William Burroughs called him the "Pope of Trash." Time magazine hailed him as the "Sultan of Shock." Every other article on John Waters resorts to one (if not both) of these epithets in order to capture his cheekily subversive spirit. While I'm sure the king of kitsch appreciates the use of clich??s to sing his praises, let it be suffice to say that Art: A Sex Book is classic Waters: a charmingly bizarre pastiche of taste and trash.
Art: A Sex Book is the latest project by the Hairspray director, co-authored with Artforum contributing editor Bruce Hainley. According to the flap copy, Art is a "unique, provocative, and personal interpretation of sex and sexuality through contemporary art." Despite its saccharine-meets-Stoli tone, the description holds true. Waters and Hainley talk about the comings and goings of art and man over the course of two hundred pages of colorful art interspersed with equally colorful text. The smartly grouped works of art depict the obvious (a seventies ad for gay porn), the subtle (a delicate pencil drawing of a open box atop a fine line), and the decidedly outr?? (a green sponge and a yellow sponge mounted against a white background).
The text portion of Art primarily consists of the exchange between Waters and Hainley. A highly entertaining introduction gives the reader a taste of the things to come. Despite the ubiquity of big breasts, erect members, and glistening vulvas, Waters drolly notes, "Everything we've picked for the book is as much about ideas as it is about sex. If you bought it as a jerk-off book, you might be confused."
Indeed, Waters and Hainley's cerebral approach to the subject is evident in the number of names they drop and subjects they cover (albeit unpretentiously, a testament to Art's sharp yet earthy sense of humor). In the span of a dozen pages or so, they touch upon the legacy of Andy Warhol, the public response to contemporary art, and the pornographic appeal of a Sotheby's catalog.
The spontaneous nature of the text allows the reader to engage in the ideas put forth by Waters and Hainley without the barriers normally imposed by theory. However, this sense of intimacy also works to Art's disadvantage. On occasion, Waters and Hainley go off in tangents only accessible to the reader familiar with their (often obscure) references and/or trains of thought.
Art includes nearly two hundred illustrations, grouped thematically in six "rooms" to produce an "exhibition" on paper. Although the technique is an undeniable conceit, it's also quite effective. Waters and Hainley choose widely from the worlds of drawing, installation, painting, photography, and sculpture, resulting in a collection that is decidedly smart if not always comprehensible.
Unsurprisingly, pictures of naked men and women figure prominently. Likewise, a number of the included works of art have intrinsic shock value: groups of circles painted with menstrual blood, a dot of feces on a white canvas.
However, the selections with the most impact are the ones that appear the most innocuous. A rectangle of heavy purple is a startling sight against a background of placid blue skies and tender green trees. Quiet paintings of homes, rendered with simple, flat strokes and muted colors, pulse with tension. Perhaps most intriguingly (if also most perplexingly), a sterile square of white, titled "1000 Hours of Staring," serves as a space of limitless possibilities for the projection of sexual desire.
