MATTHEW BARNEY MOVIE
MATTHEW BARNEY PLUS

This film was the most raw in terms of film stock and technique, but that gave it an urgency and energy.

The film opened with Barney, playing the satyr with prothetic ears and nose, carefully combing fire-engine red hair over some raised, rather anus-like protuberances, before crashing through a hole in the pier and into the sea – where he kept tapdancing on the sea bed. This was number four and it was a pretty male experience – all that racing around the Isle of Man (the name probably significant too) the closeups on leather-clad crotches and burly fairies. According to the sheet we got at the screening, the numbers of the films correspond to “the height of the gonads during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation” – one is the least descended, five the most. Photograph: SuppliedĪlex: The Cremaster Cycle is named after the muscle that controls the height of the testicles I’m sure every man has noticed its operation when swimming in a cold sea (or less pleasantly, getting socked in the balls). Still, there’s not a moment of this 42-minute video that isn’t strangely spellbinding.Ĭremaster cycle: the satyr tapdances. If I knew more about the specific myths or legends this is riffing on, I might have a richer reaction, as I do with some of later aspects. We’re introduced to a lot of iconography that will recur throughout the cycle. It concludes with the satyr wiggling through an enormous wax anus (again, my interpretation) and emerging in the mud as the race concludes. There are some androgynous fairies who put some oozing goo into the pockets of the satyr, which somehow transports to the racers. Its twin actions include a motorcycle sidecar race around the Isle of Man intercut with a satyr tapdancing a hole through a tile floor. So seeing them in this fashion seems like a better buildup.Ĭremaster 4 is, in some ways, the most energetic. Part one features a lot of birthing imagery, and part five has some death, but that’s about all I could put together as a throughline. I think it’s a wise move, as they definitely grow, not just in terms of length (roughly 40 minutes to three hours) but in scope, grandeur, difficulty of production and quality of film stock. Jordan: The first, which is the fourth! The Guggenheim chose to show these films as they were produced, which is out of order. So I was keen to get my hands dirty in the axle-grease and melted rubber of Barney’s automobile obsession – which brings us to the first in the series. My only engagement with Barney’s work has been his great Drawing Restraint show at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2007 I just missed his last film River of Fundament in Australia last year. We’d spend the vast majority of the day in a basement, albeit one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.Īs for the Cremaster Cycle itself, I’d never seen it other than in still images.

The rare opportunity to spend seven hours immersed in Barney’s Vaseline-slathered universe seemed like one too good to pass up – although I did have second thoughts when Saturday morning saw New York drenched in radiant sunshine. I’ve done a Ring Cycle I’ve read Ulysses I’ve done Einstein on the Beach (five hours) and Gatz (eight).

MATTHEW BARNEY MOVIE

What expectations did you have going in?Īlex: Movie marathons aren’t my thing but, as a man blessed with a long attention span, I’ve sat through a bunch of sizeable artworks, including a memorable nine-hour avant garde concert in Adelaide which included what sounded like a man rustling a crisp packet for 20 minutes. What’s surprising is that, with the exception of a few stretches, these lengthy and somewhat mystifying sequences can also be enthralling in a traditional moviegoing way. The films are a part of a larger work, and, as such, I always expect to go into his movies with an expectation merely to “enter a zone”. The props created for his films are later sold as sculpture to collectors, and can be found in galleries and museums. In recent years I’ve used the phrase “could double as an installation piece” when discussing beautiful films with hard-to-reach narratives, movies like Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder or Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux.īut Barney really does live at the other end of that divide.

MATTHEW BARNEY PLUS

I’ve done Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (seven hours and 12 minutes) and Jacques Rivette’s Out 1 (12 hours and 53 minutes, spread out over two days), plus the Alamo Drafthouse’s 24 hour Butt-Numb-a-Thon, but what makes this one different is its museum aspect. Jordan: I’ve done my share of movie marathons. Matthew Barney as the satyr in Cremaster 4.

Matthew barney