Continued essay and 2nd part of video from this post.
In their form these works shared the utilitarian aesthetic of seventies body-art by Vito Acconci or Marina Abramovic, but, in the Cremaster Cycle, Barney translated these themes into colourful and complicated allegories, full of characters in strange costumes, incredible locations and bizarre storylines. This was body art in fancy dress – Baroque conceptualism! The theme of the work was the process of creation from the moment in which ideas are conceived until the moment before the finalisation of the work. Barney drew parallels between the period of development of the human embryo, when its sex is not yet determined (the Cremaster is the muscle which raises and lowers the testes), the period when an artist is actually making a work, and sporting competitions, whose outcome is uncertain.
Here was a work of art whose meanings had been very precisely formulated by the artist, yet were difficult to work out without reading extensively on the subject. To me this was one of typical pleasures and problems of art. The work looks great, you walk round it, contemplate it, and try to work out what it says. Often you get it wrong or you just can’t tell. Still somehow it’s a great work of it. That’s why most documentaries on art spend all their time ‘explaining’ the work. But in my film on Barney, I wanted to get to a moment before that – analogous to Barney’s moment of creativity in flux – when I was still trying to work out what all the symbols and stories in the work meant – and I wanted to see how the artist and his entourage of curators and interpreters would react, if I got it wrong.
“You can see the entire Art Safari Matthew Barney Feature on Art Safari Series 1’DVD which you can buy here
www.artsafari.tv
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