Some paintings I’ve done over the last three weeks. They are all painted on bristol board unless otherwise stated. If you want to purchase any of them it is $150 unframed, or $250 with a glass picture frame. Prices on all other ones will be stated below. FUCK YAH…

Send all purchase inquiries to hart@tawdryproductions.com

EXCELSIOR FATHEAD.

JACKIE ONASSIXXXX.

MONGOLOIDS UNITE.

MATING SEASON.

MOVE IT SLAVE.

FAYDRA.

THE SCREAMING TWINZZ.

YOU ARE MINE TO KILL.

CANCER, YOU GOT IT. AKA. CHECK THAT TIT.

POLIO.

SPINA BIFIDA.

WAYNEO.

KLAUS KINSKI.

LICE.

YOKO.

TOTO.

STEVE’S E GO GO GO.

WAYNE’S BROTHER RAY.

THAT’S MOTHER FUCKING IRRELIVENT.

ELEPHANT DICKS.

THAT WILL BE MEOWTEEN DOLLARS AND A WOOF PLEASE.

THE PROFESSOR.

MEET YOUR NEW GYNOCOLOGIST.

The following two paintings are on stretched canvas measuring 20 inches by 20 inches. $150 each.

THE BISHOP.

EGGS.

The following three are on wood.

ANATOMY OF A PYGMIE. $300.  4 and a half feet tall.  1.5 ft wide.  On Wood.

BELLY RUB. $250.  4 and a half feet tall.  1.25 feet wide.  Chipboard.

NO NECK TWO HEADS THREE BACKS. $500.  4.5 ft by 4.5 ft.  On wood.

Below, an interview from an art magazine I bought recently profiling a John Waters art show and promoting his new book role models (A book where he discusses his role models, from anti-fashion fashion designers, Baltimore legends, Little Richard and his moustache, A Manson girl, contemporary art and outsider porn among other things.) Below are the photos from his art show and a few parts from the interview where he talks about the art (the rest of the interview is focused on the role models book, which is good, but it serves no purpose showing dialogue discussing parts of the book without any reference. So I won’t do it!)

INTERVIEWER (italics): I had to laugh at my mom, who walked through your show’s opening a few times last night, eavesdropping on what people were saying. She loved hearing a woman waxing philosophically on one of the stills from pecker about what it was and what it really meant. Mom thought, “You idiot, it’s a picture of a light socket from a film set.”

JOHN WATERS (bold): It is, but it’s for the crew. It’s art for the crew. It’s noticing something that no one else notices and photographing it. It isn’t the normal things people would take a picture of if they were on a movie set. They want to take picture of the actors or of the cameras. They don’t want the tiny little details that only the crew has to care about or notice. I did another series where I photographed the marks that the actors had to hit with their feet. I’ve shown them before, which was the only thing that can’t be in a movie still. It’s art that only the crew sees; it’s clutter, teeny little still life that no one would notice on a movie set.

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?

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.

…………

I have a studio. And in my studio is certainly every little thing that can give me ideas. I’ve had the roach things for a long time and I”ve had rats and roaches in my movies. “Decorative” is sometimes the meanest word you can use in art, a real no-no, I did the roach stuff to keep decorators, or the kind that buy art to match the furniture or to put over the sofa, away. Although, my art would fit over the sofa because it’s long and thin, so it’s a joke! I don’t know how many people want to hang the The Process, the giant, scary one of someone who worships Christ and the devil over their sofa, though. That’s what I like’ it might be sofa sized, but not sofa-subject appropriate.

The first Christmas ornament I put on my tree every year is your “Seasons Greetings, John Waters” plastic roach in the clear ornament ball………WIth the “Passion of Audrey Hepburn” and ‘Product Placement’ in particular, you’re manipulating pictures of icons. Are you worried that Audrey Hepburn’s ghost is going to be irritated that you reinvented her with hickeys all over her neck?

No, because she has the most famous neck in the world. If you really like to give hickeys, wouldn’t she be the most ideal person to give hickeys to? She’s so famous, she’s so iconic, she lived in Switzerland, and she had a sense of humor. It’s parodying an image that’s almost sacred, which I do a lot.

You’re definitely the most impeccably scheduled, hardest working person I know. I’ve said in the past that I need to be a little bit more structured like you to get more work finished in my own life. Do your habits come out of something instilled by your parents? Or Catholic school? Or is it what works for you to get everything in that’s needed for your day?

Not Catholic school. I went to private grade school, public junior high school, and Catholic high school. My Father, I think, probably instilled it in me. I look back and think, how did I make those early movies? I took LSD all the time, I went out every night. How did I do them? I don’ remember! Did I go to sleep the night before? But nowadays I’m very organized. Sunday to Thursday I don’t go out, certainly, I even schedule a hangover three nights in advance.

Reading about the bars of Baltimore in the book made me want to go to Baltimore, if just for them.

You can get beat up at those bars. I wouldn’t advise just walking in.

When you’re in SF or New York, do you do a similar bar night?

In NYC I can’t find bars like that. If they’re biker bars, they’re fashion biker bars. If they’re hillbilly bars, it’s hipsters dressed as hillbillies. There are other bars I do go to, yes. The difference is that the next morning there are pictures of me online, posted on blogs that I don’t even know are being taken. That doesn’t happen in Baltimore.

PANTHER PISS.

I’ve been using my mothers digital camera the last couple of days. That’s all there is to it.

I made this painting a couple nights ago. It’s been a long time since I’ve painted. It’s called Face Eater 72.

pickles. pickleS. picklES. pickLES. picKLES. piCKLES. pICKLES. PICKLEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. ahhhhh.

A friend of mine told me about this book awhile ago. It was a project spanning between Canada (Quebec and Ontario) and Germany that’s purpose was to create photocopy art. Below are some of the more interesting images in it. It didn’t go into much detail at all as to how these images were actually created and in turn spoke more about the actual purpose this work stood for among other genres of art.  But no matter.

I’m working on Menstrate issue two, and though I didn’t find much in the vein of ideas it was still good.

Here are a few quotes from the book. This book is from the early-eighties if I remember correctly. I like how they figured that in the near future this art form would become obsolete due to the amount of paper being wasted and in turn the shortage of trees.

QUOTES.

The photocopier permits self-impression, the production of art books that short circuit review boards and other dilatory and often disappointing procedures. It adds to the problem of copyright and “counterfeiting” that of competition which could become a boykott.

This particular case gives one pause. It is with printing, here, that the border is revealed to be hazy, porous and beckoning. As Marshall McLuhan said: “…Caxton and Gutenberg enabled all men to become readers, Xerox has enabled all men to become publishers.” (Notice in passing that we photocopy for deferred reading, in order not to have to read immediately documents that we will not read at all in more then half the cases. As if assimilation were transferable from the brain to machine. What would this mean about the electronic brain and its “memory?”)

It is more advisable not to seek a philosophical answer here.

The waste and glut of paper is such (in 1979 Xerox estimated an average of 4 000 documents per employee, almost an entire file cabinet and increasing steadily) that an end is in sight through sheer lack of paper. Paper, if there are any trees left, (it’s already hard to find tissue paper) will be liberated for artistic production.

They all have collection in common; stockpiling, inventory, a repertoire of fragments from various sources. This mania of Bidner’s evidenced by his “hyper-hoarding” of documents has taken on Kafkaesque proportions: a 2 000 sq. foot warehouse in London Ontario cannot accommodate the tonnage piled to the rafters, and overflowing into studios at Stratford and Toronto, even into a friend’s basement….

I forgot to scan this last image.  So I went back to the library and photocopied it from this book on photocopying.  It seemed appropriate.  It’s too good.  Photo-Copy Rock and Roll.  By Jurgen, of course.

A friend gave this to me a few weeks ago. It hangs on my bathroom door. DANGER!

I was given a new bed a small while ago. The thing is a palace. And beneath this forthcoming rant is my old mattress. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but sensed it would be good to keep. For guests I suppose. Soon I realized it served another purpose. I spray painted this face on it, propped it up in my kitchen. It is to the left of my fridge in front of this strange abandoned pantry. A couple of days ago, I had absolutely no food, I felt like I was starving, but that would have taken a few more days. When I opened this door I found three cans of string beans. They were from before I even moved into my apartment four years ago. This was a success. I was nervous. But it worked out fine. I use the mattress as a punching bag. I punch the party animal out while I play a best of Patsy Cline tape at full volume.

I’m never angry when I do it. I hardly ever act out of emotion.  Any violence in me is most likely directed at myself.  Although directing violence towards other people is often a veiled way of attacking yourself.  But I have no time for that.  Anyhow, the sense of your physical being and the feeling of your strength growing is a feeling that cannot be denied when you punch a spray painted mattress to Patsy Cline. And when you run head first at the rest of the world I suppose it’s a good idea to have someone to back you up. Even if that person is an appendage that spreads out from your neck and swivels with your spine.

The mattress is canvas though, and it tends to rip at the knuckles. Which is strange. Not the feeling, but the reactions. Sometimes people see a bruised knuckle and a weird certain respect emanates from them. And in other situations, say the library, talking to a very nice lady while your asking about where to find a Federico Garcia Lorca book of poetry it sends the wrong signal. But in the end everyone’s reactions are wrong, though sensible. The nervousness or fear lies in the fact that if someone is willing to say this or do this, what else are they capable of.  But everyone sees the world through their own eyes, and everyone is full of manipulative and selfish secrets and dark passions and dark fears that they spend half their lives trying to hide.  So they assume your secrets and lies must be of a darkness the depths outer space  could never fathom.   But finally I am truly truthful, even if exxxagerating or lying.

This is a major flaw in the understanding of things, though you cant understand anything fully, me or you. If you are a vessel through which you see things, how you relate to things, and you don’t fully understand yourself, then your judgments are lost and misguided.  But the most misguided always seem to have an urge to lead.   Anyways, I’ve made gloves out of old sweat shirt sleeves. I hate that your the toughest if you pretend to be, or the smartest if you pretend to be, or the most sensitive, or the most together, or the most apart. I hate how people care about other peoples perceptions, and how they perceive other people and themselves. You should know whats right, and strive to first satisfy that initial instinct, then worry about the others after, not the other way around.

Anyways, I am deep into the beers, and I’m rambling. This is the Punching bag. His name is Steve Sr., and he feels no pain.