"I love impenetrable art," John Waters tells me over the dining table in his New York City pied-à-terre. It’s
a funny thing to hear from a man whose name for almost 40 years has
been associated with art that is anything but abstruse. Though his
movies have made him an international symbol of all that is
rib-ticklingly subversive in American culture, his gallery art has
remained
relatively under the radar. And he seems to prefer it that way.
Since his first gallery show, at American Fine Arts in New York in 1995, Waters has been creating work that shares a sensibility with his ingeniously vulgar movies — among them Pink Flamingos (1972), Hairspray (1988), Serial Mom (1994), and, most recently, A Dirty Shame (2004). He says he finds the art world’s small audience liberating. "I don’t ever have to say, ‘Oh, they’re going to love this in Omaha,’ he tells me. "Although now Omaha and New York are not that different, if you want to know the truth."
Read the rest of my profile of John Waters here, in the new issue of Modern Painters.
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