John Waters, art connoisseur

the movies he directs are truly in A League of  Their Own so you'd expect the same of his art   collection and you'd be right in fact it's Museum  worthy and as Rita braver tells us John Waters   knew just the museum this is by Richard Tuttle I  love this piece because it basically looks like   I had a niece that failed shop class in summer  camp welcome to the wacky and wonderful world   of art collected by John Waters on you now at the  Baltimore Museum of Art works like this Untitled   sculpture by Paul gabrielli what lunatic would  have a box and put these kind of locks on that   anybody could break in a cardboard box so this  is obviously a crazy person's secret that I love   and John Waters loves craziness his 1972 cult  classic Pink Flamingos features the late drag   performer known as Divine in a contest over who  is the filthiest person filth is my politics   filth is my life take whatever you like good yes  so it's no surprise that the man who glories in   nicknames like pope of trash and Prince of puke  collects art that is quirky and provocative   what has to speak to you it's something that  stops me in my tracks surprises me I remember   coming as a kid long before he ever made films  water's parents brought him here to his hometown   Museum where he bought his first piece of  art a postcard of this Joan Miro painting   took it home and hung it up and all the kids went  oh it's ugly and that's when I started collecting   art we are it's not just his art collection that  has roots in Baltimore but his films including   the 1988 classic hairspray which celebrates  outsiders Ricki Lake stars as a plus-sized   girl who finds love and acceptance on the dance  show I'm Tracy turnblad and I go to Marble High do you see all of this interest in the Arts  as kind of one piece that you're just it's all   creativity it's all one piece of taste it's all  the same thing what I do I'm trying to make you   laugh at something that you were nervous about  laughing about and you're walking on the edge   of what you can make fun of and what you can get  away with at the same time oh now look I'm hitting   the I'm stepping on my own thing I love Flora this  is a piece of art here too this is Carl Andre one   of the most famous minimalists ever yeah yeah no  we gotta get it straight here you can't hurt it   though these works are part of a larger group  that Waters has bequeathed to the museum after   his death they usually deck his own walls your  living room my living room yes so when we visited   his house here in Baltimore a few years back he  focused on kitschier items this is my fake son   Bill he's ugly and he I ordered an angry baby with  bad hair I suppose that's an ugly picture of me   and I look like Bill there I was a premature baby  and Bill's a fake baby so Bill didn't make it to   this show but there's no mistaking who's collected  this work this is a wall that like the whole show   really kind of shows John's Network case in point  according to associate curator of Contemporary Art   Leila Grothe is this 1976 picture of a very young  Waters at opening night of Pink Flamingos a photo   by Nan Goldin we have a baby John Waters talking  to one of his Muses cookie Mueller how did the   museum react when John Waters suddenly laid it on  you that he wanted to present his collection to   the museum after his death we were ecstatic John  is a legend of Baltimore and his collection really   reflects so much of what we think John is and  there's something else that really reflects   John Waters this was one of your conditions for  giving your gift of your collection that they had   to name a bathroom not a gallery but a bathroom  yeah but I wanted the bathrooms just because I   thought nobody's done that I thought it would  be humorous it would go along with everything   in my career and it did of course given Waters  work celebrating gender fluid characters the   bathrooms are gender neutral but I'm all for that  because so what you're just looking in the mirror   you're washing your hands you can't see in here  at all you can't tell who's in there you know I   mean let's talk about private you could live in  there the museum won't put a price tag on the   collection but with Warhols liechtenstein's and  more it's said to be worth millions which didn't   impress John mother's dad especially after John  bought this Cy Twombly work when I brought up my   father just hated it so much and to poke fun  at John Waters senior came up with this piece   so he made that to you as a joke yeah but he  drew badly correctly and that's hard to do he   didn't even realize it I'd probably turned my dad  into a good artist who's now hanging in a museum   just one of the ways in which the life  of John Waters has come full circle one's banned in several countries Pink Flamingos  was named to the Library of Congress' National   film registry in 2021. you are about to receive  into your community the filthiest people alive   and the young kid who first learned about art  here is now on the board of this Museum I'm now an   Insider so I have no it's the final irony really  because now I don't want to be an outsider anymore   everybody wants to be that I want to be an Insider  because they have the power to change things

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 67,170

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, john waters, art, connoisseur, baltimore, collection, baltimore museum of art, rita braver, leila grothe, pope of trash

Id: nt3UQaJbP98

Length: 6min 11sec (371 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023