As I mentioned in my TC diary from 2 weeks ago, I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art late in December with an old friend of mine. That previous diary featured items in the museum’s permanent collection, specifically the Cone Collection of modern art, with an unparalleled collection of Matisse paintings. But that’s not the only art we saw that day.
The museum was featuring an exhibition entitled John Waters: Indecent Exposure. As my friend and I are both fans of Waters, we certainly wanted to see it. For the uninitiated, John Waters is a filmmaker who hails from Baltimore (as do I), and who has set all of his films in the city. He prides himself on breaking boundaries of taste and appropriate behavior. His early films were shocking and considered indecent to the verge of obscene, particularly by those with no sense of humor. His breakthrough film, Pink Flamingos (1973), concerned itself with the competition between two families running for the title of the filthiest family in Baltimore, and contains what may be the most disgusting shot in what might be loosely called “commercial” cinema (the movie did make money), and, no, you’re not going to drag that out of me. Waters is probably best known for Hairspray (1988), probably his gentlest, sweetest film, about both the dance crazes of the early 1960s and the Civil Rights movement. This film was later turned into a hit Broadway musical, and then a movie of the musical. In any case, Waters’ sensibility is simultaneously playful and caustic, and not unlike a kid with a chemistry set before there were serious rules regarding chemical safety, explosions happen sometimes.
Waters dates his interest in photography as art while searching for candidate stills in a VCR copy of his early film Multiple Maniacs. The result was the photo above, featuring his “leading lady” Divine, a 300 lb drag queen. Divine was a fellow who lived down the street Waters knew in school named Glenn Milstead. Both were outcasts in school. Drag and Waters’ films gave Divine a way to rebel and “shock the hippies,” as Waters has said. This still of Divine is thus the point of departure for Waters to express his sensibilities as art.
We’ll look at and discuss some more of the images from this show below the fold, but first, here’s a word from our sponsor:
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