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| | Scene from "Cremaster 3."
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Cremaster works
Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle — a five-part art exhibit on film and off — reaches completion with a monumental three-hour creation full of music, spectacle, sculpted vaseline, and audacious decisions both good and bad.
By DAVID N. BUTTERWORTH
Offoffoff.com
The best way to view — and truly appreciate — Matthew Barney's epic and colossal
Cremaster Cycle, a series of five avant-garde films made between 1994 and 2002,
is in its entirety: complete, one after the other with breaks in between to
take in the artist's related sculptures, drawings, and photographs on display
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In the process, a better understanding of
the artist's underlying polemic and overall aesthetic will emerge, the process
of creation as envisioned by a talent of staggering (in more ways than one)
proportions.
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| THE CREMASTER CYCLE |
Written and directed by: Matthew Barney.
Produced by: Matthew Barney, Barbara Gladstone, Chelsea Romersa.
Includes individual films: "Cremaster 1," "Cremaster 2," "Cremaster 3," "Cremaster 4," "Cremaster 5" by Matthew Barney
Cast: Richard Serra, Matthew Barney, Aimee Mullins, MacCumhail, Paul Brady, Terry Gillespie, Mike Bocchetti, David Edward, Campbell, James Pantoleon, Jim Tooey, Nesrin Karanouh, Peter D. Badalamenti, The Mighty Biggs, Ursula Andress, Marti Domination, Norman Mailer, Matthew Barney, Anonymous, Lauren Pine, Scot Ewalt, Patty Griffin, Michael Thompson, David A. Lombardo, Bruce Steele, Steve Tucker, Cat Kubic, Sam Jalhej, Jacqueline Molasses.
Cinematography: Peter Strietmann.
Music by: Jonathan Bepler.
Related links:
Official site
| All of David N. Butterworth's reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
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| SCHEDULE |
Guggenheim Museum
(212) 423-3500
Film Forum
209 West Houston
(212) 727-8110
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Or you can trot on down to the Film Forum where the series (sans artifacts)
is currently enjoying a "special" two-week run.
Ripe with symbolism and awe-inspiring imagery, the Cremaster Cycle is named
for the male cremaster muscle that "controls testicular contractions in response
to external stimuli." The films progress from representations of the most undifferentiated
or "ascended" state ("Cremaster 1") to the most differentiated or "descended"
state ("Cremaster 5").
Through direct biological allusions tempered by narrative models taken
from the realms of history, geology, and mythology, Barney explores the creation
of form in a universe that is by turns jaw-dropping, laughable, mind-boggling,
maddening . . . but never less than totally unique. Numerically then (but not
chronologically, since the films were produced out of sequence), we have:
"Cremaster 1" (1995), 40 mins.
Above and beyond Boise's Bronco Stadium float two Goodyear blimps with near-identical
lounges, each populated by four bored flight attendants who casually draw on
cigarillos while observing the Busby Berkeley-inspired musical revue unfolding
on the blue Astroturf below. The thrum of ambient engine noise heralds the
under-table movements of a stowaway (Marti Domination) who plucks grapes through
a vaginal opening picked in the tablecloth as the chorus girls kick up their
heels, mimicking patterns formed by the grapes that emerge through bells on
her toes.
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| | Scene from "Cremaster 3."
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"Cremaster 2" (1999), 79 mins.
Barney's sprawling ode to the American West features, among other things, lots
of bees, a sˇance, a rock drum solo, glacial and Salt Lake landscapes, a French
bulldog, reversing bison, the double "C" Cremaster Cycle symbol, a dazzling
honeycombed saddle, the Texas two-step, Sinclair gas, #55 Brahma bull in a death
row rodeo, and cultural icons Gary Gilmore (Barney himself) and Harry Houdini
(played by Norman Mailer, Gilmore's biographer), plus a couple of Canadian Mounties
backed by the organ-grinding Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
"Cremaster 3" (2002), 182 mins.
"Makes Peter Greenaway look like Joel Schumacher." Phallic symbols abound in
this bum-numbing centerpiece that melds Celtic allegory with architectural conceits
and Masonic initiation rites. "An hypnotic hallucination that unfolds patiently,
disturbingly, and very strangely." With sculptor Richard Serra as The Architect.
"Cremaster 4" (1994), 42 mins.
In "Cremaster 4," a repetitive and not altogether successful entry, gonadal
potatoes jockey for position, reverberating out of the uniforms of two motorcycle
sidecar teams, one blue, one yellow, that traverse an idyllic green yet blustery
Isle of Man (the creation of which is alluded to in the conclusion of "Cremaster
3" when a leprechaun hurls a rock into the Irish Sea) while the Loughton Candidate
(soon to be a ram) literally tap dances off the Queen's Pier.
"Cremaster 5" (1997), 55 mins.
A poetic operetta (with ruffled pigeons) performed by "Dr. No"'s Ursula Andress
(as The Queen of Chain) and two doting Chinese attendants while Barney climbs
the stage of the Budapest opera house and underwater androgynous faeries attend
to the nether regions of a differentiated being in a finale that "defers definitive
conclusion."
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| The three-hour "Cremaster 3" doesn't seem overwhelming
at all. The tautest and most significant of the films, it is beautifully structured and takes delicious time in setting up situations that don't necessarily lead anywhere. | |
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Jonathan Jones of The Guardian newspaper has called the Cremaster Cycle
"the
first great fusion of art and cinema since 'Un Chien Andalou' " — no small
assertion as far as film criticism/theory is concerned, and while there is no
denying the complexity and surreal nature of Barney's work, his interpretation
is sometimes hampered by decisions that serve to weaken the looping "narrative."
Although these are not silent films per se, dialogue is limited, with Jonathan
Bepler's minimalist score filling in for conversation. Towards the beginning
of "Cremaster 3," for example, Bepler overscores a benign sequence with an atonal
sound wave of increasing intensity that bores into your brain like a hot wire
through Vaseline, Barney's signature sculpting medium. Petroleum jelly (like
billowing ribbons, balls on rods, and weird footwear) provides the films with
a thematic link. This white lardaceous substance, often having the texture
and appearance of salt-water taffy, is used to mold the abstract, grape-surrounded
centerpieces of "Cremaster 1"; likewise, Gilmore uses it in an attempt to conjoin
his two Ford Mustangs in "Cremaster 2"; and the red-haired, Pixie-eared satyr
of "Cremaster 4" crawls through a cervical tunnel filled with the sticky, icky
stuff.
Barney doesn't sculpt in a single medium, however. One piece, selected
at random from the exhibit, comprises a wrestling mat, antique lace, Manx tartan,
prosthetic plastic, large pearl tapioca, polyester, silicone, porcelain, sterling
silver, and mother of pearl.
The writer/director also appears in his films — as serial killer Gilmore
in "Cremaster 2"; the Diva, Magician and Giant of "Cremaster 5"; and "Cremaster
4"'s tap-dancing fool to name a few. As auteur, Barney knows precisely what
he wants and how to get it up on the screen (with financing seemingly unrestricted).
However, Barney is often guilty of overstating his case. "Cremaster 1," for
example, is only 40 minutes in length but feels twice that due to the overly
repetitive nature of the piece (Domination's Goodyear arranges grapes in varying
patterns and the dancing girls affect matching formations again and again . . .
and again!). And "Cremaster 4" (42 minutes) spends almost half its time endlessly
following the sidecar teams buzzing around the Isle of Man. There's nothing
here a good editor (currently credited to Barney) couldn't tighten up.
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| | Scene from "Cremaster 5."
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That said, the three-hour opus that is "Cremaster 3" doesn't seem overwhelming
at all. The tautest and most significant of the films, this middle chapter
is beautifully structured — much like the Chrysler Building at its center — and
takes delicious time in setting up situations that don't necessarily lead anywhere.
Some of the most meticulous and imaginative sequences, including a demolition
derby by five 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperials, a disturbing sequence in a dentist's
chair that recalls the two Davids (Lynch and Cronenberg), a fatal maypole dance,
and a slapstick routine in the building's Cloud Club bar, can be found in "Cremaster
3."
Unfortunately, the "highlight" of this segment is a self-indulgent and,
frankly, idiotic "choric interlude" filmed at the Guggenheim called "The Order"
in which Barney (as the Entered Apprentice, pompom wigged and kilted, with rolled
orange satin stuffed in his bloodied mouth) scales the walls of the museum's
spiraling rotunda while rock bands blare, a maintenance worker slops liquid
plastic at deliberately arranged slabs of steel, and a half-woman, half cheetah
(Aimˇe Mullins) engages the Apprentice in a erotic dance.
For the crowd that appreciates art as spectacle, "Matthew Barney: The Cremaster
Cycle" provides a rare opportunity to wallow. It's hard to believe all this
comes out of the head of one man.
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APRIL 24, 2003
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
Reader comments on The Cremaster Cycle:
wtf from kolla, Sep 11, 2004
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