#cremaster 4

[candont]

[bremser]

Matthew Barney’s Self-Lubricating Frames

A small, lingering question I’ve had for 20 years: what is a “self-lubricating frame”? At the Guggenheim "Cremaster" exhibit and later exhibits, I wondered about this phrase on the label cards of Barney’s film stills, with custom frames, they are described as “chromogenic print in self-lubricating frame.” Perhaps easily answered, but because I wasn’t holding a phone connected to the internet in the museum back then, never answered.

Recently I went to a screening of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster 3” (2002), with a Q&A between Barney and Martine Syms. Nostalgia lured me to Santa Monica, as I haven’t seen the complete 3-hour film since seeing the entire cycle at San Francisco's Castro Theater in 2003.

While the earlier films retained a video look, "Cremaster 3" (the final film) must have been shot on one of the better HD DV formats of the era at 24P, because it looks very filmic, the degraded 35mm print we watched certainly contributed to that vibe.

If you are new to Barney’s work, his long-term projects like "Cremaster" have sculptural and architectural aspects. Some sculptures could be construed as props and parts of a set for performance. In a gallery setting they are firmly sculpture. A film of the performance becomes its own highly edited and crafted artifact, which is then used in the spaces that exhibit the objects. 

How do framed photographs fit into this system? As with the films, they are artifacts of the performance, a Barney exhibit might have the sculpture (often quite large) in the center of a gallery space, with the framed photographs on the walls, in the same way a video monitor might be on a wall with the dangling headphones.

Barney cites "Cremaster" as beginning in 1994, but this framed football magazine is from 1991, with what became the Cremaster logo applied in the center. This example suggests these framed photographs exist as collectables with some connection to how a sports or music fan collects still images of action, or a cinema fan would collect a production still.

Along with vaseline or beeswax, self-lubricating plastic as used in sculpture or framed photographs can be considered one of Barney's core materials. Was it selected due to the fact it resembles beeswax? Here's another 1991 example, with a black and white silver print.

The "Cremaster"-era prints themselves are exquisitely lit and printed, mostly color, many seem to be photographed by Michael James O’Brien, though I don't recall ever seeing his name on a museum or gallery label. The photographer is like the fabricator of the frame, a craftsperson Barney hires to execute the object. My recollection is they are printed luxuriously matte, which works well with the creamy frames. The "Cremaster 3" prints are of larger dimensions that became popular at the fin de siècle with Gursky, or more relevant to Barney as his own lead actor, the portraits of Rineke Dijkstra. These are titled film stills, the convention of the Cremaster stills seems to be “movie : subject.” (e.g. Cremaster I: Orchidella).

My memory of the framed Cremaster photographs is that they were of somewhat uniform size and look: a creamy beeswax plastic, in line with the other sculpture you might see in his exhibits, no sharp edges, but not particularly different from other plastics you might encounter in our modern wonderland of PFAS.  When I first read "self-lubricating frame," I assumed it was partially a joke, a reference to petroleum jelly/ vaseline, one of Barney’s other preferred materials. Or perhaps lubricated condoms.

Looking online at the auction houses, it appears my memory was way off, there were many variations in size, shape and even color. Ireland is a core part of the "Cremaster" mythology, and this "Cremaster 4" print is in delightful Shamrock Shake green.

After that screening of "Cremaster 3," I went on the typical bender of reading old blog posts and writings on the topic. There’s a 2004 doc streaming on Kanopy (the library video app, excellent for art documentaries), where the NYT art critic Michael Kimmelman walks through the Guggenheim Cremaster exhibit with Barney answering questions, explaining references, personal and mythical, cutting to scenes from the relevant films. About nine minutes into the doc, my question is answered. Barney explains about a sculpture they are looking at: “[it's] high density polyethylene, from the same family as Teflon is from, has a resistance to friction. And in that way it’s a self-lubricating plastic, in that it generates its own lubrication.” 

OK! So "self-lubricating" is a description for a class of industrial plastic products, which Barney has fabricated his frames of and adopted the phrase. "Self-lubricating plastic frame" is more accurate if more mundane sounding. There's no liquid aspect to it, but if we were able to rub at it, in a repetitive fashion, could we perhaps notice it was different? It's a specific material - not a condom joke, or even like using the word "giclée" to gussy up "ink jet" print.

This material is described as:

solid lubricants are embedded as microscopic particles in millions of tiny chambers in the fiber-reinforced material. From these chambers, the plastic bushings release tiny amounts of solid lubricant during movement.

Another description of how it works once molded into an industrial form:

The bearing achieves this by transferring microscopic amounts of material to the mating surface, creating a film that lubricates and reduces friction over the entire length of the rail or shaft. 

When you read this and see some of the examples of how it's used in actual products (Linear Bearing for 8mm rod pictured above), this wasn't selected by Barney just because it resembles beeswax, but because conceptually it's a classic Barney material. A plastic, honeycombed with microscopic bits of lubricant! There's an added tension looking at these objects, knowing the material is designed for friction, but will likely never experience it. After the organic forms are molded, the films are shot, the stills are taken, the photographs mounted in the frame, they will only ever be handled by people wearing white gloves.

 (Previously on the topic of artist's frames: Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Kitchen Sink", 2016)

[sharkchunks]

What are essential Surrealist short films? You seem like you'd have an opinion on that.

Here are my top few-

Seashell and the Clergyman - Germaine Dulac Un Chien Andalou, L’Age d’Or - Luis Bunuel The Blood of a Poet - Jean Cocteau Meshes of the Afternoon - Maya Deren Dimensions of Dialogue, Food, Darkness Light Darkness - Jan Svankmajer The Grandmother - David Lynch Street of Crocodiles - Brothers Quay Cremaster 4 - Matthew Barney Schism, Parabol/Parabola - Tool Music Videos The Country Doctor - Katariina Lillqvist Point Five - Ari Bach

Also, thank you Google for trying to sell me some surreal shorts-

[k00317494]

Contextual Artist Research: Matthew Barney

- This artist/film director was one of the three artists recommended to me by my tutors, best known for his project The Cremaster Cycle - It is a series of pieces sculptures and movies which focus on themes of self identity, transition and gender through physiological gender markers

- The uncomfortable imagery from the rubber outfits of cremaster 1 and gore throughout the series, The dental surgery scene of cremaster 3 and the fawns journey as well as its conclusion in cremaster 4 have got to be my favourite elements that inspire me most in my work - I love how cold and sanitised the set design is , repetitive and alien representing how strict and alien the concept of self is when derived from ones genitals, the fact that the image of masculinity that OWNED society for so long is strung together by the weak cremaster muscle - The projects themes of self-discovery and improvement whether imposed by society or chosen is very important to MY project as I always felt that surgery while changing me mentally to become who I am today, in some way was done to make me more adhered to a preconceived status quo of being attractive or able-bodied even the act of transitioning for me as a genderfluid person would be an act to adhere to some preconceived binary

[ironpour]

One of the primary wine importers I work with are having a tasting today - I'm not going because it's in London and because I'm doing a smaller tasting with them up north soon - and I'm taken aback and intensely jealous of the enormous, signed Cremaster 4 poster the venue has

[landscapesuicides]

Cremaster 4 (Matthew Barney, 1995)

[thedesignarchive]

QCQ- Matthew Barney

Q: "That tension between control and chaos is a fundamental aspect of my work, and it reflects the larger themes I explore—themes of transformation, conflict, and the unpredictable forces at play in both the natural and cultural worlds."

EXHIBITION, New Work, Matthew Barney, December 12, 1991–January 30, 1992

C: I can totally see this in his video work, where he is trying to balance the two. All of those themes stated are directly translated into his work. Since working on the book for our final project, it can be hard trying to find the in between the control and chaos with the project. There aren’t e many factors that contribute to this like how open it is, but mostly it's the amount of photos that I have at my disposal. It's a learning curve on how to not shove all the photos into one spread.

Matthew Barney, Cremaster 4, 1994, Film,42 min. 19, Commission for the exhibition Matthew Barney, Cremaster 4, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 1994, Acquisition 1994

Q: What draws you to your color choices in your creative expression.

[dare-g]

Made another Cremaster pop this time from 4 🐐

[elf-indulgent]

The Cremaster Cycle, 1994-2002, Dir. Matthew Barney

[woundgallery]

Matthew Barney, Cremaster 4: Loughton Manual, 1994

[candont]

[mentaltimetraveller]

Matthew Barney

Cremaster 4: Manannan, 1994

[weirdletter]

The American Weird: Concept and Medium, edited by Julius Greve and Florian Zappe, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Info: bloomsbury.com.

Hitherto classified as a form of genre fiction, or as a particular aesthetic quality of literature by H.P. Lovecraft, the weird has now come to refer to a broad spectrum of artistic practices and expressions including fiction, film, television, photography, music, and visual and performance art. Largely under-theorized so far, The American Weird brings together perspectives from literary, cultural, media and film studies, and from philosophy, to provide a thorough exploration of the weird mode. Separated into two sections – the first exploring the concept of the weird and the second how it is applied through various media – this book generates new approaches to fundamental questions: Can the weird be conceptualized as a generic category, as an aesthetic mode or as an epistemological position? May the weird be thought through in similar ways to what Sianne Ngai calls the zany, the cute, and the interesting? What are the transformations it has undergone aesthetically and politically since its inception in the early twentieth century? Which strands of contemporary critical theory and philosophy have engaged in a dialogue with the discourses of and on the weird? And what is specifically “American” about this aesthetic mode? As the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of the weird, this book not only explores the writings of Lovecraft, Caitlín Kiernan, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer, but also the graphic novels of Alan Moore, the music of Captain Beefheart, the television show Twin Peaks and the films of Lily Amirpour, Matthew Barney, David Lynch, and Jordan Peele.

Contents: Acknowledgements Contributors 1.Introduction: Conceptualizations, Mediations, and Remediations of the American Weird – Julius Greve and Florian Zappe Part One: Concept 2. A Doxa of the American Weird – Dan O’Hara 3. The Oozy Set: Toward a Weird(ed) Taxonomy – Johnny Murray 4. Validating Weird Fiction as an (Im)Possible Genre – Anne-Maree Wicks 5. Woke Weird and the Cultural Politics of Camp Transformation – Stephen Shapiro 6. The Weird in/of Crisis, 1930/2010 – Tim Lanzendörfer 7. After Weird: Harman, Deleuze, and the American “Thing” – Daniel D. Fineman 8. Concerning A Deleuzean Weird: A Response to Dan Fineman – Graham Harman Part Two: Medium 9. Get Out, Race and Formal Destiny (on Common Weirdness) – Eugenie Brinkema 10. From a Heap of Broken Images Towards a Postcolonial Weird: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Western Landscapes – Maryam Aras 11. “It is in Our House Now”: Twin Peaks, Nostalgia, and David Lynch’s Weird Spaces – Oliver Moisich and Markus Wierschem 12. Demolishing the Blues: Captain Beefheart as Modernist Outsider – Paul Sheehan 13. Weird Visual Mythopoeia: On Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle – Florian Zappe 14. Hidden Cultures and the Representation and Creation of Weird Reality in Alan Moore’s Providence – Alexander Greiffenstern 15. Alien Beauty: The Glamour of the Eerie – Fred Francis 16. Conspiracy Hermeneutics: The Secret World as Weird Tale – Tanya Krzywinska 17. Afterword: Weird in the Walls – Roger Luckhurst Index

[gsuartarturoalfaro]

How To Dream/Performance Project

1- Turn On Satie's Gymnopedie

2- Watch "How to Dream"

3-Go To Bed —

4- When You Wake Up -- Revel In Yourself

My performance project is meant to be a guide, it is intended to be watched, just before you fall asleep, ideally with classical music, such as Satie and as a result, hopefully, it helps to figure out ur subconscious more deeply. Or to help bring into consciousness any underlying struggle within. I was heavly inspired by Matthew Barney's "The Cremaster Cycle" and Yoko Onos "Grapefruit". A few of these shots I've had for a long time in my head and couldn't see them into fruition. In the video, I tried to capture those sort of aged-ideas into the dream-like reality that Matthew Barney can create. I also wanted to make it interactive. Through the audiences participation(sleeping afterward) I believe it brings the video into realty. I also tried to make the clips very short and engaging since most peoples attention span is very short(because of social media). This creates and engaging video and by letting people sleep afterwards, it forces it to be the last thought, and the first thing you remember. I believe that sometimes its possible we forget , "How to Dream." I think its important to stimulate your brain with art, so you can dream all the wonderful dreams, in safety as you sleep, and so-you work them out, and when you come out of that deep languor of rest. You can feel ok with trying another day.

[pleasant-canadians-music]

Jonathan Bepler - “The Ballad of Gary Gilmore”

Last nite i flew in my dream like a white bird through the window came through the night and the cool wind with a few bright stars in the darkness And got lost. And Woke up Long days waiting For your Love again Long nights restless Scattered thots Wondering whats become Of all our chances

[landscapesuicides]

Cremaster 4 (Matthew Barney, 1995)