Cremaster 4 - Matthew Barney:
Here is a paragraph to explain what I was feeling throughout watching this clip.
I found that the Cremaster 4 film was rather disturbing and damn right vile, I didn't like what this video was trying to get across and it's meaning made me physically queasy. The Cremaster Cycle was created by Matthew Barney and, Cremaster 4 was the first installment that he filmed. Cremaster 4, was filmed and set on the Isle of Man - an small island (about three times the size of Washington, D.C.) in the sea between Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. The film incorporates imagery from the island’s folklore, wildlife, and annual Tourist Trophy motorcycle race. Biologically, Cremaster 4 deals with the organism’s desire to return to a state of neutral gender as its male identity is formed.
Like I said before, I found this 42 minute film to be rather disturbing and made me feel ill, I simply thought that this is completely freaky and I felt that it didn't have any real meaning whatsoever. In conclusion, I'm scarred for life due to even watching this 42 minute film I don't understand how that was "art".
Elements of the film I found interesting were: the use of tap dancing within the film, as I thought it was strange and unusual.
Like I said before, I found this 42 minute film to be rather disturbing and made me feel ill, I simply thought that this is completely freaky and I felt that it didn't have any real meaning whatsoever. In conclusion, I'm scarred for life due to even watching this 42 minute film I don't understand how that was "art".
Elements of the film I found interesting were: the use of tap dancing within the film, as I thought it was strange and unusual.
About "Cremaster 4"
Cremaster 4, like other films in the series, has a circular structure and begins and ends in the same location: in this case a white padded building erected on Queen’s Pier, which juts far into the Irish Sea. The building has a white Cremaster field emblem painted on the roof. Inside the building, the Loughton Candidate combs his bright red hair in a mirror.
The Loughton Candidate is the central character in Cremaster 4. He is the descendent of a Manx satyr named Phynnodderree and wears an Edwardian suit with a Manx heather corsage. As he combs his hair, we see that he has four impacted sockets on his scalp. These will potentially grow into the horns of the Loughton Ram, a species native to the Isle of Man. The Loughton Ram has two sets of horns -- one pair rises upwards, the other grows downwards. For Barney, the Ram’s horns symbolize a state of equilibrium, where ascension and descension can coexist together equally.
Meanwhile, two motorcycle sidecar teams (each team is played by two brothers) are preparing for a race around the Isle of Man. The “Ascending” team is outfitted in yellow and will take the clockwise path, beginning in the lowlands and then ascending into the mountain section of the race. The “Descending” team wears blue and takes the opposite path. Both teams bear the insignia of the “Manx Triskelton” (the symbol of the Isle of Man: three legs around a central axis) superimposed over the Cremaster field emblem. Barney employs the Triskelton as a symbol of the three separate possibilities offered by the Loughton Candidate and Ascending and Descending teams.
The Loughton Candidate is the central character in Cremaster 4. He is the descendent of a Manx satyr named Phynnodderree and wears an Edwardian suit with a Manx heather corsage. As he combs his hair, we see that he has four impacted sockets on his scalp. These will potentially grow into the horns of the Loughton Ram, a species native to the Isle of Man. The Loughton Ram has two sets of horns -- one pair rises upwards, the other grows downwards. For Barney, the Ram’s horns symbolize a state of equilibrium, where ascension and descension can coexist together equally.
Meanwhile, two motorcycle sidecar teams (each team is played by two brothers) are preparing for a race around the Isle of Man. The “Ascending” team is outfitted in yellow and will take the clockwise path, beginning in the lowlands and then ascending into the mountain section of the race. The “Descending” team wears blue and takes the opposite path. Both teams bear the insignia of the “Manx Triskelton” (the symbol of the Isle of Man: three legs around a central axis) superimposed over the Cremaster field emblem. Barney employs the Triskelton as a symbol of the three separate possibilities offered by the Loughton Candidate and Ascending and Descending teams.
About Matthew Barney:
Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in 1967 and was raised in Boise, Idaho.
He attended Yale University, receiving his BA in 1989, then moved to New York City, where he lives today. From his earliest work, Barney has explored the transcendence of physical limitations in a multimedia art practice that includes feature-length films, video installations, sculpture, photography, and drawing.
In his first solo exhibitions, Barney presented elaborate sculptural installations that included videos of himself interacting with various constructed objects and performing physical feats such as climbing across the gallery ceiling suspended from titanium ice screws.
In high school, Barney played on the wrestling and football teams (the football team played their games at Bronco Stadium, the setting of Cremaster 1). He gave the graduation speech (drawing parallels between the travels of life and the path of the sperm) for the class of 1985 at Capital High School.
The summer after graduation, Barney answered an ad for a modeling job. He was spotted by a model scout and paid his way through college working for the Click modeling agency (clients included Ralph Lauren and J. Crew. Modeling meant that he had to abandon football, but he frequently references athletics in his artwork.
In 1992, Barney introduced fantastical creatures into his work, a gesture that presaged the vocabulary of his subsequent narrative films. In 1994, Barney began work on his epic Cremaster cycle, a five-part film project accompanied by related sculptures, photographs, and drawings.
He completed the cycle in 2002.
Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle, an exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum of artwork from the entire project, premiered at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in June 2002 and subsequently traveled to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in October 2002 before its presentation in New York.
He attended Yale University, receiving his BA in 1989, then moved to New York City, where he lives today. From his earliest work, Barney has explored the transcendence of physical limitations in a multimedia art practice that includes feature-length films, video installations, sculpture, photography, and drawing.
In his first solo exhibitions, Barney presented elaborate sculptural installations that included videos of himself interacting with various constructed objects and performing physical feats such as climbing across the gallery ceiling suspended from titanium ice screws.
In high school, Barney played on the wrestling and football teams (the football team played their games at Bronco Stadium, the setting of Cremaster 1). He gave the graduation speech (drawing parallels between the travels of life and the path of the sperm) for the class of 1985 at Capital High School.
The summer after graduation, Barney answered an ad for a modeling job. He was spotted by a model scout and paid his way through college working for the Click modeling agency (clients included Ralph Lauren and J. Crew. Modeling meant that he had to abandon football, but he frequently references athletics in his artwork.
In 1992, Barney introduced fantastical creatures into his work, a gesture that presaged the vocabulary of his subsequent narrative films. In 1994, Barney began work on his epic Cremaster cycle, a five-part film project accompanied by related sculptures, photographs, and drawings.
He completed the cycle in 2002.
Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle, an exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum of artwork from the entire project, premiered at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in June 2002 and subsequently traveled to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in October 2002 before its presentation in New York.
Quotes:
"The Cremaster Cycle" contains gross-out imagery, nudity, graphic sex and enough pretentiousness to choke a hippo.
By James Verniere
Barney began writing and directing the Cremaster films in 1994 in an eschewed chronological order. He started with "Cremaster 4” followed by "Cremaster 1" (1995), "Cremaster 5" (1997), "Cremaster 2" (1999) and "Cremaster 3" (2002). Along with playing one or more roles in the films, Barney created related sculptures, drawings and photographs.
In addition to focusing on the cremaster cycle, the project also explores anatomical allusions to the position of the reproductive organs during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation. Each film looks at Western Civilization with humor by borrowing from the dramatic form. "Cremaster 1" parodies the musical extravaganzas of Busby Berkeley; "Cremaster 2," starring Norman Mailer, is a gothic Western loosely based on the life of convict Gary Gilmore; "Cremaster 3" is part zombie-thriller, part gangster film; "Cremaster 4" is part vaudeville, part Victorian comedy of manners and part road-movie; and "Cremaster 5" is performed as a lyric opera set against the Baroque backdrop of the Hungarian State Opera House.
(Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
"Barney's 'Cremaster Cycle' reaches the Guggenheim. (New York)." Art Business News May 2003: 56. General OneFile. Web. 28 Mar. 2013.)
Barney has spent eight years working on the experimental films, an epic cycle of birth and sexual differentiation that draws on influences as diverse as Busby Berkeley musicals, gothic Westerns, operatic spectacle, Celtic myth, Masonic initiation rites and motorcycle races.
Rooney, David