Visited the Baltimore Museum of Art today with friends. One of the impetuses was a recent visit they had made from which my friend spoke of this special exhibition. "Coming Attractions: The John Waters' Collection" is not only a tongue in cheek nod to the Baltimore icon's work in cinema, but a reminder that the works have all been bequeathed to the BMA upon his death.
Among the works presented, the motif of the phallus is rather ... present...dominant...evident, swelling, throbbing, LARGE! throughout the works. Once you see it, and it does not take a genius to see it! You see it everywhere! From something as pedestrian and innocuous as a coat hook, to the facile column of a child's stuffed toy. As one of my friends agreed during a discussion of this, "The man loves his penises."
But what I loved most of all was that, works by artists like Andy Warhol and Peter Hujar notwithstanding, the collection features artists of little note in the wider world. This brilliant artist in his right, chose works that he found delightful regardless of what anyone else thought of them. And in time, the entirety of the collection tells a story that became immensely valuable. Interestingly enough, the Baltimore Museum of Art has a track record of this sort of thing. Their entire modern art wing is predicated on the collection of the Cone Sisters, who amassed a group of over 3,000 post impressionists European works when no one thought artists like Matisse and Gauguin would actually amount to much.
From the exhibit, "Coming Attractions: The John Waters Collection," selected works.
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