Tell me this isn’t the weirdest crap ever...

[cainxinth]

CREMASTER 1 (1995) is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho - Barney’s hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via television broadcast. Four air hostesses tend to each blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table, it’s top decorated with an abstract centerpiece sculpted from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes are green, in the other they are purple. Under both of these otherwise identical tables resides Goodyear (played by Marti Domination). Inhabiting both blimps simultaneously, this doubled creature sets the narrative in motion. After prying an opening in the tablecloth(s) above her head, she plucks grapes from their stems and pulls them down into her cell. With these grapes, Goodyear produces diagrams that direct the choreographic patterns created by a troupe of dancing girls on the field below. The camera switches back and forth between Goodyear’s drawings and aerial views of the chorus girls moving into formation: their designs shift from parallel lines to the figure of a barbell, from a large circle to an outline of splitting and multiplying cells, and from a horizontally divided field emblem (Barney’s signature motif) to a rendering of an undifferentiated reproductive system (which marks the first six weeks of fetal development). Gliding in time to the musical score, the chorus girls delineate the contours of a still-androgynous gonadal structure, which echoes the shapes of the two blimps overhead, and symbolizes a state of pure potential.

http://www.cremaster.net

[SanguineSpider]

And you stumbled upon it… HOW?

[Kobaltblu]

[FONT=Arial]Oh No! not Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle ! Matthew Barney’s the biggest art fraud since Jeff Koons!

[cainxinth]

I ran into this artist on the spymac.com gallery boards. Here’s one of his many rave reviews:

An art world phenomenon eight years in the making, Barney’s epic cycle of birth and sexual differentiation melds genres as diverse as the Busby Berkeley musical, the gothic Western, and operatic spectacle, encompassing Celtic myth, Masonic initiation rites, motorcycle races, obscure historical references, high fashion, lush music, and category-defying imagery, as it spans half the globe, from Boise to Budapest, with Barney himself popping up as a tap-dancing satyr, a naked magician, a giant, and serial killer Gary Gilmore. This is the cycle’s first theatrical screening in the order it was conceived.

http://www.filmforum.com/cremaster.html

The reviews for his films on amazon are written like graduate theses. Delta Airways sponsored his exhibit at the NY Guggenheim. Is this guy a legitimate genius? Or has everyone lost their damn minds?

[FreeRange_Maniac]

Is this guy a legitimate genius? Or has everyone lost their damn minds?
I vote for Number 2. The only thing it did for me is creep me out!

[snorlax]

On the Cremaster site there is a disturbing trailer for the films including some of the imagery mentioned by cainxinth as well as the Chrysler building with streamers hanging off it.

Whoever this guy is, he has a big budget.

Or has everyone lost their damn minds?

From IMDB:

The ‘Cremaster’ is a muscle that acts to retract the testes. This keeps the testes warm and protected from injury. (If you keep this in mind as you view the piece it will be easier to find other clues and make sense of the myriad allusions to anatomical development, sexual differentiation, and the period of embryonic sexual development - including the period when the outcome is still unknown. The films, which can be viewed in any order (though chronologically is probably better than numerically) range from Cremaster 1 (most ‘ascended’ or undifferentiated state) to Cremaster 5 (most ‘descended’).

It would appear so.

[GuanoLad]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Art’s a crock.

[Hunter_Hawk]

@Rhaeven

Is this guy a legitimate genius? Or has everyone lost their damn minds?
I vote for Number 2. The only thing it did for me is creep me out!

And I vote for Number 1, so nyaaah.

I’m not a huge fan of Cremaster 1, 2, 4, and 5, but I think Cremaster 3 is amazing.

The others are interesting, well-done, and have good visuals, but they’re not in the same league as 3.

[Larry_Mudd]

Cremaster 3 is the only one I’ve seen, so I don’t know how it compares to the others, but I agree it’s genius.

I can see how someone who’s never looked into Freemasonry might think it’s just “weird for the sake of weird,” but even at that it’s brilliant photography.

I rate it up there with Alejandro Jadorowsky for sheer mind-blowing, transcendant perfection. (Of course, that recommendation might not do much to sway the inconvinced.)

Barney is like David Lynch without the inhibitions that make him a slave to convention. (Not to knock Lynch, but he has to work within a severely limiting system. I’m sure it gives him ulcers.)

[Larry_Griffin-Kentzel]

This thread is better suited for Cafe Society. I’ll move it for you.

Cajun Man
for the SDMB

[moriah]

Watch out for the undifferentiated giant gelatinous gonads.

[Yookeroo]

Looks like LSD would be a good fit for these movies.