Matthew Barney Moving to Fort Greene?

The New York Observer reports that Matthew Barney may have purchased a townhouse at 67 South Elliott Street in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. The two-family house was built in 1854 and sold for $1.99 million - apparently it is a "fixer upper" in need of renovation. The Observer could not confirm that the house was sold to the artist Matthew Barney (it could be a different person with the same name) but the same real estate lawyer representing this Matthew Barney coordinated Barney and Bjork's purchase of the $4 million Brooklyn Heights penthouse where they have lived since 2009. Bjork's name does not appear on the new deed, perhaps confirming rumors that the couple has split. If Bjork and Barney are, in fact, moving into the house on South Elliott, their neighbors on the block will include writer Jhumpa Lahiri and the offices of Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule film production company.

River of Fundament

Matthew Barney has launched a web site for his new film River of Fundament at http://www.riveroffundament.net . The site includes a synopsis of the film and a list of upcoming screenings, including Vienna, London, Amsterdam, Toronto, Basel (Switzerland) and Reykajavik.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music has also posted an album of photographs from the world premier of ROF. Guests included rapper Kanye West, performance artist Marina Abramovic, actor Peter Saarsgard, artist Wangechi Mutu, and musician Rufus Wainwright, plus cast members Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aimee Mullins, Ellen Burstyn, Debbie Harry, John Buffalo Mailer, Milford Graves, Jennie Knaggs, Marti Domination, and others.

We are working on a new issue of the Cremaster Fanatic Fanzine focusing on River of Fundament. If you would like to submit artwork or writing, please email your submission to info@cremasterfanatic.com

Matthew Barney at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Matthew Barney's exhibtion River of Fundament will be on view at Haus der Kunst in Munich from March 17 - August 17. The exhibition will contain sculptures, drawings, and other works related to Barney's recently-released six hour film of the same name, based on Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the film will have it's European premier at the Bavarian State Opera on March 16. Tickets are already sold out, but Haus der Kunst has promised to present additional screenings (dates tba).

On Saturday, March 15, Barney will give a talk at the museum with curator Okwui Enwezor; the conversation will be streamed live HERE starting at 6pm Munich time. Haus der Kunst will also be screening the five Cremaster films from June 3-5 and have scheduled other public programs related to the show - see the full schedule HERE

Tickets on Sale for New Matthew Barney Film at BAM

Tickets are now on sale for the premier of Matthew Barney's new film, River of Fundament, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The film, clocking in at nearly six hours (including two intermissions), will have a single daily screening from February 12 - 16. From BAM's web site:

"Visionary artist Matthew Barney makes his BAM debut with the world premiere screening of River of Fundament, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

The film’s central scene is an abstraction of Mailer’s wake, set in a replica of the late author’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights and featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Giamatti, Elaine Stritch, Ellen Burstyn, Joan La Barbara, and jazz percussionist Milford Graves. Alluring and intense, this epic, multidimensional experience is a sprawling allegory of death and rebirth within the contemporary American landscape."

Purchase tickets HERE.

River of Fundament to have Australian Premier at the Adelaide Festival

Shortly after it's world premier at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Matthew Barney's new film River of Fundament will open at the Adelaide Festival in Australia. The film will screen on March 2 and 3. Buy tickets here.

 

October Matthew Barney Exhibitions / Screenings

California State University Long Beach will screen all five movies in the Cremaster Cycle next month, in conjunction with their exhibition of Matthew Barney's special effects collaborator Gabe Bartolos: Abhorrence and Obsession  (running through December 8). The screenings will be held on three consecutive Saturdays, October 5, 12, and 19. Ticket info and the full schedule are here.

Also next month, Matthew Barney's drawing exhibition The Subliming Vessel (aka La Chambre de Sublimation) will open at the Bibliotheque National de France in Paris on October 8. A version of the exhibition was previously on view at the Morgan Library in New York, but the French installation will include materials drawn from the BnF's collection that were not shown in New York. The exhibition includes approximately 80 drawings, created between 1988 and 2011 and related to projects from the Cremaster Cycle through the currently in-process River of Fundament. Barney will also create a new work in the Drawing Restraint series at the BnF, in a performance that will be filmed for future use. The exhibition runs through January 5.

Matthew Barney and Bjork Break Up!

Icelandic magazine Séð og Heyrt reports that Matthew Barney and the musician Bjork, his long time romantic partner, have parted ways, according to newsoficeland.com. Barney and Bjork have a daughter, Isadora, born in 2002.

Potrait of Matthew Barney by Elizabeth Peyton

Gawker reports a rumor that Barney is now romantically linked to "sometimes-lesbian" painter Elizabeth Peyton. Barney and Peyton had a joint exhibtion, The Blood of Two,  at the Deste Foundation in Greece in 2009. The show included several portraits of Barney by Peyton. Peyton divorced her husband, artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, in 2004.

Elizabeth Peyton, via Zimbio

Gawker recently reported that Barney and Bjork purchased a 3,000 square foot penthouse apartment at 160 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights and were selling their West Village abode with an asking price of $1.7 million. The site now speculates, "Either they bought the Brooklyn house so that one of them could live their with their daughter, or they just wanted more room."

Matthew Barney Performance TOMORROW - Hudson, NY

Matthew Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler will lead a performance tomorrow night (Friday, September 13) at the BasilicaSoundScape art and music festival in Hudson, NY. The organizers are being secretive about the performance, but it will apparently involve all of the bands on the lineup being conducted by Bepler. The event will be held in a converted 19th century factory two hours north of New York City (take Amtrak to Hudson station). Tickets can be purchased for Friday night only or for the entire weekend, and camping is available for $30 per tent per night. We at Cremaster Fanatic won't be able to make it, but please send us photos/video if you go.

Purchase tickets HERE

Interview with festival organizer Melissa Auf der Mar HERE

Gabe Bartalos Exhibition

Matthew Barney's long time collaborator Gabe Bartalos is having an exhibition of his special effects work at the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach through December 8. The exhibition, titled Gabe Bartalos: Abhorrence and Obsession, includes a number of pieces Bartalos made for Barney's films, including a statue of the Loughton Candidate swathed in Vaseline from Cremaster 4, a zombie horse from Cremaster 3, and, perhaps most provocative, replicas of Matthew Barney and Bjork's genitals (and feet) from Drawing Restraint 9.

Photos by Brian Addison, via lbpost.com

River of Fundament to Premier at Park Avenue Armory in 2014

GalleristNY reports that Matthew Barney's River of Fundament will appear at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City in 2014. There are few details at the moment (and the Armory has not confirmed the news) but it will apparently be a 6-hour "operatic film project" with a "huge" cast. It is unclear whether there will be live performers or if the opera will unfold entirely on film, but there will undoubtedly be a sculptural installation in the Armory's massive drill hall.

Cremaster Fanatic was able to sit in on a day of shooting at the River of Fundament set at the Brooklyn Navy Yard a few weeks ago. We've been too busy to post our photographs, but hope to have them online soon - keep watching this space!

Matthew Barney Needs Extras For Film Shoot TOMORROW - NYC

Hey Cremaster Fanatics - this could be your dream come true. Matthew Barney is in need of volunteers to perform in a shoot for his new film River of Fundament. The shoot will take place tomorrow, June 29, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Volunteers will be positioned on a steep set of stairs and will be asked to participate vocally. Music director Jonathan Bepler will be directing the volunteers. If interested, you must be in good physical shape, willing to climb up and down the stairs (which may be slippery), and commit to a possible 10-hour workday. Lunch and water will be provided, and volunteers will receive limited edition signed & numbered T shirt. Apply here.

Matthew Barney "Subliming Vessel" at the Morgan Library

The New York Times has a nice article (with some photos) about Matthew Barney's Subliming Vessel drawing retrospective, on view at the Morgan Library in New York City through September 2. In addition to drawings and stroyboards for Barney's films, the exhibition includes a site-specific drawing by Barney, Drawing Restraint 20. "A few days before the opening, the artist, alone in a gallery, executed a wall drawing while hefting an Olympic-grade weight bar and using it as a graphic tool. The drawing remains, as do related props: the weight bar, a towel and containers of graphite powder, chalk and petroleum jelly."

The Morgan Library has posted a list of events being held in conjunction with the exhibition. A talk, originally scheduled for this evening (May 15), between Matthew Barney and Christian Scheidemann, has been rescheduled for Wednesday, May 29, at 7 pm. On May 21, Matthew Barney will speak with Paul Holdengräber at the main branch of the New York Public Library at 7 pm. Other events at the Morgan include screenings of the documentaries No Restraint on June 7 and The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation with Matthew Barney on June 21 and gallery talks on June 1 and June 14.

Matthew Barney Live at the New York Public Library

In conjunction with his upcoming drawing retrospective at the Morgan Library, Matthew Barney will be speaking at the New York Public Library on May 21, as part of the LIVE from the NYPL series (note: the lecture will be held at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building - aka the "main" library on 5th Ave & 42nd St. - not at the Morgan). Barney will be speaking with the New York Public Library's Paul Holdengräber. You can find more information and purchase tickets HERE. The talk will evenutally be archived on the library's web site.

Matthew Barney Drawing Retrospective and Film Premier

New York City's Morgan Library will hold a retrospective exhibition of Matthew Barney's drawings from May 10 - September 2. Titled Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney, it will be the first museum exhibition dedicated to Barney's drawings, featuring approximately 100 works from his undergraduate years in the 1980's to more recent drawings inspired by Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings. The exhibition will include storyboards for Barney's films and videos, sketches, magazine clippings, and postcards, plus related rare books, medieval manuscripts, and drawings from the Morgan collection selected by Matthew Barney including a 2,000-year-old Egyptian Book of the Dead, a medieval zodiac and a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. After it's run at the Morgan, the exhibition will travel to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, where it is scheduled to open in October (with supplemental materials drawn from the Bibliothèque's collection replacing those from the Morgan's). On July 13 and 14, Barney and one of his frequent collaborators, the composer Jonathan Bepler, will discuss their work and premier selections from a new film called River of Fundament at the Manchester International Festival in the UK (Barney presented the performance The Guardian of the Veil at the festival in 2007). River of Fundament is a projected seven part film project that draws upon the thematic undercurrents of Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, combining the traditions of narrative cinema with elements of live performance, sculpture and opera. Each film will correspond to one of the seven stages of the soul’s journey from death to rebirth in accordance with Egyptian mythology. Barney plans to present River of Fundament at opera houses and theatres internationally beginning in 2014.

Matthew Barney Floats Norman Mailer's House Down The East River

The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy article about the filming of Matthew Barney's River of Fundament. The film is the latest installment in Barney's Ancient Evenings series, based on a book Norman Mailer about the Egyptian afterlife. Barney began working on the sculptural components for River of Fundament last August in his Long Island City, Queens studio and has been filming in New York City. Perhaps the most remarkable element is a life-sized floating replica of Mailer's four-story Brooklyn brownstone. The house has been filled with items borrowed from Mailer's actual home. A tugboat towed the building down the East River from Barney's studio to the Brooklyn Bridge for a film shoot, where an actress playing Norman Mailer's widow sang Walt Whitman's poetry to the bridge.

The cast of River of Fundament includes well-known actors Paul Giamatti and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as well as paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins (who appeared as the Entered Novitiate in Barney's Cremaster 3) and avant-garde vocalist Joan La Barbara. In addition, Norman Mailer's son John Buffalo Mailer (pictured above) will appear in the film, playing a reincarnation of his father. The younger Mailer told the WSJ, "I've been lucky enough to know two geniuses in my life. My father is one and Matthew Barney is the other. I think my dad is up there dancing a jig he's so happy about how Matthew has taken the ball and run with this." In addition to Mailer's floating home, props for the film have included a cow carcass containing a surprise fetus, rotting pigs, two 12,000-pound blocks of salt and a gold 1979 Trans Am that was plunged into Newtown Creek (a polluted industrial waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens). Shooting will pause for the winter, but a large-scale performance in New York is planned for next spring.

Drawing Restraint 19 Skateboard

Matthew Barney has teamed up with Juxtapoz Magazine to produce a new Drawing Restraint 19 skateboard. The board features a graphite nose, so the rider creates a drawing as s/he skates.

Juxtapoz recruited skateboarding legend Lance Mountain to be the first (and, so far, only) one to ride the board at Ride It Sculpture Park in Detroit as part of a series of artistic interventions in the neighborhood.

A special limited run of 1,000 copies of the February issue of Juxtapoz have been published with a special Barney/Mountain cover. Juxtapoz also created a video documenting Mountain's time in Detroit. More info here.

Visit Matthew Barney's Studio!

The Tate Gallery in England has teamed up with The Ultimate Travel Company to offer a trip to New York City that includes a visit to Matthew Barney's studio. The trip, called New York: The Performance of Style, runs for five days from November 7 – 12 and costs £2,345 ($3,788) per person (for a double-occupancy room in the Meatpacking district). In addition to Matthew Barney's studio, travelers will visit the studio of artist Sarah Sze, the Whitney Musueum, PS1, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum. The Tate does not promise that Matthew Barney will be present during the studio visit, but this rare behind-the-scenes look should please any Cremaster fanatic!

Matthew Barney Previews Ancient Evenings Film In Amsterdam

Blend reports that Matthew Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler have been working on a residency in conjunction with Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum and the Holland Festival. The two recently presented a rough cut preview of the film Ancient Evenings at the Frascati theater. "Ancient Evenings consists of seven acts, which mirror the seven stages of the soul in Egyptian mythology as it passes from the deceased body to rebirth. In the novel this progression is told through a man who has reincarnated three times. Barney and Bepler have replaced the man with the body of a car. The car will pass on through three generations as well: from Chrysler Crown Imperial 1967 to Pontian Firebird Trans Am 1979, which will end up as a Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor 2001. The eventual film will be the result of taped performances in front of an audience, as well as material directly shot in front of the camera." The rough cut of the film, "opens with beautiful long shots of bubbling mud, parts of gold leaf moving in the wind, desolated factories and a man waiting in a car. The car is outside of a church, which is entered by two detectives. In the church there is the body of an American muscle car, which is thoroughly examined by the detectives, as if it were a crime scene or an autopsy. Suddenly the man who has been waiting enters the church. He moves to the altar, where an ambulance has been placed. The ambulance is covered with gold leaf on the inside, and has a man dressed in a golden straitjacket. The man is been put into the car with his arms strapped to his body and a blindfold on, as well as several top hats. As a large Egyptian wand is pierced through the car window, the car starts to drive. The detectives escort it to a bridge, where it dives in the water." Barney also showed a clip from the Khu performance recorded live in Detroit last year. Blend reports, "In front of an audience on a large boat... A huge body bag containing a car is being pulled from the river onto the boat. Various detectives on the scene are singing it to, and in a small tugboats circling around the bigger boat violin- and trumpet players are making music." Following the screening, Barney and Bepler brought live performers and opera singers (with whom they have been working during their residency) onto the stage. "It is clear that this is not your average theatre performance... The opera singers and musicians are playing a seemingly chaotic manner. Improvisations are sometimes brilliant, sometimes messy. The amazing British voice actor Phil Minton is great, singer (and actor in the film) Jennie Knaggs sings wonderfully and opera star Joan la Barbara does an interesting act."

Matthew Barney Blingee

keeley hawes and matthew macfadyen pictures

via

Matthew Barney for J. Crew, 1988

Many thanks to Cremaster Fanatic David, who sent us these scans of Matthew Barney modeling in a 1988 J. Crew advertisement. Barney famously put himself through college at Yale by modeling for the Click agency. The Cremaster Fanatic web site has more photos from his modeling career here, here, and here.