Fantastic Metropolis

The word “Cremaster” comes from the cremaster muscle, which is the muscle in the male that controls the ascension and descension of the testicles in the scrotal sac in response to external stimuli such as temperature changes and fear. For example, when it is cold out, this muscle draws the testicles inward so that their ideal temperature can be maintained and the sperm within protected. Beyond this fact, however, I will not attempt to describe what The Cremaster Cycle is “about.” I just have not absorbed enough of this gigantic work to do this task justice. So I will quote Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, from her eloquent and revealing essay “Only the Perverse Fantasy Can Still Save Us,” as published in the exhibition catalog for The Cremaster Cycle (ISBN 0810969351):

“Taking the cremaster muscle as its conceptual departure point, the project circulates around anatomical allusions to the height of the gonads during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation: Cremaster I represents the most ‘ascended’ state, Cremaster 5 the most ‘descended.’ But as the cycle evolved over the course of decade, this biological mode became less prominent; other paradigms, such as biography, history, and codes of behavior, came to the fore as vessels of Barney’s narrative constructs… As a topographical map, a diagrammatic proposal, the Cremaster cycle has no definitive beginning or end, no indisputable point of departure. It functions as a loop, particularly in the chronology it subtly reveals…

“While the Cremaster cycle expands outward in time from the period of an individual life to the passage of centuries, it also describes what is by comparison almost a nanomoment: the first six weeks of an embryo’s development. During this fleeting interlude, the just-formed fetus is pure potential. Neither male nor female, it hovers in a realm of gender interdeterminacy. Free from defining pronouns and anatomical indicators, the fetus, for one brief instant, occupies the space of possibility. It lingers before the moment of difference, the ‘either-or’ that shapes all future thought and action. The Cremaster cycle imagines the prospect of suspending this phase indefinitely, resisting the inexorable impetus toward division. Its five installments ponder this internal struggle against definition, while tracing the passage from full ascension to complete descension.” (pp 30, 31, 33)

There are several ways to experience The Cremaster Cycle. One way to experience the cycle is simply to watch the movies straight through (which I hope to be able to do someday). Barney has also designed and published a book to coincide with the release of each installment in the cycle. The aforementioned newly published exhibition catalog The Cremaster Cycle also features a chronological sequence of stills from the movies, photos of the sculptures, and commentary. The web site contains a beautiful layout of the entire cycle, including trailers for the movies. In addition, there are CDs for a couple of the cycles, which feature music from the films. A lucky few experienced a live allegorical performance of the entire cycle called The Order (more on this later).