My mental circus, inside and out.

Cremaster

 The hero's cycle begins with a pasty Scot in a pink plaid tartan with a bloody silk rag stuck in his mouth.  He athletically scales the circular levels of the Guggenheim, past women tapping their pointy black shoes against the wall making a sound like a typewriter. He meets an oracle amputee with clear plastic legs like a perverse Olympia, but when she embraces him she turns into a cat woman with legs reminiscent of the aliens in Arrival.  She tears a piece of flesh from his shoulder.  He descends and embraces a wee lamb. Then he returns to slay the cat beast and restores his masculinity by heaving caber-like plastic logs into what appears to be a slain goat with a head in the shape of a trumpet.  

Another striking scene:  a giant with legs made from large pink hibiscus walks through his palace into a pond full of yellow ping pong balls.  Mermaids weave ribbons around his genital area which at first seems as undifferentiated as a doll's.  The ribbons are tied to pigeons or doves that fly in circles around his head until under the water large testicles are drawn out of his body.   Matthew Barney's obsession, the cremaster muscle which surrounds the scrotum,  can pull the testicles into the body.  It can keep the testicles from descending.   The films are fixated on forms that are not-quite-yet or something-familiar-but-other.  Fear, anxiety, desire, beauty, horror, fascination play around these images.  Barney's married to Bjork.  They've made an Icelandic baby.

Posted by: EmmaPele at February 26, 2005 02:10 | link | comments (1)

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#1  24 June 2005 - 22:21

 

I wonder what there baby will grow up to be? Do they live in Iceland? I am putting the films on my netflix list. I hope they have them.

Leigh

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