New Haven from Kang en—
Video is the most ambitious, successful and popular medium of art production in our time.
You guys, painting, sculpture and photography do a great job, so don't panic.
But this is video.
The media that used to mean long, rough films with fragile conceptual foundations --
This is the setting of the agenda. Proof?
Exhibit 1 is the clock by Christian Marclay.
Clever 24
As a clock, its function is unimaginable.
Zhong is a hot and indisputable masterpiece.
Other examples include Ragnar Kjartansson's "tourists" and recent works --
You pick it.
By Mika Rothenberg, Alex da Cotter, Anri Sarah, Aja John akumfla --
Lisha ahtira, William kendridge, Pilotti Rist, Arthur Jaffa, Ryan trecatine and Liz Fitch.
And then Matthew Barney.
Twenty years ago, Barney, 2, was described in 5th day of this month as "the most important artist of his generation" by Michael kimmerman of The New York Times ".
"If the importance can be measured by influence, Kimmelman's statement has been confirmed.
Barney pulled video art out of a dead end more than anyone else. de-
It created sac for itself.
He blends the medium with performances, sculptures, paintings and architecture and makes it the natural carrier of the most ambitious new art.
In the process, his influence went beyond art.
For example, it's hard to imagine Lady Gaga's groundbreaking early video (e. g. “Bad Romance”)
There is no terrible and disturbing
The drama of Barney's "Cremaster" film.
If you don't pay attention to contemporary art in 2002, when it opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, it may be difficult for you to understand the buzz surrounding his "creative cycle.
The cycle described by Nancy speckett, the curator of the show, is nothing more than a "self"
The "closed aesthetic system" appears in the form of five films, totaling about seven hours, as well as a series of exquisite drawings, photos and sculptures made of Vaseline, plastic and metal.
This is too much.
However, it's hard not to marvel at Barney's genius for finding a consistent form of cascading flow for his ideas and his ability to produce fashion themes (Norman Mailer!
The life cycle of bees! Freemasons! )
Feeling alive.
It helps the film itself, and is intoxicating to all of their painful lonists.
Barney filmed the "Cremaster Cycle" in a Palace in Budapest ";
On the island of man;
Chrysler Building in New York
On a salt Beach in Utah
His cast includes Ursula Andres, sculptor Richard Serra, athletes Amy Mullins and Meller himself.
He works with chorus girls, Canadian Mounted Police, Mormon tent choir, helicopter pilot, Bee Coach, heavy metal band, orchestra, tap dance and language coach, and a variety of artificial limbs, clothing and makeup.
You know, watching them, video art will never be the same.
Many people hate the luxury of "Cremaster", either because Barney's image is objectionable to them, or because the whole project seems to be groaning under its own pressure.
But if you are interested in contemporary art, you will see it and have an obligation to respond, which shows that something important has emerged in the world.
Barney follows the "Cremaster loop" and has the "drawing constraint 9" feature --
Long-time cooperation with singer Bjork, his partner for 13 years, boarded a Japanese whaling ship, and then carried out 1/2-
A film made in three hours.
Performing the opera, performed by Barney's longtime collaborator, Jonathan beipur.
Many "Cremaster" rely on Gary Gilmore, who is the main character in the real-life crime novel "The Song of the condemned man.
The "river of Foundation" was inspired by Meler's "old night"
Read novels about ancient Egypt.
It is woven in a story about the competition between Meile and Ernest Hemingway in the Russian version and the death and resurrection of the Detroit auto industry.
It is characterized by the role of masturbation, anal sex, being covered with sewage or appearing from the dead bodies of rotten animals, and what a pregnant woman gives birth to non-human.
Too disgusting, too dazzling, too strange
Until it's not.
Barney's work can give a new meaning to the phrase "get higher value by your own strength" and the last two hours of "River of foundation --
At least for me.
Almost unbearable.
There's a sense of unease around Barney today.
A feeling that there was too much praise in the early days, or that his ambition was too big --
But the most important thing is to realize that the aesthetic of giving himself to him is like joining a cult.
He has the charm and quiet intensity of the cult leader.
He is a sincere truth.
A quick study.
His art weaves stories, fables, images and symbols that sweep the audience in the waves.
Fascinated, beaten, you are either forced to take risksto believe —
Or keep your head on the water.
If you believe, it's like baptism: you're attracted to a sub-culture of intellectual stimulation, in which the deeper you delve, the more meaningful everything becomes. If you don’t —
If you think this work is my-only, the relationship between it and reality is fragile --
You saved yourself a lot of trouble.
But you missed the fun too.
Barney's latest movie, Redoubt, runs for 2 hours and 14 minutes, and it's like a string quartet compared to his full movie
A symphony of scale.
It premiered at Yale last week and Barney was recruited to play at Yale in 1985. (
He reported it.
Plans to study plastic surgery. )
The screening of the Yale Art Gallery is accompanied by an exhibition of Copper Prints, experimental plated copper reliefs and large sculptures cast from burningout trees.
Barney sees these as an important extension of his image in the film.
But the exhibition feels like wandering in an original museum, showing the public image of a recently rising religious sect: at all costs, big ideas, bad art.
The film is much better;
This is Barney's most effortless and beautiful film.
The term "Redoubt" refers to a defensive military defense or a political or social position that is firmly defended. (
"American suspicion" is a conservative libertarian movement, founded in 2011, designed to establish Idaho, Montana and Wyoming as safe havens for conservative Christians and Jews at the time of the disaster. )
For Barney, who was born in San Francisco but moved to Boise, Idaho at age 6, this is more of a feeling of personal isolation or retreat.
"Redoubt" was filmed in the jagged mountains, where he used to go on family trips when he was a child, where Hemingway retreated and committed suicide (
Activities used by Barney to book "River of Foundation).
It was filmed under a blizzard, a moon night and a clear blue sky, with footage of wolves, elk, Eagles and mountain lions.
There are a large number of animal bodies, as well as spectacular images of trees, with life dead, burning and disfigured by lightning.
Like all Barney's works, the film is about the cycle of creation, destruction, and regeneration.
It also involves ecological balance, isolation, violence and vision.
"Redoubt" is roughly based on the Greek mythology of Diana and aktaon and is divided into six parts, namely, "hunting ".
"There was no dialogue, but the visuals, and the music of Bepler, conveyed a story that Barney said, inspired by the controversial wolf being introduced again in 1995, into the jagged mountains.
Wolves have almost been eradicated, but their numbers have bounced back to the point where hunting is now allowed to be controlled.
Enter the role of Diana played by Anette Wachter (a. k. a.
Rifle shooting champion, supporter of the Second Amendment "30calgal ").
She hunted wolves while the park administrator actaon role played by Barney followed her and her two fellow virgins.
After finding them, he set up a tripod and a copper plate, then drew them out, and then returned to the trailer with his prints, on the trailer, another woman, he seems to have guided the energy of the astrological constellation, plated carvings, and flooded them in a charged chemical bath.
Whenever Barney's character creates an image, he is punished for Peeping (
Not as deadly as actaon though).
At the same time, the two virgins seem to respond to these events in slow, creative choreographed, mutually supportive actions that take place in hammocks, around campfire, in deep snow and on trees.
When Barney introduced the screening at Yale last week, he said he welcomed the presentation of his work at a learning institution where his art would be used as a teaching tool.
He went on, and this appealed.
He spoke with the melancholy of an apostate.
For "a desire, one must have a function of what one does --
The work has certain functions. ”I sympathize.
Art, however, is not ultimately a teaching tool and may even need to protect it from such tools --from being co-
Chosen by religious dogma, political demands, or colleges.
Indeed, art can build a world for itself.
For a dedicated viewer (
Or the audience: Some people think Richard Wagner's worship)
It can build a tempting system of faith, beauty, challenge and comfort, a possible and-
It's also strange
The belief system of ancient Egyptians, Mormons, Native Americans or Masons (
All of this plays an important role in Barney's work).
But the art created like a cult or teaching tool may become too self-sufficientenclosed.
Barney tried to avoid this.
His endless curious wisdom reaches out to the world with all its complexity.
But he always gains reality for his own purposes.
Private worship for every new Matthew Barney project.
I suspect that no one knows the meaning of this better than the artist.
His entire work can be understood as an awareness review of arrogance, the redundancy of the universe of artistic creation. (
John Updike called it "a knife to take criticism of God's carefully considered masterpiece. ”)
Why are we doing art?
Why can't we make the world simple?
Barney was attracted to these basic questions, which made his excessive ambition so acute.
The sharper the idea of his work, the more clever the exposition, the more dazzling the execution, the more eccentric, eccentric and meaningless it is.
Yes, this is intoxicating.
But this is a strange game.
Matthew Barney: Art Gallery, Yale University, 1111 Chapel Street, June 16
New Haven from Conn. artgallery. yale. edu.