Response to Barney Reading

In the reading one of the quotes that stood out the most to me was "Barney views the entire universe of forms within the constellation of the cycle as one multidimensional artwork." In practice this means that the artist Matthew Barney really tries to establish a meaning or message and then create art works that push the boundaries of the original idea. One of the main topics that the reading explored was how Barney looked into gender with his Cremaster series, and although they are numbered 1 through 5 they were produced out of sequence and with little spoken language. Having refrained from actually watching the videos, since we are going to do that in class, it seems that they will either tell an actual story – or be so bizarre that they are more shocking than anything else.
Another aspect that I found interesting is that after he spends years developing the Cremaster series, at the end its resolution is what the reading describes as “ambiguous.” While they seem to downplay the political implications of such work, it seems that simply exploring these topics could cause some controversy especially since it seems to allude to the fact that the final gender is not final. Perhaps Barney’s thought that the gender differentiation is trying to mimic the process of creating art downplays that message.