Some New York Times art critic called multi-media artist Matthew Barney the most important artist of our generation, and Los Angeles believed him.
Upper-crust art lovers - beautiful people in beautiful clothes - came out of the proverbial woodwork to Regen Projects Saturday night, where Barney’s new movie premiered in a small room next to an exhibition of accompanying drawings.
“It’s like everyone’s dirty little secret,” noted commercial director/ex-boyfriend Ben Weinstein. “We all love Matthew Barney.”
Ish. I wouldn’t call myself a fan, merely a curious observer. I snored my way through the Cremaster series, hoping for a pay-off that never came. I approach Barney’s work like those 3-D mind maps that if you stare at long enough, reveal a picture. It’s like, if I keep at it, something will come through.
I’m still waiting.
“People go to a Matthew Barney show hoping to be shocked or offended or violated or creeped-out,” explained Weinstein. “Even moreso than hoping to see Bjork.”
Oh yeah, Barney and Bjork are an item. They share a child and a similar sensibility that renders them hip, edgy and abstruse. The artist was nowhere in sight. I imagined him canoodling in a nearby zeppelin with his rock-star girlfriend and a big bowl of concord grapes.
His latest film, Guardian of the Veil, is, as far as I could tell, another lengthy, inchoate exploration into Barney’s incomprehensible mythology.
Weinstein, all dandied-up in black velvet with pink accents, gave my friend Nina and I the Cliff Note version of the new film complete with wildly gesticulated improvisation and colorful descriptions of a woman in “like, a hoodie, but with sixty hoods,” and a naked woman urinating.
“Was she really urinating?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” he enthused, wide-eyed, grinning from ear-to-ear. “It was, like, the best part of the movie.”
Weinstein, an idiot-genius of sorts and a talented artist in his own right, loves Matthew Barney.
“It’s like couture meets The Chronicles of Narnia,” he riffed. “He does it so unapologetically without flinching. I don’t get it, but I can’t stop looking at it.”
He gushed enthusiastically about Barney’s mysterious, disassociative explorations of sex and violence and bodily fluids, and his ability to move freely, and deftly, between various media – sculpture, painting, drawing and film.
I gave it one last try, going nose-to-glass with the faint, chalky sketches that hung between a smattering of larger photographs of smashed cars. But, aside from a cute boy wearing a stripey scarf and holding tightly to the leash attached to his dog, there was nothing at Regen Projects to excite me.
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'Some New York Times art critic called multi-media artist Matthew Barney the most important artist of our generation, and Los Angeles believed him.
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There are 2 comments posted for this article.
I feel your pain.
I last saw Mr. Barney when he presented another of his videos at the Hammer a couple of years ago. He was suitably inscrutible, though it did seem a bit forced.
I remember there was a lot of footage in the film of his taking something-or-other up his behind that night, while hanging under a slow-moving tractor.
The payoff for me was when I shot reams of video of the flower cars at burning man later that year, pointedly parodying some of Barney's tractor angles - sans anal acrobatics (sorry!)
Parts of the Cremaster series were all right... I especially liked the cat woman. But in general, I think he only shocks people who haven't spent much time at burning man or in a few other alternative communities.
As for whether he's genuine about his work or not, who knows? He's got momentum, that's for sure.
"Emperor's new clothes", and all that.
Me? I prefer Bjork.
Posted on December 18, 2007 9:24 PM by Julie D.
barney is interested in examining the ceremony of the spectacle, which los angeles pretty much embodies. my guess is if you're in it [the ceremony], then you don't "see" [it], perhaps are not supposed to. nice to see that his 'no' show at regen merited a review title in itself, but really i think it just testfies to my theory of those in the cermoney of the spectacle. and honestly, there IS more to contemporary art than just howard stern level shock-jock shenanigans, something that the 'average' LA art cobrasnake scenester doesn't seem to get.
but i guess knee-jerks like that come forth from taking overly serious cues from new york times art critic's declarations of genius and such.
and of course the thing at burning man is a parody of barney's tractor. or is it the other way around. ooops....
and hey- itdiot geniuses are what make LA grrrrreat.
signed,
ceremony of the spectacle
Posted on January 14, 2008 10:31 AM by Galina Kurkova