When John Waters gave up his art collection to have a toilet named after him: “No, I’m serious”
Since he was a kid, John Waters has been attracted to the stranger things in life, the things that inspire a reaction, a conversation. Of course, this fascination with subversive and transgressive art only came to shape his career, in which he has become one of modern cinema’s most iconic figures, as loved by some as he is despised by others.
His time as a filmmaker began in the 1960s, when he made some controversial short films with his friends, all of whom were perpetually high. Waters might have been a stoner with long hair, but he wasn’t a hippie. In fact, he wanted to scare the hippies, whom he found to be boring, and equally, the uptight conservatives.
With Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, he depicted an interracial marriage officiated by a KKK member, and in Eat Your Makeup, Divine daydreams about being Jackie Kennedy, fantasising about the assassination of her husband. Provocative and incredibly bold to say the least, Waters would go on to make features like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, where every gross, taboo act was enacted by his group of Dreamlanders, with Divine even putting freshly-laid dog shit in his mouth.
But this fascination with art that starts an unavoidable conversation, provoking arguments and engaging discussions with friends (and foes), arguably stems from Waters’ trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art as a kid, where he bought a Joan Miró poster.
“The other kids said, ‘Why would you hang that up?’” he told The Baltimore Sun. “That’s when I realised that art could provoke, shock and cause trouble. At that moment, I became a collector for life.”
So, over the years, Waters has used much of the money he has amassed as a director to collect works by artists that he has long admired, from photographers like Cindy Sherman and Diane Arbus, to icons like Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol…his collection is certainly impressive, ticking off a bunch of the biggest names in the American art world.
But Waters came to realise that he could get something a lot more ‘him’ if he gave up some of his collection, so in 2020, he bequeathed over 300 pieces of art from his personal collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the very place that his interest in creativity began. His reward? A toilet named after him.
“Renaming the bathrooms was my idea right from the beginning,” he revealed. “They thought I was kidding, and I said, ‘No, I’m serious.’ It’s in the spirit of the artwork I collect, which has a sense of humour and is confrontational and minimalist and which makes people crazy.”
Waters has never shied away from acknowledging the very human act of going to the toilet in his work. Whether he’s showing prolapsed anuses up close (that scene from Pink Flamingos is one that many of us will never be able to erase) or having Divine place poo in his mouth, Waters doesn’t think there’s anything embarrassing about it.
When it came to having the bathroom named after him, however, he kept privacy in mind, helping to redesign the space so that it was gender neutral, with several rooms united by communal sinks. “Public restrooms make all people nervous,” Waters concluded.
“They’re unpredictable. They’re also fuelled by accidents, just like my favourite contemporary art.”
