Matthew Barney for the Masses:
The Order now available on DVD

by Sarah Jaffray

"Follow the Entered Apprentice as he advances from the ground floor of the Guggenheim Museum to the top of the spiral in the game of The Order. He must ascend through five degrees, each presenting him with a different opponent or obstacle. Molten Vaseline drips slowly downward from the fifth degree providing the game with its time base. The Entered Apprentice must become initiated before the Vaseline reaches the first degree."1 Although it sounds like a bad description for the latest Playstation game it is actually a summary of the latest incarnation of artist Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. The most recently released of the five film series, Cremaster 3 (2002), has been trimmed down and turned into an interactive DVD entitled The Order.

The Order DVD is an interactive version of the final segment of Cremaster 3 in which the Apprentice (Barney) must achieve Masonic redemption by racing up the spiral ramp of the Guggenheim Museum, level by level, encountering and conquering obstacles such as a chorus line of dancing girls and a cheetah-woman played by Paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins. For the DVD Barney has taken the footage from each level of the race and extended it turning it into its own 30 minute vignette. The different scenes converge towards the same conclusion. Also different from the original presentation of Cremaster 3 are the enhanced features allowed by the DVD format: An interactive multi-angle presentation where the viewer can choose to see in real-time all the events on each level of The Order, music remixes, commentary by Barney, a trailer for the Cremaster Cycle, and the ability to fast forward those all too intricately, slow-paced scenes for which Barney is famous.

Exclusivity has been a huge component of Barney's success. In addition to their esoteric symbolism, the limited number of screenings (at a small number of museums and art-house movie theaters) has helped to create an aura of mystery around the Cremaster Cycle. With The Order, the first time his work has been legally licensed for private viewing and ownership, Barney throws his audience a curve ball. Does it affect the integrity of the artwork if Amazon.com sells it for $22.49 and if so, why did Barney choose to release it in this way?

My original pessimistic response to the release of The Order was that it was a shameless marketing ploy created to cash in on Barney's status as (it states quite clearly on the cover of the DVD) "the most important artist of his generation," but since Barney has made so much already from the films, there may be something else at stake. On some level I believe that the release of The Order is really part of a genuine desire to expose a larger audience to this once so secretive art. Mass production and easy-access could destroy the cult of the Cremaster Cycle, but it will more likely increase its prosperity by allowing artists, critics and historians to study the work more closely than ever before.

By using the end of the series as its major theme, Barney specifically stresses the end of the artwork as a whole. Because the cycle has concluded, Barney may now view the wider release of Cremaster material for mass consumption as an acceptable conclusion to this phase of his career; the official close of this chapter in Barney's career could be a pivotal point from which to move to new work. Where will Matthew Barney's career go now? Regardless of direction, one can safely bet that he will continue to cultivate the mysterious and personal mythology for which he is best known.

publication date: March, 2004