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MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE AND SELECT EARLY WORKS

Marti Domination squeezes into a tight space in Cremaster 1

MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE AND SELECT EARLY WORKS
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens May 17
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.cremaster.net

Matthew Barney’s Cremaster is so much more than five essentially incomprehensible films totaling seven hours made over the course of eight years out of chronological order; it’s a state of mind, a whole other level of consciousness. The complete series, which will never, according to Barney, be available on DVD or cable or any other salable personal format, is rarely shown in its entirety; the last times it was seen in New York City were the world premiere in 2003 at Anthology and in 2015 at IFC. Ostensibly following the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testicles as sexual differentiation takes place inside the human body, the films feature strange characters in odd metaphorical situations that are rarely immediately apparent; watching the films, I found myself continually referring to Cremaster Fanatic, which offers excellent meta-descriptions of each work, breaking down each bizarre symbol. But that doesn’t mean the narrative is impossible to follow or overly convoluted; instead, part of the fun is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

In conjunction with the opening of Barney’s latest exhibit, the free five-channel video installation “Secondary,” continuing in the artist’s Long Island City studio through June 25, Metrograph will be presenting the full cycle beginning May 17. On June 4, Barney, whose other films include the five-and-a-half-hour River of Fundament and the Drawing Restraint series, will be at Metrograph for a conversation with American writer Maggie Nelson following a special screening of remastered early works.

Artist Richard Serra plays the Architect in Cremaster 3

At three hours, Cremaster 3 (2002) is the longest and easiest to follow of the series. It details the heated 1929 fight between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan (40 Wall St.) to be the tallest structure in New York, framed by the Irish legend of Fionn and Fingal and the Giant’s Causeway. The cast features Barney as the Entered Apprentice climbing up the Guggenheim’s spiral walls, conceptual artist Richard Serra as the Architect (Hiram Abiff) and himself (melting Vaseline that drips down the length of the museum), amputee Aimee Mullins as the Entered Novitiate, singer Paul Brady as the Cloud Club maitre d’ serving a small group of gangster-like Masons, Terry Gillespie as a bartender with a bit of a Guinness problem (in the series’ funniest scene), and punk bands Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law engaged in a musical battle.

In Cremaster 4 (1994), the Ascending and Descending motorcycle sidecar teams race for the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man while the Loughton Candidate (Barney) carefully combs his hair (he has four potential horns on his head) and tap-dances as a trio of faeries bandy about. And in Cremaster 5 (1997), the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress) belts out a Hungarian opera above the Gellert Baths, where Fudor Sprites swim and Jacobin pigeons are prepared for a special purpose, with Barney appearing as the Queen’s Diva, the Queen’s Magician, and the Queen’s Giant.

Matthew Barney plays multiple roles in his experimental epic The Cremaster Cycle

Watching The Cremaster Cycle is an unforgettable experience, a thrilling foray into experimental film at its finest. It’s both mind-blowing and infuriatingly confusing, stunningly gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Everything in it is laden with meaning, though you’ll be hard-pressed to know what much of it is about. And there are more references to male genitalia than in any teen sex comedy ever made. The films will screen at select times at Metrograph over several weeks, with tickets, which will sell out quickly, available seven days in advance. The Cremaster Cycle is more than just a cinematic art project; it’s an event that has to be seen to be believed.

MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Marti Domination squeezes into a tight space in CREMASTER 1

THE CREMASTER CYCLE (Matthew Barney, 1994-2002)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Saturday, July 11, August 8, and September 5, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 7:40 pm
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
www.cremaster.net

Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is so much more than five essentially incomprehensible films totaling nearly seven hours made over the course of eight years out of chronological order; it’s a state of mind, a whole other level of consciousness. The complete series, which is shown at art houses and museums and will never, according to Barney, be available on DVD or any other salable personal format, has only been shown in its entirety in New York City twice this century, in October 2003, when it screened at Anthology Film Archives shortly after the exciting Matthew Barney survey held at the Guggenheim earlier that year, then at the IFC Center in the spring of 2010, in three programs of either one or two films. But now you can experience it all in one marathon sitting on July 11, August 8, and September 5 at the Guggenheim, where one of the films was made. (The full cycle was also shown there on June 6.) Ostensibly following the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testicles as sexual differentiation takes place inside the human body, the films feature strange characters in odd metaphorical situations that are rarely immediately apparent; you may want to continually refer to Cremaster Fanatic, which offers excellent meta-descriptions of each work, breaking down each bizarre symbol. But that doesn’t mean the narrative is impossible to follow or overly convoluted; instead, part of the fun is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

Artist Richard Serra plays the Architect in CREMASTER 3

In Cremaster 1 (1995), the Goodyear blimp hovers over a stadium where the young Barney, a former quarterback, played football. Bright colors dominate as four flight attendants peer out the window, unaware that beneath a table topped with a Vaseline centerpiece a platinum blonde (Marti Domination) is stealing grapes. A beautifully choreographed Busby Berkeley–like dance ensues. In Cremaster 2 (1999), Barney plays Gary Gilmore, re-creating the murder of Mormon gas station employee Max Jensen. There’s also a séance led by Baby Fay La Foe, graphic sex, a queen bee and her drones, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Mormon Tabernacle, and Norman Mailer, who wrote The Executioner’s Song about Gilmore, as Harry Houdini at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. At three hours, Cremaster 3 (2002) is the longest and easiest to follow of the series. It details the heated 1929 fight between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan (40 Wall St.) to be the tallest structure in New York, framed by the Irish legend of Fionn and Fingal and the Giant’s Causeway. The cast features Barney as the Entered Apprentice climbing up the Guggenheim’s spiral walls, conceptual artist Richard Serra as the Architect (Hiram Abiff) and himself (melting Vaseline that drips down the length of the museum), amputee Aimee Mullins as the Entered Novitiate, singer Paul Brady as the Cloud Club maitre d’ serving a small group of gangster-like Masons, Terry Gillespie as a bartender with a bit of a Guinness problem (in the series’ funniest scene), and punk bands Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law engaged in a musical battle. In Cremaster 4 (1994), the Ascending and Descending motorcycle sidecar teams race for the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man while the Loughton Candidate (Barney) carefully combs his hair (he has four potential horns on his head) and tap-dances as a trio of faeries bandy about. And in Cremaster 5 (1997), the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress) belts out a Hungarian opera above the Gellert Baths, where Fudor Sprites swim and Jacobin pigeons are prepared for a special purpose, with Barney (Drawing Restraint, River of Fundament) appearing as the Queen’s Diva, the Queen’s Magician, and the Queen’s Giant.

Matthew Barney plays multiple roles in his experimental epic THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Watching the Cremaster Cycle is an unforgettable experience, a thrilling foray into experimental film at its finest. It’s both mind-blowing and infuriatingly confusing, stunningly gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Everything in it is laden with meaning, though you’ll be hard-pressed to know what much of it is about. And there are more references to male genitalia than in any teen sex comedy ever made. The Guggenheim will be showing the films in the order in which they were made, so audiences can follow Barney’s creative process, beginning at 10:30 in the morning with Cremaster 4 and continuing with Cremaster 1 at 11:15, Cremaster 5 at 12:15, Cremaster 2 at 2:45, and, for the big finale, Cremaster 3 at 4:30. The screenings are free with museum admission, and you can come and go as you please as long as there are available seats. But you might as well settle in for the whole thing. The Cremaster Cycle is more than just a cinematic art project; it’s an event that has to be seen to be believed.

SUBLIMING VESSEL: THE DRAWINGS OF MATTHEW BARNEY

Matthew Barney, “Khu: Djed,” brush and ink, gold leaf, iron, and lapis lazuli on black paper in polyethylene frame, 2011 (copyright Matthew Barney / courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Daily through September 8, $12-$18 (free Fridays from 7:00 to 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
www.drawingrestraint.net

No, the banner outside the Morgan Library proclaiming that its Matthew Barney exhibition ends September 2 is not a restraint to stop drawing visitors to the show, which actually closes September 8. For the first-ever museum retrospective of his drawings, the California-born multidisciplinary artist chose two very specific venues, both of which had to be libraries: the Morgan first, followed by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. For “Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney,” the Park Slope-based former college quarterback and premed student combines pieces from the institutions’ holdings with his own works and research paraphernalia to lend new insight into his creative process and influences. Since the late 1980s, Barney has been making drawings that relate to his films, installations, and live performance events, the works serving not only as rehearsals or storyboards but also acting as part of the central focus of the narrative as well as continuing into the aftermath. “I would describe a system that I’ve always visualized as an inverted pyramid, where the narrative is at the widest point, at the top of the structure,” Barney tells artist Isabelle Dervaux in an interview in the exhibition catalog. “The narrative in most projects is film-based, video-based, in some projects performance-based, but it’s the most developed aspect of the project. From there a process of distillation happens. Sculpture comes next in the sense that sculpture often tries to articulate a relationship in the narrative between characters or between places. Drawing is at the bottom of this structure and is the most distilled aspect of it. In that way it’s one of the more rewarding — possible the most rewarding part of the process, to get down to the purest form, the most distilled form of the narrative.”

Matthew Barney, “Cremaster 4: Manx Manual,” graphite, lacquer, and petroleum jelly on paper in cast epoxy, prosthetic plastic, and Manx tartan, 1994-95 (copyright Matthew Barney / courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels)

Hanging on the walls are fully realized ink and pencil drawings, several incorporating one of Barney’s signature materials, petroleum jelly, in self-lubricating plastic frames, that relate to such ambitious projects as the five-part Cremaster Cycle film series, which explores the ascending and descending muscle that determines gender; his Drawing Restraint performances, in which he creates art while limiting his physical mobility, one of which was recently held at the Morgan (the result of which can be seen in the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery); the OTTOshaft trilogy, in which Barney uses Oakland Raiders center Jim Otto, who wore number 00, as the impetus for an exploration of athletic endurance that also involves Harry Houdini and the Hubris Pill; De Lama Lâmina (“From Mud, a Blade”), a collaboration with musician Arto Lindsay about environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill; and River of Fundament, inspired by Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evening, which delves into the Egyptian belief of the soul’s death and rebirth as experienced by a 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperial. Barney’s most accomplished drawings are those done in red, comprising the “River Rouge” series, while his pieces on black are the most mysterious, the details visible from only certain angles.

Matthew Barney, “River Rouge: Crown Victoria,” ink on paper in painted steel frame, 2011 (copyright Matthew Barney / Courtesy Gladstone Gallery)

The show also includes vitrines filled with objects chosen specifically by Barney from his own collection as well as the Morgan’s that relate to his work, from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to a Diane Arbus photo of Mailer, from a third-century papyrus copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead to a page from a thirteenth-century book depicting sailors on the back of a whale, from the Goya drawing “Locura (Madness)” to Joseph Smith’s The Book of Mormon. In addition to adding insight into Barney’s ever-evolving narrative, they reveal his endless fascination with the human body. “The first pieces I made of Vaseline were about wanting to moisten something,” he told Gerald Matt in a 2008 interview. (The quote is included in the wall text for the 1991 drawing “Delay of Game [manual] C.”) “I was thinking of all things that I was making at the time as literally extensions of my body somehow, and I wanted these objects to feel like they had just come out of me or could be put into me.” In many ways, that gets to the heart of Barney’s intense creative process and intriguing, confusing, highly abstract, and extremely stylized output. While Barney might often physically restrain himself, the worlds he has brought to life, which have oozed out of him and into him, on paper, on film, and in live performance, seem to have no limits.

THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Marti Domination squeezes into a tight space in CREMASTER 1

THE CREMASTER CYCLE (Matthew Barney, 1994-2002)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Wednesday, May 19 – Thursday, June 3
Tickets: $12.50 per program, series pass $30
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.cremaster.net

Matthew Barney’s CREMASTER CYCLE is so much more than five essentially incomprehensible films totaling seven hours made over the course of eight years out of chronological order; it’s a state of mind, a whole other level of consciousness. The complete series, which is shown at art houses and museums and will never, according to Barney, be available on DVD or any other salable personal format, hasn’t been seen in its entirety in New York City since October 2003, when it screened at Anthology Film Archives shortly after the exciting Matthew Barney survey held at the Guggenheim earlier that year. Ostensibly following the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testicles as sexual differentiation takes place inside the human body, the films feature strange characters in odd metaphorical situations that are rarely immediately apparent; we found ourselves continually referring to Cremaster Fanatic, which offers excellent meta-descriptions of each work, breaking down each bizarre symbol. But that doesn’t mean the narrative is impossible to follow or overly convoluted; instead, part of the fun is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

Artist Richard Serra plays the Architect in CREMASTER 3

In CREMASTER 1 (1995), the Goodyear blimp hovers over a stadium where the young Barney, a former quarterback, played football. Bright colors dominate as four flight attendants peer out the window, unaware that beneath a table topped with a Vaseline centerpiece a platinum blonde (Marti Domination) is stealing grapes. A beautifully choreographed Busby Berkeley-like dance ensues. In CREMASTER 2 (1999), Barney plays Gary Gilmore, re-creating the murder of Mormon gas station employee Max Jensen. There’s also a séance led by Baby Fay La Foe, graphic sex, a queen bee and her drones, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Mormon Tabernacle, and Norman Mailer, who wrote THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG about Gilmore, as Harry Houdini at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. At three hours, CREMASTER 3 (2002) is the longest and easiest to follow of the series. It details the heated 1929 fight between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan (40 Wall St.) to be the tallest structure in New York, framed by the Irish legend of Fionn and Fingal and the Giant’s Causeway. The cast features Barney as the Entered Apprentice climbing up the Guggenheim’s spiral walls, conceptual artist Richard Serra as the Architect (Hiram Abiff) and himself (melting Vaseline that drips down the length of the museum), amputee Aimee Mullins as the Entered Novitiate, singer Paul Brady as the Cloud Club maitre d’ serving a small group of gangster-like Masons, Terry Gillespie as a bartender with a bit of a Guinness problem (in the series’ funniest scene), and punk bands Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law engaged in a musical battle. In CREMASTER 4 (1994), the Ascending and Descending motorcycle sidecar teams race for the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man while the Loughton Candidate (Barney) carefully combs his hair (he has four potential horns on his head) and tap-dances as a trio of faeries bandy about. And in CREMASTER 5 (1997), the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress) belts out a Hungarian opera above the Gellert Baths, where Fudor Sprites swim and Jacobin pigeons are prepared for a special purpose, with Barney appearing as the Queen’s Diva, the Queen’s Magician, and the Queen’s Giant.

Matthew Barney plays multiple roles in his experimental epic THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Watching THE CREMASTER CYCLE is an unforgettable experience, a thrilling foray into experimental film at its finest. It’s both mind-blowing and infuriatingly confusing, stunningly gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Everything in it is laden with meaning, though you’ll be hard-pressed to know what much of it is about. And there are more references to male genitalia than in any teen sex comedy ever made. The films will screen for two weeks at the IFC Center in three programs, CREMASTER 1&2, CREMASTER 3, and CREMASTER 4&5. Barney will be at the 7:00 screening of CREMASTER 4&5 and the 9:25 showing of CREMASTER 1&2 on May 20. THE CREMASTER CYCLE is more than just a cinematic art project; it’s an event that has to be seen to be believed.