''The Cremaster Cycle'' is a series of five feature-length films, together with related sculptures, photographs, drawings, and artist's books, created by American visual artist and filmmaker

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

. ''The Cremaster Cycle'' was made over a period of eight years (1994–2002) and culminated in a major museum exhibition organized by Nancy Spector of the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

in New York City, which traveled to the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lich ...

in Cologne and the Musée d'art Moderne in Paris from 2002-03. Barney's longtime collaborator

Jonathan Bepler Jonathan Bepler is an American composer of experimental music perhaps best known for his collaborative work with artists and choreographers, including many years of work with visual artist Matthew Barney. He is also multi-instrumentalist, singer, ...

composed and arranged the soundtracks for the films. The series incorporates a multidisciplinary narrative that heavily references connections between real people, real places and real things personal to Barney himself, but are all fictionalized to some extent.

Overview

Guggenheim Museum curator Nancy Spector has described the ''Cremaster'' cycle (1994–2002) as "a self-enclosed aesthetic system." The cycle includes the films as well as photographs, drawings, sculptures, and installations the artist produced in conjunction with each episode. Its conceptual departure point is the male cremaster muscle, the primary function of which is to raise and lower the

testes A testicle or testis (plural testes) is the male reproductive gland or gonad in all bilaterians, including humans. It is homologous to the female ovary. The functions of the testes are to produce both sperm and androgens, primarily testoster ...

in response to temperature. The project is filled with anatomical allusions to the position of the reproductive organs during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation: ''Cremaster 1'' represents the most "ascended" or undifferentiated state, ''Cremaster 5'' the most "descended" or differentiated. The cycle repeatedly returns to those moments during early sexual development in which the outcome of the process is still unknown — in Barney's metaphoric universe, these moments represent a condition of pure potentiality. As the cycle evolved over eight years, Barney looked beyond

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

as a way to explore the creation of form, employing narrative models from other realms, such as

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

, and

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

. Barney portrays, at various points, a satyr and

Gary Gilmore Gary Mark Gilmore (born Faye Robert Coffman; December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing ...

Ursula Andress Ursula Andress (born 19 March 1936) is a Swiss-German actress, former model and sex symbol who has appeared in American, British and Italian films. Her breakthrough role was as Bond girl Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film, '' Dr. No'' (1962 ...

portrays the Queen of Chain in ''Cremaster 5''.

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...

Patty Griffin Patricia Jean Griffin (born March 16, 1964) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician.Griffin, Patrici She is a vocalist and plays guitar and piano. She is known for her stripped-down songwriting style in the folk music genre. Her songs ha ...

, and

Dave Lombardo David Lombardo (born February 16, 1965) is a Cuban-American drummer, best known as a co-founding member of American thrash metal band Slayer. He is currently playing drums with Testament, Fantômas, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungle ...

portray

Harry Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

, Nicole Baker, and

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

respectively in ''Cremaster 2''. Richard Serra and Aimee Mullins portray

Hiram Abiff Hiram Abiff (also Hiram Abif or the Widow's son) is the central character of an allegory presented to all candidates during the third degree in Freemasonry. Hiram is presented as the chief architect of King Solomon's Temple. He is murdered ins ...

and

Sadhbh In Irish mythology, Sadhbh or Sive ( ) was the mother of Oisín by Fionn mac Cumhail. She is either a daughter of Bodb Derg, king of the Síd of Munster, or may derive in part from Sadb ingen Chuinn, daughter of Conn of the Hundred Battles. ...

respectively, in ''Cremaster 3''.

Numerical and thematic chronology

While thematically the ''Cremaster'' films are chronological in the numbered order, they were not made or released in the same manner. The order in which they were made is as follows: The numerical order is the thematic order, while in order of production the films increased in production quality, ambition and scope, and they can alternatively be viewed in any order, as different views of a set of themes and preoccupations. The films are significantly different in length; the longest (and last-made) is ''Cremaster 3'', at over three hours, while the remaining four are approximately an hour each, for a total of approximately seven hours – #3 alone makes up almost half the total length of the cycle. Like Barney's other works, most of the films lack any particular dialogue with the exceptions being ''Cremaster 2'' and ''5,'' the latter of which is an opera sung in Hungarian. An important precursor of ''The Cremaster Cycle'' is ''Drawing Restraint,'' which is also a biologically inspired multi-episode work in multiple media, also featuring the field emblem.

Availability

The full series was released in a limited series of 20 sets of DVDs, sold for at least $100,000 each, in custom packaging and as fine art, rather than mass-market movies. In 2007 one disc (''Cremaster 2'') sold for $571,000. The films are not available on mass-market DVDs, and according to the press release for the 2010 US tour, the cycle "is Not Now Nor Will it Ever be Available on DVD".Cremaster Cycle U.S. Theatrical Release This Spring
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 The films are primarily available via periodic screenings.
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Palm Pictures Palm Pictures is a US-based entertainment company owned and run by Chris Blackwell. Palm Pictures produces, acquires and distributes music and film projects with a particular focus on the DVD-Video format. Palm places an emphasis on such proje ...

, the distributor, has continued to comply with Barney's request, and has not made the series available on DVD, though there were some rumors and announcements to this effect in 2003. Only a 31-minute excerpt, the Guggenheim scene from ''Cremaster 3'' entitled “The Order,” was released on mass-market DVD in 2003.

Reception

Reaction to the cycle is sharply divided – some consider it a major work of art, on a par with ''

Un Chien Andalou ''Un Chien Andalou'' (, ''An Andalusian Dog'') is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Buñuel's first film, it was initially released in a limited capacity at Studio des Ursuline ...

'' and ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

,'' while others dismiss it as vapid, self-indulgent tedium. This is summarized by one critic as "Barney's cinematic art inspires both awe and revulsion, often simultaneously." Indeed, the ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...

'' featured two reviews, with

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for '' New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for ''The Village Voice'', he received the Pu ...

praising the cycle, and film critic

J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at ''The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

panning it. Lavish praise includes: "''The Cremaster Cycle'' by Matthew Barney is the first truly great piece of cinema to be made in a fine art context since Dali and Bunuel filmed ''Un Chien Andalou'' in 1929. It is one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema." In 1999, when three of its entries (the fourth, first, and fifth) had been made,

Michael Kimmelman Michael Kimmelman (born May 8, 1958) is the architecture critic for ''The New York Times'' and has written about public housing, public space, landscape architecture, community development and equity, infrastructure and urban design. He has report ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' hailed Barney as "the most important American artist of his generation." It has also, on the other hand, received scathing criticism as "a mostly tedious succession of striking but vacant imagery whose effect diminishes the longer you look at it," from which "any sense of mystery or wonder is drained." The visuals are roundly praised, however, and some (Hoberman) feel that the movies work well as parts of installations, due to visuals, though not as movies, due to poor editing and pacing.