Cremaster 5

by Matthew Barney, Barbara Gladstone (Producer), Peter Strietmann (Photographer)

Named after the muscle that raises or lowers a man's testicles in response to temperature, the Cremaster series has featured Barney as a satyr, a magician, a ram, Harry Houdini, and even famous murderer Gary Gilmore, props made from tapioca, petroleum jelly, ice, and self-healing plastic, and settings as fantastic and desolate as the Isle of Man, an empty football stadium in Idaho, and a nearly empty opera house in Hungary. The films are slow-moving and weirdly hynotic, full of elaborate sexual and biological allusions, references to sports and fashion, and a bizarre mix of autobiography, history, and private symbolism that have earned him comparisons to Wagner. This book is one of the five companion volumes published to coincide with the release of each of the Cremaster films. Each was designed in an original manner by the artist and features photographs and stills from the film it accompanies.

Genres: Art

100 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Matthew Barney is an American artist who works in sculpture, photography, drawing and film. His early works were sculptural installations combined with performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002 he created the Cremaster Cycle, a series of five feature-length films described by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian as "one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema."