Does minimalism make pop horny? 2019: John Waters Indecent Exposure

At idle moments during this endless lockdown, have you ever imagined what the artworks in all those museums storage units around the world are getting up to right now? Of course, that troublemaker John Waters has.

Writing on the Walker Art Center website back in 2011, he mused:

Are prints, sculptures, paintings and photographs relieved to be in museum storage where they don’t have to shine, “art-off”, risk exposure to light? Or are they happy when they have to “work”? Get along with each other in public? Hear sometimes stupid comments from hostile museum-going amateurs? Publicly humiliate themselves by being forced to live up to their auction prices? Who should room together in the world of contemporary art? Can a Russ Meyer photograph go to sleep in the same gallery as an Yves Klein blue chip masterpiece?  Certainly, Sturtevant is secure enough to be hated, but is Anne Truitt?  Video art has “street cred” these days but can it ever catch up with a John Currin painting in art-history references, even if they’re embraced and mocked? Who’d copy from Richard Prince? Who’d be sloppier to live with than Mike Kelley? And better yet, who’d ruin decoration more than Christopher Wool?  Suppose an “art-terrorist” like Gregory Green was hiding amongst us? Do we snitch or shiver in welcome artistic fear? Would Fred Sandback approve of the damage his fellow roommates have caused or would he think they were trying too hard? Can artwork sexually attract each other? Does minimalism make pop horny?

Combining Waters’ reference to Anne Truitt’s sense of worth with minimalism’s libido reminded me of his work Secret Movie which graced gallery B during his exhibition Indecent Exposure. Here is an austere photograph of the work from the catalog.

Although you get a better sense of the work from this description of the in a review of the Baltimore installation of the show by Brian McCabe:

“Secret Movie” is a tall, square white column that kinda looks an Ann Truitt-ish minimalist sculpture. Atop Waters’ piece, out of reach without a ladder, is a print from one of three movies, known only to Waters and exhibit curator Kristine Hileman, sworn to secrecy. In an exhibition littered with Waters’ appropriation of film images, he’s keeping this one to himself. And you totally want to know what it is.

To add a level of titillation and intrigue to this post, I want to share with you a moment when the ‘secret’ was revealed as recorded on the Instagram account of one zane.a.miller. I am not going to play spoilsport here, so if you really need to know the secret, click on either of the images below for al to be revealed.