Cremaster Fanatic Steve sent us an email to let us know that the Drawing Restraint Vol. V catalog published in conjunction with Barney's Drawing Restraint exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery is now available in the US for pre-order on Amazon.com at the discounted price of $40.95 (plus an additional 5% pre-order discount). The book will be released in the US on March 1.
A recent search on YouTube has turned up a bunch of new Matthew Barney videos:
First up is the trailer for Destricted - a compilation of sexually explicit films by contemporary artists that includes Barney's Hoist This one is definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Next is "One Minute Barney" (which actually clocks in at 1:12). It claims to be "all you need to know about matthew in under 90 seconds" but that's only if you think that "all you need to know" is Cremaster 1, 4, and 5. However, it's a nicely-edited montage of clips from those three films.
A somewhat gory addition to the Matthew Barney "fan video" genre is "Cremaster 6". It purports to be Barney's "last work" in which, "the artist proposes a trip to the balance across castration." However, as one critic comments, "There are only 5 films in the Cremaster cycle and this is not one of them. There is no Barney in this piece. This is either a cheezy attempt to equate the work of an unknown with that of a top-tier artist or a clumsy attempt at parody." Other comments are, "this totally didnt make any sense," and "cool," which, coincidentally, are the same reactions Barney's actual films often elicit.
Finally, we come to Uruguayan artist Martin Sastre's video "Lala Meets Barney". As we noted in our post about Sastre's recent exhibition at Brooklyn's Momenta Art, this video is an invitation from Sastre's grandmother to Matthew Barney and Björk to spend a traditional Uruguayan Christmas with her and her 6 children and 13 grandchildren.
Many thanks to Cremaster Fanatic Rob for sending us these photographs from Matthew Barney's days as a professional model (he put himself through Yale by modeling for the Click agency).
Cremaster Fanatic Greg emailed us from Los Angeles with a report on Matthew Barney's Guardian of the Veil exhibition currently on view at Regen Projects. Greg informs us that in addition to the drawings and photographs we mentioned in our previous post on the show, there is a 40-minute HD video of the Guardian of the Veil performance. The gallery also has all of Barney's books, including a number of rare Cremaster volumes, available for reading.
The photographs at the top of this post come from a fantastic photo gallery posted by Lucies Farm, the ranch that provided the bull for the Guardian of the Veil performance in Manchester. They have posted a ton of great "behind the scenes" photos of the rehearsal and performance. http://www.bark.ch/thumbnails.php?album=64
We'd like to draw your attention to an item currently up for bidding on ebay - the complete Cremaster Cycle on DVD. Although this is clearly an (ahem) unauthorized released, look at the production value on the packaging! This is the best looking Cremaster boot we at Cremaster Fanatic have ever seen (obviously, we can't vouch for the quality of the video).
If you want this, you'll have to act fast - there's less than a day left on the auction. The price is currently $65 - far below the half-a-million dollars Cremaster 2 recently fetched at auction. Plus, the seller says he'll use the money to pay off student loans.
