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Lot Essay
These works picture pivotal moments from three of Matthew Barney's five feature-length Cremaster films, which he wrote and directed between 1994 and 2002. In the first of the series, Ms. Goodyear directs a choral revue on the field of the Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho, Barney's hometown. Played by performer Marti Domination, her swanlike pallor cuts a striking figure against the formation of Rockettes-like dancers and the blue turf of the athletic arena. The sense of collectivity relayed by this synchronic group begins to break down in Barney's second film. Cremaster 2 alternates between and interweaves the stories of Gary Gilmore and Harry Houdini (who may have been the murderer's grandfather). This triptych features a scene from its final moments, in which the magician and the woman who may be Gilmore's future grandmother perform a two step in a dance hall, the lonely fragility of their union emphasized by a starkly illuminated setting and a plunging depth of field. Cremaster 3, actually the last film to be made, starts with a prologue of Celtic fable, adding the weight of mythology to Barney's sweeping narrative. The central panel of this triptych pictures a giant who legendarily built a causeway in northern Ireland; the green expanse surrounding him foils the urban scale of the rest of the film, which tracks the construction of the Chrysler Building.
These images hint at the astonishing thematic range that Barney's films engage. Biology is the most obvious-cremaster is the name of the male muscle that controls testicular movements-and the works repeatedly allude to that moment of embryonic sexual development in which the fate of the reproductive organs is still unknown. But as these images attest, Barney also borrows from the disciplines of history, biography, geology, and mythology. The forms of the gothic, the western, and the opera are brought to bear on his Wagnerian, techno-futuristic vision, in which humans muse with animals and technology. The experience of watching a Cremaster film is akin to a thrill ride; it is almost impossible to take everything in at once. The scores of related photographs, sculptures, drawings, and installations that Barney produces with each one allow for the lingering contemplation of his epic meditation on the forms and processes of creation.
These images hint at the astonishing thematic range that Barney's films engage. Biology is the most obvious-cremaster is the name of the male muscle that controls testicular movements-and the works repeatedly allude to that moment of embryonic sexual development in which the fate of the reproductive organs is still unknown. But as these images attest, Barney also borrows from the disciplines of history, biography, geology, and mythology. The forms of the gothic, the western, and the opera are brought to bear on his Wagnerian, techno-futuristic vision, in which humans muse with animals and technology. The experience of watching a Cremaster film is akin to a thrill ride; it is almost impossible to take everything in at once. The scores of related photographs, sculptures, drawings, and installations that Barney produces with each one allow for the lingering contemplation of his epic meditation on the forms and processes of creation.