Matthew Barney: C/D?

We had planned to see three in a row — but it was like 2 in the morning already, so we went home instead. Better than the Mummy = last film I saw with Rae.

What fuck was it? If IMDB wasn't so slow on my machine I'd look it up right now. But it's time for bed and Tove Jansson instead.

Barney's work is like a Poussin painting come to life, or a continuation of the 'metaphysical' fetishism for materials like fat, urine, felt and hare's blood seen in the work of Josef Beuys. He's brilliant at what he does, and he's the only one doing it.

What were they ABOUT? I think art contributes nothing, and in fact makes people feel less connected to each other, unless it's possible to discuss a MEANING to a movie over coffee afterwards.

Wanting just one meaning seems unduly reductive, but there's plenty to discuss if you know your Poussin and your Beuys, or even if you just want to talk about the personal symbolism, for you, of doves or grapes or TT racing or Gary Gilmore, or even just gossip about Bjork and Norman Mailer. It's entertaining on so many levels, there's just no excuse for being stumped for conversation.

bereft of drama, bereft of context or natural progression

I think what you mean is bereft of conventional drama, conventional context, and conventional progression. It's called 'being original'. And yes, MB can get away with this, and skip the 'how will it play in Des Moines' idiocies, because he has the money to do something completely uncompromised. There is, certainly, a certain amount of narcissism in his project, but there's narcissism in most great art that puts Man at the centre of the picture. (Although Barney is as likely to focus on a glacier or a grape as on his own, heavily-disguised, figure.)

The vertigo you describe, your thinly-veiled anger, is the direct result of Barney's complete 'otherness', which is what, for me, makes him so great and so welcome.

(And the kind of world you imply, a world where everything makes sense and is in the correct context, not only bores but terrifies me, because it's the kind of world where it 'makes sense' and is 'in context' for, say, the president of the US to mourn seven deaths while planning 500,000. How does that play in Des Moines? It 'makes sense' because of a non-problematical narrative structure called 'patriotism'.)

The MCA here had an exhibition of some of Barney's plasticine sculptures and large photo prints related to the Cremaster series, but it is no longer up. Apparently such ephemera is typically sold after the Cremaster premieres for premium prices. (A few limited-edition DVDs had been available for upwards of $100,000.)

Finally, anyone interested in Barney should look at the books published by the Gladstone Gallery to accompany each of his film projects. They are filled with lavish photos taken by Barney along with frames from the films themselves, and are always designed so as to be art-objects in themselves (clever overleafs, different qualities of paper, etc.).

The most extreme form of the shaggy dog could be a film that ran forever, that you could duck in and out of always see something new! But to be thorough and everything about this extreme version we'd have to have different editors who didn't talk to each other, different writers doing a kind of exquisite corpse with the script, different compression and effects applied to the audio - MTV basically. So why does MTV usually feel so tyrannical, so riskless? Why did I feel so subjected, so whacked over the head in that screening room, as entrapped as one of Barney's misshapen archaic mutants? Because I didn't do things in the right order! First I was supposed to grok Beuys and Poussin (maybe Bacon too?), or be interested in Bjork's love life - THEN I could be admitted to Barney's uncompromised circle. I think I speak for Des Moines when I say "eh". Hope that's not too thinly veiled!

You know, when I saw the cremaster film (which one has an old yet still beautiful Ursula Andress in it?), it was preceded by a digital video short featuring miniature blimps, his strangely predictable assortment of biogenital creatures; a phalanx of sexualized humanoids participating in a strange ceremony in what looked like an unused back-alley smack in the middle of town, caught on tape. I liked it! It was short and the digital video opened some breathing room from the crushing hermetic exactitude of his stylization. Barney's approach to whatever he's getting at in the Cremaster series is uncompromising, but to the point of being airless?kindof the opposite of what I would have thought you would say, Momus, about having provisional, short-term idea, constructs that fold away when they're no longer necessary, or transform to enclose more area:: quick mime or a sense of humor :P If somebody SCRIBBLed ALL OVER//////// the series of friezes would snap in a second.

I guess it's pretty original. ALTHOUGH there was a repugnantly cruel and graceless J-Lo flick that ripped off his style - what does THAT say? Did he do it first? Shouldn't you be ripped off by the BEST? :o Whichever it is, I certainly can't stop him from making the movies he puts so much care into, he doesn't need my money. Who knows what technical challenges he's solving all along the rocky way that every film production is, all the nuts and bolts and small triumphs. (We'll never know, because those kind of things never make it into his movies.)

Here's another J.Lo flick—taking sides—ts: "Out Of Sight" vs "Schizopolis"

I will be overdosing on the rest of the series as they play out here in SF over the next week. Since I haven't seen the whole series I'm not positive how well the biological theme works, but the images had a strong resonance with me regardless of the intent and I think that's the hallmark of good art anyway.

Also, I don't think that the whole series is coming out on DVD, unfortunately, just The Order section of Cremaster 3 (the bit in the guggenheim w/Agonostic Front deuling w/Murphy's Law), which, while a nice fun diversion from the relentless gloom of the rest of the picture, seemed kind of tacked on and really stunted the dramatic impact of the death of the Apprentice in the film proper (I guess this was the point, but it was a weird one).

I also saw Pirates of the Carribean today, and got just exactly what I hoped to out of it: silly pirate-y fun, with plenty of Depp in eyeliner. It made one hell of a double feature!

Tracer doesn't seem to be stumped for conversation. In fact, T seems to have gotten quite alot to talk about from MB. Maybe Barney is important, but to who exactly? There are 80 year old black ladies in Alabama making art as conceptual, symbolic, powerful and, as far as I'm concerned, important as Barney in their low budget, low tech quilts. And they achived this without hype, budget, or a famous girlfriend. I'm not denying his talent and vision. Personaly I love it. But I cringe when he's touted as THE most important artist. It's a title not unlike "Homecoming Queen".

"too many references, my dear Barney"

look how singualr, hermetic, epic and perverse his vision is, how it is almost cobbled together, and how it mantains its own symbol set.

this is harvey danger at least. (vyvvan girs. have then ame wrong)

we know what's going on, don't we. ;] ;]

and re:narrative--do you bitch to joyce about those things?

it may be resepcted for his unique vision, and balls out ambition-his world creation, but hated for his lack of plot and narrative, for what many assume to be an elabortate wank job.

Are you sure?

Jump Cuts
by Michael Atkinson
August 13 - 19, 2003

Renaissance man Matthew Barney is such a busy artistic powerhouse these days (Cremaster 3's climactic movement, "The Order," is out this month on DVD), we thought we'd lend him a hand with the scenarios for the next Cremaster "cycle." No, thank you, Mr. Barney!

Cremaster 8

Wearing a bronze jockstrap, an astronaut's helmet, and a coat of mango-peach latex paint, Barney scales Angkor Wat while the Green Bay Packers sit in an empty swimming pool, taking turns to blow up a used-car-lot balloon figure of Uncle Sam through a valve on its crotch. Cambodians slowly fill up the pool with cups of guacamole. By the time Barney finishes his climb and sings "If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sittin' On It," the Packers are immersed.

Cremaster 6

Whoopi Goldberg reads the Magna Carta over the Yankee Stadium PA system, as a boa constrictor slowly slithers around the bases after a remote-control toy car with a real mouse in the driver's seat. In the outfield, 30 naked women play 30 grand pianos wearing cardboard Dalai Lama masks. When the boa makes it home, fireworks erupt, spelling "I LIKE IKE" in the sky.

Cremaster 7

Strapped together with bungee cords, Barney and a proboscis monkey run through a shopping mall as members of the Bolshoi Ballet and the cast of Mummenschanz battle each other with paintball guns. Barney is dressed as Elizabeth II; the monkey is completely shaved. In Sears, they meet Udo Kier, who's trimming dwarf juniper trees with a toenail cutter. Together the trio make it to the parking lot, board a circus elephant, and ride into the sunset.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,4267,1064264,00.html

?

Cremaster 3 is good AND bad the order section in the guggenheim is magnificent and there are some genuinely disgusting and shocking images which are quite jolting. as tracer said though its slightly let down by the beauty of the images themselves they seem too gorgeous to be anything other than superficial - the chrysler section (the bulk of the film) goes on far too long.

Cremaster 2 i thought was the strongest - he gets the balance just about right - the gary gilmore murder sequence at the garage and the honey/cum fucking are good - really engaging, as are the salt flats sequences. its let down by the weakness of the relationship of these sections to the Harri Houdini/ Norman Mailer bits - the ending woth Mailer's speech pretty much ruins everything that has gone before it though.

Haven't seen 1 or 4 but i intend to. Overall they are extremely patchy but definatley worth checking out simply because they offer something you will never see the likes of at the movies. Except 5 which is like a bad Peter greenaway film.

The one thing i think that lets the cycle down overall is that the narrative is TOO STRONG. Seriously.

jed u R being high

but that one was my favorite! maybe even for the reasons you didn't like it. i was even very moved by it.

1 & 4 are ugly boring crap. fuck them and their ideas.

I'll have to get to it over time.

notes directly:

bagpipe music in the isle of man one is all scratchy and noisy
i really like the colour of testicles
centuar with shorn horns, ron perlman in hellboy,
escape thru tunnels, vas deferens/wombs
all this fucking lubricant
isle of man makes me reconsider girl on a motorcycle-!
swimming thru pearls, like fish roe
cod peices
doves (jacobian doves !?)
couteiers in crimson and orange--twins ?
ribbons all over the place
the lights like ovaries, the angels bless the house
opera=high code for low emotion
pink slit betwixt black leather
drums on empty stage
stuffed/inflatable
pools of water
lillies ribbons
4(goat,excess, servents, centaurs)
dancers,doves,mistresses)
baubled pairs
climbs the bean stock
black leather bodice
hand peice of two glass spheres connected by gold
two pennies
love on stage as an assumed 3rd audience, this does not
orchestra as audeince
like a whistler painting
underwater, baptism/drowning
min black on a black horse, are they dying together
winter field, black trees
emph. on footwear
naked under his cloak, white bone futursitc goves and manacles
langourus cuts
tragic, almost camp, so over time (does it realize this?)
germanic (remake of wagner)
horse rides alone (western)
dives off bridge in mantacels naked (houdini and the water sequences in 4, the centuar dives beneath the floor, handcuffed or weighted)
swelling strings
greygreen river much like the forrest (intercessional ?)
strange biomechincals (pool, shoe, robotic vaginas and anuses, unrelated or pseudorelated to ursla andress)
broad silent acting more kabuki then gish
18th centuy polychrome itaalian clupture of angelic kids
4 mermaids live under roe
full size, with fetal faces
marie attonies, wating to rise to coutiers
saphhic
barney comes in, as neptune, with red tulip feet, walks into the water, the attendants come and tie ribbons to genderless gentila, and then doves take the ribbons and fly it to the celling, pulling out (cremaster) his cock
majorettes/busby berkley one idea taken too far
sex--bees over whelming
houdini
salt flats
norman mailer (who wrote about gilmore, and gilmore is in this one)
rythimic
sacred/secert rituals in rooms shaped like honeycombs (lds deseret)
rock and roll (slayer--inside joke--cf blood revenge(ww) lds (think laban)
Brahma Bulls
rock and roll as GGs first break w. the church
Desert
wax phallus
everything overwhelmed w. bees (work, efficency but also groupthink)
matthew barney and his ego
does everything have subliminal meanings ?
(dino gas)
two cars connected by honeycomb (replacement, intercessary again, conduit)
slc tabernacle, w. 12 men--scale model
petrojelly everywhere (in the flapdown wind visor)
old fashioned american gothics (the gilmore murder/the architechture of slc)
12 apostles, 12 tribes, 12 riders, 12 flags, latter 12 bison
american/canuck flags
rodeo (angola + gary on the bull, bull dies as gary rides, sacfricial)
circle of salt,
4 beehive sentinals
cops on mounts in atheltic patterns
2nd half about drones and queens,
mounties, lakes, rocky mtns, banff springs

surreal in its most litearal sense

I'm a little bothered by how very DV it looks; wasn't cremaster 3 shot on film?

Not surprisingly, the Village Voice spoof Cremasters cited above sound much more fun to watch than Barney's.

"What a unbelievable piece of crap! Pretentious, boring and promoting the Japanese massacre of killing whales (in the name of science, hypocrites). Japan every year is trying to buy other countries to vote for reopening the hunt on whales in the International Whaling Commission. Maybe that's where Matthew Barney got the money from to make this piece of sh*t.

I used to be a big fan of Björk, musically but also her acting in "Dancer in the dark" (magnificent) , but now she has really lost it.

Matthew Barney is her partner, and apparently makes her lose all her critical capacity.

Don't go there!"

Oh God, did you ever make as lovable a creature? A three-legged kitten in a teapot maybe.

When in Minneapolis, which has significant and early Barney 'purchases' at the Walker, it was funny to look at who the wealthy buyer/donors were: a local real-estate magnate nobody outside Minnesota would be troubled by.

As to the art, it's relentlessly packaged but that's part of the practice. I wondered also if the practice was trying to express the ultimate self-ref/reverence and directing all that narcissism into strange and loopy places. It is very meaty as in fleshy. However intellectual they might make it sound, I can't help but think B&B sit there all day counting one another's toes and doing fuck-all.

"The Simple Life" for a pair of self-important art-world celebrities. With a combination of lavish pageantry and industrial exertion, the Nisshin Maru, Japan's last whaling ship, sails off from Nagasaki Bay. Along with its crew, it carries two guests, Matthew Barney and Bjork, who submit to elaborate rituals of tonsure, pomade, and dress at the hands of solemn bearers whose job it is to keep from laughing at their employers' airs. They partake of a classical tea ceremony in an unabashed display of Oriental kitsch that makes "Memoirs of a Geisha" look like an ethnographic documentary. As their berth fills with what might be water or whale oil, the couple lovingly carve each other up into human sushi. Barney, the director of this unbearingly empty spectacle, has in effect filmed at great expense the couple's designer-sightseeing cruise, with little more skill and vastly more pretense than the average tourist.

also, they don't usually show in movie theaters. the cycle did two years ago as part of a retrospective, but i believe barney's preferred venue for these things is in art galleries. cremaster 2 was meant to be experienced sitting on saddle sculptures.

Don't Barbara Walters interviews have all of these things? With the exception of the soundtrack role, I could argue the same for music videos or sports documentary-style films. A friend has an indy car film that's basically an imax-style film put on dvd that has long driving sequences with no plot whatsoever. Should I complain about them using "Hollywood" technology? I don't even think this classifies as a repurposing of tools for artistic intent since the methodologies are versatile enough that I don't see them bound to one filmmaking style.

I've actually just realized that if the entire thing were soundtracked by Sad#233; I would totally love it. There's a similar kind of obsessive sadness going on with both of them.

It goes without saying this stuff isn't for most people, and I can certainly see why it's annoying to some people this work even exists; the films are flagrant displays of production value and wealth, employed towards something extremely subjective and vague -- so I can understand the derision towards not only the work but the fact that there's an audience for it -- all I can say is I got something out of it, so I'm part of the audience.

this new one, from the look of it (and, god help us, its eight sequels)

Drawing Restraint 1 through 8 already exist. Try Google.

i. avant-garde art is somewhat about refusing conventions (rarely as totally as it says it is: but def somewhat)
ii. conventions provide (among other things) useful constraints and obstacle courses for problem solving which allows for leaps of energy and imagination as HOOKS
iii. avant-garde art is generally also pinched for funding in ways mainstream and traditional art aren't
iv. lack of funding provides (among other things) useful constraints and obstacle courses for problem solving which allows for leaps of energy and imagination as HOOKS
v. MB never has to worry whether something he's doing WORKS -- there isn't a convention metric, there isn't a technique metric, there isn't a budget metric -- so a. he plans it all out, complete w.hidden conceptual whatever in his BRANE, and then b. he executes it, except where anyone else would come to FORMAL or STRUCTURAL or EXECUTIONAL obstacles*, he can always just spend his way round them
vi. so there's a actually a kind of evasive deadness haning over the whole thing -- you can't tell when he's ON IT and when he's NOT bcz HE can't te;ll, bcz there's no gradient for him between skin-of-yer-teeth brilliant cobble-together-after-the-fact solution and the re-envisioning (= thinking about it afterwards) that problem-solving would bring to it... problems don't arise

*like as an example: the glaciermelt footage -- he never has to worry in respect of "i could only afford one day's shooting", i have to make what i've got WORK as it is, and restucturte everything round my limitation; which wd give its presence a kind of torque in the body of the film: he can always just film as much as he first thought he wanted -- he never has to rethink or replan, and everything stays shallow, bcz the maker's mind is neverv thrown into relief, or even into second gear really...

??

(bear in mind i have only seen 2, and quite liked it) (certainly i remember sensual images from it very clearly)

Except that the avant garde has been around for so long that refusing convention has become, itself, a convention, and therefore is now exactly the sort of constraint and obstacle course that can provide the structure you're talking about. In other words, there's the kind of repetition and redundancy required already there, and it's been there since Duchamp, at least.

There's even more when an artist establishes a sub-genre as recognizable as Barney's. Watching Pierre Hughye's film A Journey That Wasn't, I couldn't help wondering if it was a parody of Barney's apparently not-so-sui-generis genre. The music by Joshua Cody sounds exactly like Jonathan Beppler's scores for the Cremaster series. Even if it isn't a parody, it shows that this genre of art film now has as much usable convention and redundancy as Hollywood film-making.

Well, the films are very much about weird labours of Hercules. Barney always has to shin up an elevator shaft, walk along the surface of the sea, climb through a tunnel connecting two cars, climb around the proscenium arch of a theatre, etc. These scenes resemble the crossing-the-pool-with-a-candle scene in Tarkovsky's "Nostalgia" or the hauling-a-boat-over-a-mountain in Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo", and act as a sort of metaphysical "Jeux Sans Frontieres" as well as providing an epic narrative structure.

There's also the constraint that each film has to incorporate Barney's sculptures and installations. For instance, the vat of liquid vaseline on the deck of the whaler in "Drawing Restraint 9" or the sex-organs-based installation in the blimp. This is the films' raison d'etre, to turn the space-based medium that is sculpture into the the time-based medium that is film. It's in itself a "trial of Hercules", and the way Barney accomplishes it is with music, a kind of intermediate artform between space and time. Beppler's scores not only brilliant, they're hugely important to the success of the whole enterprise.

Tokion is the proud sponsor of the premiere of Drawing Restraint 9, the new film by Matthew Barney.

DRAWING RESTRAINT 9
Director Matthew Barney in person today at 6:40 & 9:30 shows!

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS TODAY! TWO WEEKS ONLY
IFC Center
http://www.ifccenter.com

Saw DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 a couple of weeks ago. Seriously gruesome finale, but if you liked the the Cremaster series, you'll like this. Otherwise . .

. . and, yeah, I'm up for DR10 and or Cremaster 6. Anyone who can connect me for a Cremaster 5 soundtrack, get in touch. And, Matthew, how about those action figures?

After straining hard to appreciate that Guggenheim show a few years ago and a few of the films, I never again felt the slightest desire to see anything this guy did.

Besides Bjork, I'm guessing.

heh

is this guy still a thing

the Busby Berkeley style shit from C1 is something I still think bout loads.

my girlfriend's dad once accidentally kicked part of a Matthew Barney installation

he kicked a tv?

nah it was some sculpture thing, I think what he kicked was like some paper piled up on the floor or something

remember when they used to call him, "The most important artist working today"? oh my god, he is so terrible. now if they'd only banish cindy sherman to the same place

like a prestigious art gallery

i'm talking about how his reputation was once so stellar and is now the crapper--he'll continue making his merch and have plenty of buyers

is it in the crapper? (that was kind of the point of this semi-drunk revive)

I remember seeing his first(?) show at Barbara Gladstone in the early 90s and it was pretty incredible...even though his various inspirations (Serra, Nauman, Burden, Acconci) were still being worked through, it was an interesting blend of sculpture, video, and performance. He coasts along now but his work isn't really looked at by other artists and the whole enterprise of making photographs and tchotchkes to fund the films resulted in alot of junk bought by rich collectors on the basis of a big industry of boosters around him that works when they are hot but dooms them in the long run

http://static.squarespace.com/static/51117ee2e4b0e580c19e2c53/t/511473e3e4b0f297c48665f2/1360294885084/ekat%20barney%20transam.png?format=1000w

Ahhh hah awesome - is that from Khu?

Early on, at an abandoned glue factory, assembly-line machinists turned steel sheets into 16 working viols, which were played by musicians in a mournful aria before Detroit blues singer Belita Woods belted out incantations from The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The audience was then packed onto a barge, which floated down the Rouge and Detroit Rivers and eventually stumbled upon a crime-scene investigation on the shoreline. Actress Aimee Mullins played an FBI detective who also happens to be an incarnation of the goddess Isis, and soon, as four towboats loaded with musicians circled the barge, the cadaver of the Chrysler from “REN” was pulled from the river. In turns, the car’s remains were autopsied on deck, separated like mummified organs, allowing Isis the opportunity to have sex with the engine—notably filled with live snakes—before being taken into custody herself by two twin baritones. The car’s body was lifted off the barge, cut into pieces, and as the audience stood after sunset in the rain on a platform in front of a steel mill shooting sparks, the pieces of the Chrysler were eventually melted into molten liquid

I will see anything this dude does ever.

What's the deal with River of Fundament?

sounds typically insane

i admit to finding the idea of this guy's movies--or more like, sections of the movies--more pleasant than watching a whole part of the cremaster cycle :(

i watched all of cremaster over the course of about a week, it was totally fun

Best review I've seen of it yet

:)

i guess i just felt, when watching them, that the shots don't seem to have any large-scale interaction that would make them more than the sum of their parts. it's like a series of maximalist images, one after the other like a slide show. but i admit i saw them years ago.

Re: the DVD issue, these all seem to be on Youtube. Any point watching them there?

should i see 'river of fundament' in london in a couple weeks y/n

i might go on the monday. Just thinking it through.

I will see anything this dude does ever.

Just saw Fundament in Los Angeles. Thought it was excellent. Not as complex, dense, or conceptually interesting as Cremaster, but very visceral and immersive. The art-kids were down on Barney's hubris, as they always are, but truthfully I have a lot of trouble thinking of anyone else who does "blockbuster art films" like these. Are there any?

Visionary artist Matthew Barney makes his BAM debut with the world premiere screening of River of Fundament, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

hahaha one of the absolute worst books, and i say that as a big mailer fan

now i want to see this, though ... how long was it?

It was 6.5 hours (including two 30-minute intermissions). So not that far off from the entire Cremaster Cycle. The Mailer thing is a pretty good send-up of his obscurantism: a novel no one has ever read, and an author who is world-famous but (at least from the perspective of academia) is hardly read nowadays, even in the United States, aside from White Negro and American Dream. And I imagine Mailer's profile is even lower in the mostly European countries where this has been screening?

Not related to River of Fundament, but I'd be really interested to learn what if anything Barney's said about Lynda Benglis. I'm finishing a paper on Benglis (undergrad, nothing fancy or probably even particularly good) and it really seems like there's a connection between her beeswax lozenges (here or here or etc) and Barney's "field emblem," especially the Vaseline version in Drawing Restraint 9.

Probably either not really or totally obvious, but fuck it, why not...

Sorry, that second link should be:
https://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/departments/davismuseum/object%20imgs/benglis-1991.2.jpg

Not sure I see the connection to the Field Emblem, though you may be on to something with the materials. Cremaster used Vaseline/plastic/beeswax (very explicitly in Cremaster 2), and Fundament moves over to gold leaf and metals, roughly following Benglis's trajectory. And I should maybe also add that Fundament features many gold-leaf phalluses and turds.

The general "lozenge" shape with a horizontal division at the center- it's not as apparent on all of Benglis's beeswax paintings but there's a line where she started brushing outward vertically.

I'll have to check out River of Fundament if I can.

6.5 hours?!? no thanks

saw this exhibit tday, p cool - https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/matthew-barney-redoubt