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If there were any
casual observers of this mega event they would have soon realized
that a bit of research was required. For instance, it is crucial
to
understand from where the title of the Cremaster
cycle is derived. The male cremaster muscle is responsible for
controlling testicular contractions in response
to external stimuli. This concept of "shrinkage" is
taken up and used as a blanket metaphor for all sorts of creative
processes. Once understood you can go on from there.
The expectations for this show were huge but
it delivered in many unexpected ways with plenty left over, literally,
in the form of props from the films.
Because the Guggenheim itself served as a set for final film,
Cremaster 3, (the five levels relating to the five cycles)
the use of the museum as an exhibition space/cinema made more
sense. This tie-in was crucial to a show that was impossible to
take in all at once. Assuming that all this would be digestible
because of the film format was a mistake. If anything, that is
what made it all the more difficult. The viewer has to bridge
the gap between the art making and the end product as film. This
gap has to do with decades of cultural acquaintance with cinema
as opposed to video art and performance. The Cremaster
series only poses as film, but it is clearly art in a film guise.
Though Barney makes successful links between these by filming
both performance and sculptural elements, one is never sure if
one is looking at a show about the films or vice versa. The stills
provide a main link that continues throughout the museum. They
have a little Hollywood glam,
giving yet another nod to cinema. These are confidently posed
as classical portraiture, usually with accompanying self-lubricating
frames.
Do we get the penchant for squidgy things and
descending testicles? Yes, sort of, but even with all the fascinating
explicative in the blurbs we never find out why Barney has this
fixation. He creates these large mythic tales that all interlink,
yet there is no single moment when it all comes into clear view.
The complexities here make Citizen
Kane look like Mister Rogers. It is as if we are party
to some major psychological research but then not given the final
results. This is what people may have found disappointing. And
although the series is effectively interwoven and looped, we need
some answers. Is that a normal requirement for viewing art? Perhaps
not, but if Barney's work is a literal art/science experiment,
we want to see the results. We need to know -- why should we care
if descension occurs or not?
Getting an overview of the series in the museum
is possible since all the films were on monitors nearly everywhere,
but having not viewed all the films in their
entirety it is hard to say exactly what all the connections are.
Does anyone know? I had time for only
Cremaster 4 as a whole piece. At times I thought I might
be tuning in to an old episode of The
Prisoner or The Avengers.
That may or may not be a criticism. Perhaps it was the Isle of
Man setting, the wacky motorcycle race and the white cliffs. There
was an inspired bit of performance as Barney (as Satyr) tap dances
through a floor of a pier and plummets into the sea. It had that
hard to watch performance art repetition but was rewarding. These
theatrical sequences reminded me of some of the illusory work
by Robert Wilson. Something about historical figures seen as art,
deconstructed. One imagines what Barney would do with Lincoln
or Robert E. Lee, as in Wilson's elaborate Civil War stage production.
Barney may himself become a historic character
in the same sense as figures in his works, namely Houdini and
Mailer. The full blown historical metaphors give multiple significance
to everything, including Barney's home state of Idaho, Richard
Serra, sexual difference, bees, Norman Mailer, Gary Gilmore, and
the Chrysler Building. These figures are used as archetypes and
the numerous subtexts within; masculinity, history, myth etc.
serve to both describe and illustrate the unique American gift
for hyperbole and self promotion. At times it feels Barney's complex
work is more suited to becoming a massive historical novel rather
than performance art. Never the less, for all these endless loops
of information, more significance is added by being channeled
through Barney's conduit of self-relativity.
For some reason, it is Cremaster 2 and
its gothic western motif that holds attention most thoroughly.
It seems to illustrate Barney's interweaving of narrative and
myth to the best effect also. Here the crossroads of late seventies,
violence, and the 20th century myth all converge narratively.
Whether this is something
autobiographical to do with Barney or his country or both is for
us to ponder. Casting Norman Mailer, the biographer of executed
murderer Gary Gilmore
(The Executioner¹s Song, 1978) as Harry Houdini (Gilmore's
alleged grandfather!?) is a piece of narrative genius that only
an artist scriptwriter could invent. Where most Hollywood films
have one Ford Mustang for the hero to chase around in, Barney
includes two, one belonging to Gilmore and one to his girlfriend.
The sculptural versions of these in the museum, chopped and channeled
and full of mysterious interventions were intriguing and one of
the many successful links that stood on their own. Barney's over-the-top
universe is fully enigmatic, elliptical, and thought-provoking
stuff.
-James
Rosenthal, July, 2003
More on Matthew Barney: read
Kevin Reay's essay on Cremaster 3 |
