by John Waters
Everybody knows you need young blood in your house. The way to build a great collection is not to have a lot of money and buy established artists; it’s to go to all the galleries once a month and find a brand-new artist you like in a gallery whose stable seems to be up your alley. Go back to the artist’s second show and buy something for around $5,000. It really means a lot to the artist at this stage of the game, and even though you should never buy art just so you can later sell it for a profit, it does perk up looking through the auction results when you see your gamble go sky-high once in a while.
I loved it when Richard Baker came over to stay with me because he seems to have a schizophrenic career. He’s been exhibiting surreal, beautifully painted still lifes for years in an uptown New York gallery, but what I go for is his other stuff—the handcrafted deadpan little sculptures of household objects that he only seems to show at the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown. I own a faux “pencil,” a wooden “kitchen knife,” three assorted clay “donuts” (the cheapest-looking kind, which come already stale in a box), a whole collection of fake pills—“downers” such as Oxycontin, Percocet, and Xanax—all displayed on a small mirror (I have to put them away if any ex-junkies are visiting), and a made-to-order large box of Jujyfruits with each handmade candy spilled out on the table where it sits. I wish he’d just remake every single thing I already live with, even the furniture; then I’d just walk around and gaze at my imitation of life.
Richard Baker’s office-related drawings make me crazy, too. Going to these shows is like the very best visit to Staples. He has meticulously drawn on paper a three-by-five-inch file card, the same kind I use daily to list my chores. Every day when I’m working in Baltimore I look up at the small piece of legal paper he also drew and then back down at the exact same style of paper I’m writing this book on. But my favorite of all is the completely realistic drawing of a badly photocopied piece of 8½ × 11 notebook paper. Now, if Richard Baker could just draw the words I have to write before I actually do it—wouldn’t that be the ultimate piece of artwork to hang over your desk?
Sometimes I don’t mind if my roommates are messy. An artist who doesn’t clean up behind herself can be welcome if she does sloppiness with charm, and that would be roommate Moyra Davey. Her work lives with me everywhere, but she keeps a very low profile. She’s meek, too, and never shouts out for attention. Once she’s inside her own apartment, she never seems to go out. She just snoops around with her camera and photographs formal, lovely still lifes of neglect that demand respect for her low-tech intelligence. And if you look around your own living space, you will realize that everybody has a Moyra Davey still life somewhere in their home; it’s just that you don’t even notice it yourself. Greatest Hits (1999), her photo of out-of-date, probably scratched old record albums in their jackets, wouldn’t be worth much to a vinyl collector, but every time I look at this artwork on my wall in San Francisco, I feel so encouraged to realize that nothing ever can be truly “used up.” In Baltimore hangs Moyra’s close-up of books (1999) stacked on a shelf the wrong way, with the spines turned toward the back of the bookcase. This is a nightmare photograph for me because I need order in my own library and Moyra doesn’t even notice that she has none! It doesn’t matter to her that she’ll never be able to find a certain volume because, as she explains in her amazingly obsessive essay, The Problem of Reading (2003), there are just so many books to choose from that she’s afraid she’ll pick the wrong one. I feel less compulsive, freer in spirit, when I stare into the unlit space of unfilled shelving in Moyra’s photographs, because she forces me to accept that I have to leave some things to chance, even though I know they will probably not succeed.
Even in my New York apartment, Moyra’s smudged elegance can be felt. When you leave my place (nobody would notice on entering), look at the Davey photos (Untitled, Bottles 5) hanging right beside the front door and you’ll never feel embarrassed for having ordinary moments in your life again. Here are nine empty liquor bottles that Moyra photographed between the years 1996 and 2000 after consuming the contents in a normal unalcoholic way. These are captured so plainly and with such a purposeful lack of force that you are not even sure if she felt like taking the picture in the first place.
Look at some of her other work and you will feel more and more special to see the off-kilter sensibilities of this artist with a gaze that gives the inferiority complex of forgotten household items the stature of architecture. Can a dirty refrigerator want to have its picture taken (even if it’s yours)? Will out-of-date turntables and shelves full of old stereo equipment ever be important enough for anyone but Moyra to celebrate? Just the thought of a Moyra Davey photograph makes me want to buy another one, but I’m afraid of one thing. The money she gets for her work might tempt Moyra to hire a part-time cleaning person for her apartment, which would be an art world catastrophe of the highest order.
Cleaning up can be pretty great, too. The artist/painter/sculptor/photographer Paul Lee has always been helpful around the house, and I’ve been collecting him from the beginning, right after I saw his work hung in his makeshift summer studio in the artist Jack Pierson’s house. Immediately I was taken with his two butch little-boy drawings of the blue-collar workplace. Stealing Colors (1999) is a shaky, primitive, part collage, part pencil sketch of a truck filled with meticulously but awkwardly cut out FedEx logos, and you get the feeling the artist was in some kind of enviable trance when he created this work. Same with Building Colors, its companion piece, which depicts a cement mixer dumping squares from the old FedEx logo he painted yellow. Stealing and Building never looked so happy together, almost sexual. If two artworks wanted to sneak off my walls when I’m out of town and have illicit sex, these would be the two I’d suspect.
Later, I let Before My Eyes (2000), Paul Lee’s Agnes-Martin-meets-Tom-Friedman-on-saltpeter grid of cutout Kodak box exteriors, move in, too, and then all his work started asking me for a place to live. It got to be like a commune. Anvil (2002) and Blacksmith (2002) came next. Paul’s two op-art black-and-white collages hang over my bed in New York to remind me of my own confusion and mixed self-esteem as a youth. I want everyone to feel dizzy in a peculiarly nostalgic way when they look over my bed and imagine what goes on here. Pretty soon his clay-mounted sculpture of a melted “Real Thing” Coke instant camera (2005) was nagging for a place to hang its head, so I put it on the wall outside my Baltimore office and marveled at its Pompeii-like damage. So “swag-bag” rejected, so distressed, so melted down that you were initially depressed over the obviously ruined film inside, but then were quickly put in a sparkling mood, realizing it had been replaced by some new kind of art.
Since I already had Paul Lee’s drawings and sculptures, is it a surprise that his Untitled 4 (2006) of a wispy young boy with a blue square painted over his face jumped right up on the wall next to my Baltimore bed? I hope nobody thinks this sad young man who may have had all his emotions blocked due to some kind of abuse has anything to do with my childhood, because it doesn’t. Maybe this vaguely troubled little painting is there just to make me realize that I don’t have any excuse to be fucked-up—nobody painted a block over my aspirations and I hope they didn’t to Paul Lee’s either.
I love it when he recycles. Paul took two photographs of lost boys off the Internet, glued them to foamboard, and bent them—instant sculpture! This creased, damaged little 2004 artwork, so afraid of the entire process of printing and mounting photographs, proves that you can’t really fail in the art world unless you try to do it to get rich. His untitled white pop-top of a can mounted on black paper with the reverse framed right next to it (2006) adds a formal touch to throwing you off. The question is, however, throwing you off what?
But Paul’s best work, by far, is his soiled washcloth sculptures (2006). These underwhelming cum-rag-dirty, once-smelly linen rejects from the bottom of a hamper exemplify the expression “exposing your dirty laundry.” The washrag that has been ripped and sewn together with another washrag,
each in a different shade of puke green, adds a touch of bold nerve to the wall right above my desk in New York. Not framed, but pinned to the wall, mated by an insane tailor for sexual reasons clear only to him, this meager rag of shabby craftsmanship and graveyard for bodily fluids never washed anybody clean. Here is a cloth that can only wipe away goodness, a rag for all the bile and filth of a sexy night just secretly remembered and celebrated in private.
Paul Lee’s crowning achievement so far is Untitled (Cemented Towel) (2008), a pitiful forty-three-inch-high Leaning Tower of Pisa from Resurrection City that mocks the pedestal itself, the happiness of clean laundry, and the macho of cement mixing. This seemingly poorly planned, fragile yet heavy-in-weight sculpture comes in two pieces that don’t fit together correctly. They lean pathetically like one of the World Trade Center buildings imagining what it had in store for itself before 9/11. The entire sculpture could topple over easily and shatter if a guest in your home accidentally brushed up against it. And to add even more architectural sadness, I have it in San Francisco, where earthquakes lurk. Having it secured to the floor with earthquake-proofing wax made the whole experience of collecting Paul Lee all the more baffling. This incredibly successful artwork is purposely homely, haughtily failed, and passively confrontational. Just like all my roommates—ready to fight.
C U L T L E A D E R
I’m so tired of writing “Cult Filmmaker” on my income tax forms. If only I could write “Cult Leader,” I’d finally be happy. Would you come on a spiritual pilgrimage with me? To Baltimore, naturally. Where I’d deracinate you from your family (after you’ve stolen all their rare art books and turned them over to our communal library) and together we’d concentrate on what really matters in life—our infallibility. Pope Benedict XVI may have denounced “filth,” but we know better. Filth is just the beginning battle in the war on taste. The certain megalomania we all share will strengthen our delusions of grandeur and make it possible for us to go that extra step into what I will call “radical holiness.” Fellow faith followers, isolated we are just ex-Catholics or slacker Jews fighting over the limits of shame or guilt. Or worse yet, Protestants turned alcoholic atheists or pussy agnostics who chicken out on the big questions daily. Together we can become saints of sordidness, “the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised,” as Jesse Jackson once so beautifully called his followers. Perverts who are fanatical in their devotion to a new dogma of dirt. Yes, a filth movement for the next century, which will claw its way down the ladder of respectability to the final Armageddon of the elimination of the tyranny of good taste. A rapture of rottenness that will flower like a poisonous mold to cover the prison of acceptance. Yes, we are ready to take over the world.
We’d first discuss Christian doctrine. I may not be what you’d call devout, but I do believe in the basic goodness of people. This is about as spiritual as I get. Brainwashed by angry Sunday school nuns who were furious that a child might think on his own, and later in high school by second-rate Christian Brothers who were impotent when it came to performing the sacraments, I had little use for the dogma that was drilled into my young mind. I mean, “original sin”? The idea that newborn babies come into the world already soiled before they can let out their first cry? Not only hogwash, but especially mean-spirited hogwash. And the Virgin Birth? The supposed miracle of Mary getting pregnant without even the pleasure of the sex act? Now there’s a real feminist concept for you! Jesus! Are Catholics all nuts? Now the Resurrection I can maybe understand. Every person who died will get to come back one day and walk the earth. Hi, David Lochary! Hi, Divine! Hi, Edith! It will be so great for everybody to be reunited in eternity. But talk about a housing shortage. What will a two-bedroom condo in Manhattan cost then?! And will we be nude? And if not, what will we wear after the coffin? The outfit we don for eternity would certainly be important, so I need to have someone begin designing it right now!
And Jesus Christ himself? I do believe he thought he was the son of God, but anybody can make an innocent mistake. He probably was a good man. A fashion leader, certainly. A little self-absorbed. A tad deluded, just like us. But as an elegant acquaintance recently pointed out, “My husband died of cancer and it took him about five years of terrible pain and agony to finally expire, and Christ was only on the cross for a weekend. What’s the big deal?” She may have had a point. Many of my friends spent years slowly and painfully dying of AIDS. Have the limits of suffering been extended in modern times?
Look, I don’t care if you had theological beliefs before you joined us. You are certainly allowed to have them. If your faith brought you comfort, I’m all for it. JUST DON’T TRY TO MAKE ME DO IT! But now, it’s time for us to come up with our own insane doctrines. Our own rigid rules for cockeyed happiness right here on earth while we still have the chance. Cult followers, it’s up to you. I need a mortal-sin brigade who can go out there and recruit. Damaged people make the best warriors, so get busy. I’m a fascist about my work habits and I expect you to be, too. Never have a spontaneous moment in your life again. If you’re going to have a hangover, it should be scheduled on your calendar months in advance. Rigid enjoyment of planning can get you high. Militant time-management will enable you to ignore how maladjusted you would be if you had the time to notice it in the first place. Discipline is not anal compulsion; it’s a lifestyle that breeds power. The only insult I’ve ever received in my adult life was when someone asked me, “Do you have a hobby?” A HOBBY?! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING DABBLER?!
You’ll need a new name, too. Forget who you used to be. “Mr. Hatt” was my initial code name and you, too, will need an alias. Why do you think movie stars’ names are made up? To conquer their pasts, that’s why! I want you to leave behind your debt and your parents’ expectations, and even more important I want a fresh identity to mold into joy and madness. Pick a character’s name from one of my movies and make it your own. But select an obscure supporting player whose name is only said fleetingly in the dialogue, like Sandy Sandstone or Vera Venninger. Sometimes just a character’s first name is enough. How about Flashlight? Or Doyle, Eater, Flipper, Dribbles, or Butterfly? Adding on the last name of the person who was meanest to you in high school can be the perfect solution to the new “you.”
You’ll need a uniform. A habit. A “fallen angel” look to intimidate yet attract. Have all your tattoos removed surgically. Yes, it’s expensive and, true, it doesn’t really work, but we have to start over, clean the slate, open up our bodies to a new lewd light. Be too thin and too poor. Study Karl Lagerfeld’s hilarious diet book daily. I know I became the patron saint of chubby girls because of the success of Hairspray, but those days are over. Fat is not enough anymore unless you were once thin and gained weight on purpose to confuse authority. This time, we’re all going to be lean and mean. If I could go to the gym to get the body of a junkie, I would. Guzzle tap water and only eat candy—but pick the brands with the racist or sexist names, like Black Crows, Mexican Hats, or Jujyfruits, so you feel guilty and won’t pig out.
Let your hair grow out from whatever style or length you currently wear so my trained team of alarmingly stylish hairdressers without licenses can give you the signature cut of our cult; longer for boys (unless they are balding, in which case hair should be drawn on) and shorter for girls (bring back the one-sided Sassoon with a W in the back?). A unisex cut from beyond the outer limits of severity that will confound and dominate the fashion timid is what any self-respecting filth follower must demand.
Boys, never let me see a pleat in your pants. Turn your belt around to the right side so the buckle is forty-five degrees off center. Nothing is sexier, the secret sign that your gun is loaded, so to speak. Joe Dallesandro wore his that way in Trash, and so did Joe Spencer in Bike Boy. Lustful, beautiful juvenile-delinquent boys have been wearing their belts this way for decades of erotic confidence, and I expect you to do the same.
Girls, the bigger your breasts, the higher the necklines. What you don’t see is always se
xier. If you’re flat-chested, go topless. Prove your self-confidence and uninterest in the male gaze. Tight pants can be a good look for you and will come in handy when you have to climb over a fence or run from a store detective. Always be dressed in your full cult finest in case you are arrested. There is only one fashion photograph that counts in our world: the perp walk.
But dressing “cult” is a tricky thing. One false move and you can easily look ridiculous. Now every once in a great while “ridiculous” can look amazing, but that is rare. Think of the middle-aged cult Mormon women who grieved their children being taken away from them by the government, wearing Edith Massey’s Pink Flamingos hairdo and those insane Little Miss Muffet outfits. Now that was a great cult look. But it’s a tough thing to pull off. I remember moseying into the long-gone Process Church headquarters in New Orleans in the early seventies (627 Ursulines Avenue), and being intrigued by this cult that supposedly worshipped both Jesus and Satan, which seemed oddly democratic at the time. The Process had a certain notoriety for suing the U.S. publishers of Ed Sanders’s book The Family, and successfully making them remove the chapter that implied Manson had stolen the religion’s “fear” belief and used it as his own. I wanted to like the Process kids; they wore all-black clothes and were really cute in a witchy-warlock kind of way, but they had one big fashion blunder. They wore cloaks. Nobody can appear all-knowing wearing a stupid cloak. Like donning a top hat or featuring a thumb ring, it’s the look of a fool. Who could fuck anyone who wore a cloak?