Dean Smith and I met last night for a very thorough tour of Matthew Barney’s installation at SFMoMA. We really put a lot into it. His work demands it. It takes and takes, asking so much of its viewer, and at times seemed worth the investment. Otherwise, if you’re not willing to read about what he’s up to, or call the special cellphone hotline at various points in the museum, the work itself doesn’t seem to contain or convey much about experience or form. Sometimes the sheer theatricality or spectacle, or ambition, is thrilling, but I don’t know, sometimes it seems like he just needs a good editor. Like ditch the photo stills from the films. The films are great, but the stills don’t extend the narrative or experience, they just locate the work as a capitalist venture, okay, consistent with his underlying themes, but if I were the King of the World, I’d strip it all down. I bumped in Jonathan Katz and suggested that Barney should really make a gay porn film to end his career–all this struggle building up to some revelatory Man-on-Man action. Björk and the kids can sing at the commitment ceremony. I see blubber, lots of slippery blubber.
I’d really never think of re-imagining someone else’s work, or sexual idenity, but my obsessive compulsive side just can’t take it when I get near a Matthew Barney.
Downstairs, one is treated to remarkable photos from Japanese post-war photographer, Shomei Tomatsu. This is what inspired my Barney rant–his work is so moving, and like, there, in the image, contained within the frame. The content and formal qualities support and extend each other. The images are of the effects of the atomic bomb, the influence of American military and pop culture, and the impact of the Japanese economic boom–quietly powerful works that stand in stark contrast to the grand empty gestures upstairs.
Tonight Davide came over for L’Avventura. Rather than focus on the isolation, desolation, and impotence of the characters, I got lost in Monica Vitti’s hair–the way it reflects light, defies gravity–kinetic and wild, yet always with form and visual dazzle. It deserves its own Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival.