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.).
― Amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 5 February 2003 16:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
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!
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 February 2003 03:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Honda (Honda), Thursday, 6 February 2003 03:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
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 flicktaking sidests: "Out Of Sight" vs "Schizopolis"
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 February 2003 06:21 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 February 2003 06:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
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).
― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Friday, 30 May 2003 14:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Leee (Leee), Thursday, 5 June 2003 17:59 (twenty years ago) link
― Leee (Leee), Thursday, 5 June 2003 18:02 (twenty years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 5 June 2003 18:20 (twenty years ago) link
― todd swiss (eliti), Thursday, 5 June 2003 21:27 (twenty years ago) link
― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Thursday, 5 June 2003 21:39 (twenty years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 6 June 2003 03:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 17 June 2003 03:32 (twenty years ago) link
― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 17 June 2003 03:54 (twenty years ago) link
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!
― Layna Andersen (Layna Andersen), Sunday, 13 July 2003 06:29 (twenty years ago) link
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".
― django (django), Sunday, 13 July 2003 18:11 (twenty years ago) link
― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Sunday, 13 July 2003 19:32 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Sunday, 13 July 2003 20:16 (twenty years ago) link
"too many references, my dear Barney"
― django (django), Sunday, 13 July 2003 20:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Dada, Sunday, 13 July 2003 20:23 (twenty years ago) link
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)
― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 13 July 2003 22:30 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Sunday, 13 July 2003 23:15 (twenty years ago) link
― ryan (ryan), Monday, 14 July 2003 03:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Layna Andersen (Layna Andersen), Monday, 14 July 2003 04:22 (twenty years ago) link
― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 14 July 2003 04:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 04:47 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:09 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:43 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:49 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:53 (twenty years ago) link
― i thought perhaps that was necessary (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:54 (twenty years ago) link
we know what's going on, don't we. ;] ;]
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 05:58 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 06:01 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 06:07 (twenty years ago) link
― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 14 July 2003 06:42 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 06:45 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 06:55 (twenty years ago) link
and re:narrative--do you bitch to joyce about those things?
― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 14 July 2003 07:32 (twenty years ago) link
― django (django), Monday, 14 July 2003 07:52 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 14 July 2003 14:55 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 14 July 2003 15:05 (twenty years ago) link
Are you sure?
― nickn (nickn), Monday, 14 July 2003 16:44 (twenty years ago) link
Jump Cutsby Michael AtkinsonAugust 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.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 17:53 (twenty years ago) link
― geeta, Wednesday, 13 August 2003 18:06 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 18:09 (twenty years ago) link
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,4267,1064264,00.html
?
― toby (tsg20), Monday, 20 October 2003 12:48 (twenty years ago) link
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 (jed_e_3), Monday, 20 October 2003 14:22 (twenty years ago) link
jed u R being high
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 20 October 2003 15:52 (twenty years ago) link
― jed (jed_e_3), Monday, 20 October 2003 15:54 (twenty years ago) link
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.
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 24 November 2007 07:15 (sixteen years ago) link
Besides Bjork, I'm guessing.
― nickn, Saturday, 24 November 2007 07:22 (sixteen years ago) link
heh
― Hurting 2, Saturday, 24 November 2007 07:37 (sixteen years ago) link
is this guy still a thing
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Saturday, 25 February 2012 07:06 (twelve years ago) link
the Busby Berkeley style shit from C1 is something I still think bout loads.
― mmmm, Saturday, 25 February 2012 11:03 (twelve years ago) link
my girlfriend's dad once accidentally kicked part of a Matthew Barney installation
― Nicholas Pokémon (silby), Saturday, 25 February 2012 15:52 (twelve years ago) link
he kicked a tv?
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Saturday, 25 February 2012 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
nah it was some sculpture thing, I think what he kicked was like some paper piled up on the floor or something
― Nicholas Pokémon (silby), Saturday, 25 February 2012 16:08 (twelve years ago) link
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
― Iago Galdston, Saturday, 25 February 2012 16:38 (twelve years ago) link
like a prestigious art gallery
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Saturday, 25 February 2012 16:40 (twelve years ago) link
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
― Iago Galdston, Saturday, 25 February 2012 16:41 (twelve years ago) link
is it in the crapper? (that was kind of the point of this semi-drunk revive)
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Saturday, 25 February 2012 17:06 (twelve years ago) link
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
― Iago Galdston, Saturday, 25 February 2012 18:30 (twelve years ago) link
http://static.squarespace.com/static/51117ee2e4b0e580c19e2c53/t/511473e3e4b0f297c48665f2/1360294885084/ekat%20barney%20transam.png?format=1000w
― johnny crunch, Friday, 19 July 2013 17:41 (ten years ago) link
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
― Brakhage, Saturday, 20 July 2013 00:06 (ten years ago) link
I will see anything this dude does ever.
― You pieces of shit. (jjjusten), Saturday, 20 July 2013 06:57 (ten years ago) link
What's the deal with River of Fundament?
― This Is Not An ILX Username (LaMonte), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 19:31 (ten years ago) link
sounds typically insane
― akm, Wednesday, 26 March 2014 23:26 (ten years ago) link
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 :(
― espring (amateurist), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 23:38 (ten years ago) link
i watched all of cremaster over the course of about a week, it was totally fun
― akm, Thursday, 27 March 2014 03:52 (ten years ago) link
Best review I've seen of it yet
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Thursday, 27 March 2014 03:58 (ten years ago) link
:)
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.
― espring (amateurist), Thursday, 27 March 2014 04:13 (ten years ago) link
Re: the DVD issue, these all seem to be on Youtube. Any point watching them there?
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Thursday, 27 March 2014 04:26 (ten years ago) link
should i see 'river of fundament' in london in a couple weeks y/n
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, 17 June 2014 17:31 (nine years ago) link
i might go on the monday. Just thinking it through.
― woof, Wednesday, 18 June 2014 10:05 (nine years ago) link
― Pew Nornographers (contenderizer), Wednesday, 18 June 2014 10:35 (nine years ago) link
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?
― Desert_Fox, Monday, 27 April 2015 07:29 (eight years ago) link
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?
― the late great, Tuesday, 28 April 2015 06:02 (eight years ago) link
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?
― Desert_Fox, Tuesday, 28 April 2015 18:00 (eight years ago) link
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...
― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing), Wednesday, 29 April 2015 01:06 (eight years ago) link
Sorry, that second link should be:https://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/departments/davismuseum/object%20imgs/benglis-1991.2.jpg
― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing), Wednesday, 29 April 2015 01:07 (eight years ago) link
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.
― Desert_Fox, Wednesday, 29 April 2015 17:57 (eight years ago) link
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.
― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing), Wednesday, 29 April 2015 22:33 (eight years ago) link
6.5 hours?!? no thanks
― the late great, Wednesday, 29 April 2015 23:53 (eight years ago) link
saw this exhibit tday, p cool - https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/matthew-barney-redoubt
― johnny crunch, Monday, 4 March 2019 01:33 (five years ago) link