“contemporary art hates you.” by John Waters

I love John Waters' interview in our current issue.


Noel Nocciolo: In rewatching Pecker, I especially loved the part, with regards to art and noticing things, of Shelly (Christina Ricci) saying to Pecker (Edward Furlong), “You’re crazy, you see art when there’s nothing there!” Has that been a blueprint for your life?

John Waters: Art is exactly when there’s nothing there and only you can see it. Art’s magic. If you go to art galleries all day and you really learn to see, when you walk home, at least for a couple hours, you’ll see something on the street that will remind you of art. It fades; you have to go back to galleries. But then everything you see will look like art, if you learn to not have contempt about what contemporary art asks you to do, which is usually see things that regular people can’t.

I did a piece once that said, “contemporary art hates you.” It does. It hates you, if you’re the kind that walks in and says, “my kid could do that,” or “that’s ridiculous,” because you aren’t giving it a chance, because you aren’t seeing it in a different way. If you can’t see it in a different way, it hates you. You have to stop, and not have contempt before investigation, which most people have about contemporary art as they walk through the door of a gallery. That’s why galleries don’t care if they’re in out of the way neighborhoods; they don’t want people to walk in off the street, because they will hate it. They want people that want to go there; that’s why Chelsea started.