His lament is even more pointed as one travels through the exhibition. But he said the gay bars are all still there, so he just combined them into a pram,” Burnett says. “Waters said the last time he went to the Castro, all the men were walking around with prams and babies. The message is blatant and very funny: a legion of the Castro’s best and brightest have traded hot, anonymous sex for vanilla monogamy. Titled “Bill's Stroller,” it is covered in names of former gay sex clubs from the pre-AIDS bathhouse days: The Toilet, Basic Plumbing, The Hungry Hole Saloon, Mineshaft, and Blow Buddies. But since this is an exhibition by Waters, you know this is no ordinary, innocent pram.īefore noticing the S&M black leather studded harness on it, a fairly large, ejaculating penis catches the eye. When one first enters the gallery, a light-blue baby stroller is on display. Specifically, there appears to be a strong yearning when it comes to the raunchy, illicit, porny gay subculture of the 1960s and 1970s. “He’s doubly corrupting in that he takes photographs that were once considered art work and defiling it with images of modernity, but he's also defiling these images of the American West,” says Burnett.īurnett describes Waters as someone who is “super ebullient,” though he adds “there's also a lot of looking back and a sense of loss.” He takes the pristine black-and-white images of the American landscape but photoshops in errors and typically tacky items, like a plastic flamingo. “Cancel Ansel” is Waters’s defilement of classic Ansel Adams photographs. To her left is notorious and now-elderly womanizer Philip Roth under the headline “Philip Roth Dates 70 Year Old Woman.” To her right is the famously prolific Joyce Carol Oates with the headline “Help! I've Got Writer's Block.” Instead, Waters' National Brainiac features the famously petite Joan Didion puffy, distorted and clutching a hoagie under the headline “Joan Didion Hits 250 pounds.” “Brainiac” is a play on the cover of the National Enquirer. He makes something perversely beautiful and funny by mixing high and low into a delightful mish-mash.

“Beverly Hills John” is the Waters who bathes in that corruption and ugliness.

However, he first earned his name for his infamously controversial 1972 Pink Flamingos, a comedy which involved rape, castration, cannibalism, and (most notoriously) dog feces-eating.

John waters art collection