Cremaster

Just incredible. Imagine if unlimted resources were put at your disposal to let your imagination run wild. How far would you get? How long before you were exhausted, and left with, "Uhhh... maybe let's do some dramatic readings of Three Stooges movies. Or something."

Matthew Barney has filled up five feature length films and the Guggenheim museum and shows no signs of stopping. It's like watching a high-wire act seeing the breadth of his vision, and his ability to maintain coherence and never be strained with his exploration of themes.

And such beautiful stuff. So aesthetically pure. The photographs in particular were just breath-taking.

Here's something interesting. Since I was a little kid, when I went to bed with a sick headache, I would see... or maybe 'experience' would be a better word... these images. The images were of white, lifeless environments--a chalk white desert, a white marble interior--that would sort of decay and rot. 'Rot' is really the better word, even though the things that were rotting were inorganic. Filth and dirt would grow over everything, like fungus in stop-motion photography. That was the sense impression that some of Barney's sculptures and installations left me with. It was truly incredible.

I've been writing and thinking about imagination lately, and this deepened the impact that the show had on me. Just as when during periods when I'm writing poetry, upon reading something by Eliot or Marvell I just have this feeling of "Hang it up, Kiddo," seeing the genius of Matthew Barney has left me feeling deficient indeed.

Also, I went there with the expectation that the images would be somewhat titilating and erotic. And they were, but in a very different way than I thought they would be. Barney is fascinated by the period immediately before sex differentiation in the fetus, when sexuality is pure potentiality. Even though there was not a single literal image of a foetus in the show, all of the persona that were represented had that same quality. I bought the catalog, and was fascinated to learn where Barney drew inspiration for a surreal image of genitalia. During a sequence of one of the Cremaster films (3, I think), Barney, in the role of the Entered Apprentice, has his teeth rammed down his throat when steel teeth are forced into his mouth in the Dental Operating Theater. During the procedure, the Apprentice's genitalia are revealed. It's sort of a stub that ends in a rosetta of fleshy bulbs. In the catalog, preceeding the still of the Apprentice in the dental operating chair, there is a photograph (a pretty common one, almost iconographic) of the splash created from a drop of milk falling into a glass of milk. And it's the same shape. Really wonderful.


And, it was great spending the day with Special Guy, who went with me. We had a great talk over lunch afterward. I told him, and this is absolutely true, that of all the men I've ever dated or with whom I've had a relationship, he's the guy I enjoyed the most. He was the best I've done so far.

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