sex. (Artist Reiner Ruthenbeck's roomful of upended furniture, for example.

*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction *--* *--* 1 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Picador: $15) A Greek family embraces the American dream. 2 Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (Pocket Books: $7.99) A scholar uncovers a vendetta against the Catholic church. 3 Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Harvest Books: $14) A boy shares a lifeboat with a tiger on a harrowing trip. 4 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin: $14) A teenage girl is haunted by her mother's death.

The mammoth entry hall at London's new Tate Gallery of Modern Art features a monumental bronze sculpture of a spider--a classic subject for octogenarian artist Louise Bourgeois. Poised on spindly legs, the august arachnid is ready to deposit its elegant gift of Brancusi-like marble eggs, becoming a surreal metaphor for the darkly personal nightmares that lurk within industrious creativity.

Since human experience is increasingly mediated through the digital ether, going analog is counterintuitive. Evan Holloway, a prodigiously gifted sculptor adept at playing against type, exploits this productive friction in a marvelous installation in the Pomona College Museum of Art's ongoing Project Series. The untitled work is composed from two principal elements. A nearly square gallery is wallpapered in machine-printed sheets of black polka-dotted newsprint.

THE Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has been host to some unusual midweek performances lately. Not opera, not ballet, not drama. Not a lick of scenery and no fancy lighting either. Still, the audiences of nearly 3,000 seemed delighted to spend upward of $150 per seat to hear a single speaker reminisce and parse major political and social trends. Especially because two of the speakers were former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.