Matthew Barney donated the photograph New Sun (pictured above) to the (Red) Auction, held on Valentine's Day at Sotheby's New York. The auction was organized by Damien Hirst and singer Bono to benefit Bono's (Red) Charity, which combats AIDS in Africa. Barney's photograph (from Drawing Restraint 9) sold for $137,500, well above the pre-sale estimate of $70,000 - $90,000. Reportedly, the purchaser was Bono, himself, who also placed winning bids on works by Robert Rauschenberg and Sean Scully.
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).