What if Michael Jackson and Charles Manson had met each other before their lives went wrong?

 

Who can play the role of the genius better than John Waters in the art world? Probably no one, not even a undisputed master of self promotion such as Jeff Koons – and effectively the two of them will have a public conversation next Monday at the Library Foundation in Los Angeles, of course the tickets are already sold out. The conversation, which follows the current solo show dedicated to the Water’s rebellious world (at Spreuth Magers, Berlin), is just the last application derived from the extraordinary ethics and aestethics space system created during the years by the voracious creative mind of this movie director, writer, artist and art collector too (who considers collecting very seriously indeed).

 

Among the artworks on show there is Playdate: a baby Michael Jackson, dressed up in a pink pajamas, lifts his hand up to another baby, a hieratic Charles Manson, a figure whose dangerous ambiguity has been a constant source of inspiration and challenge in Water’s career. “Two famous media villains,” says Waters about this work, according to the text introducing the show in Berlin. And then he questions: “could they have saved each other if they had met on a play date before their lives went wrong?”.

 

Water’s extraordinary sharped critic mind – as recently proved by the enlightening interview given to Betsy Carpenter on the occasion of the show he curated at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis – has probably conceived Playdate into the same frame in which the author’s hazardous friendship with Leslie Van Houten is also set, former member of the infamous Manson Family who is just the more recent perfect Water’s antihero. In 2010 she appeared as a character in “Role Models“, among Water’s writings the most focused on contemporary art, with references to Richard Tuttle and Cy Twombly. To Leslie Van Houten the longest part of the book is indeed dedicated.

 

Therefore, Playdate seems to be a lot more of a possible answer to that “tyranny of the good taste” Waters has so proudly fought for all his life. It may be considered the logical synthesis of the primitive need of human beings to help each other in order to be saved from tyranny, of any kind.

Note: of course also this artworks is part of a poetic constellation and can’t be admired without taking into account the other stars of the system.

July 18, 2015