Description
Book SynopsisIt has been more than fifty years since John Waters filmed his first short on the roof of his parents' Baltimore home. Over the following decades, Waters has developed a reputation as an uncompromising cultural force not only in cinema, but also in visual art, writing, and performance. This major retrospective examines the artist's influential career through more than 160 photographs, sculptures, soundworks, and videos he has made since the early 1990s. These works deploy Waters's renegade humor to reveal the ways that mass media and celebrity embody cultural attitudes, moral codes, and shared tragedy. Waters has broadened our understanding of American individualism, particularly as it relates to queer identity, racial equality, and freedom of expression. In bringing bad taste to the walls of galleries and museums, he tugs at the curtain of exclusivity that can divide art from human experience. Waters freely manipulates an image bank of less-than-sacred, low-brow referencesElizabeth Taylor's hairstyles, his own self-portraits, and pictures of individuals brought into the limelight through his films, including his counterculture muse Divineto entice viewers to engage with his astute and provocative observations about society. This richly illustrated book explores themes including the artist's childhood and identity; Pop culture and the movie business; Waters's satirical take on the contemporary art world; and the transgressive power of images. The catalogue features essays by BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman; art historian and activist Jonathan David Katz; critic, curator, and artist Robert Storr; as well as an interview with Waters by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. Published in association with the Baltimore Museum of Art. Exhibition dates: The Baltimore Museum of Art: October 7, 2018January 6, 2019 Wexner Center for the Arts: February 2April 28, 2019
Trade Review“Until someone writes the definitive biography, ‘John Waters: Indecent Exposure’, the catalog for the filmmaker’s Baltimore Museum of Art retrospective, is as complete a portrait of an unclassifiable artist as possible. The focus is on gallery work, sculptures of Charles Manson, conceptual pieces (see ‘Hetero Flower Shop’ — please) and much more transgressive works, but mixed with Q&As, essays on Water’s ‘queer ethics’ and the artist’s unassailable cheer, it offers a powerful argument for free expression itself.” * The Chicago Tribune *
Table of ContentsForeword
Lenders to the Exhibition
Acknowledgments
INAPPROPRIATION
Kristen Hileman
PLATES 1–35
JOHN WATERS’S QUEER ETHICS
Jonathan D. Katz
PLATES 36–68
QUEERING THE PITCH
Robert Storr
PLATES 69–101
WOLFGANG TILLMANS in Conversation with JOHN WATERS
PLATES 102–159
Works in the Exhibition
Filmography
Selected Bibliography
Index
Image Credits
