Fantastic Metropolis

Once you have decided upon a medium, however, there is still the question of which sequence to take in each of the five levels. One way is to experience them in order from one to five, but in the aforementioned essay, Spector suggests that the best way is in the sequence in which the artist produced them: four, one, five, two, three.

However, I am convinced that the best way to experience it the way Steve and I did at the Guggenheim. For this site-specific exhibit, Barney essentially took over the entire main portion of the museum, which if you’ve never been there is a tall circular room with a white spiraled walkway along the outer wall, ascending to five levels, with a large open center. Not only did Barney display his sculptures and photographs, but he even went as far as changing the carpet, re-arranging the lobby, and adding to the structure of the interior of the building. At the top of the spiraled room he built a five sided pod which houses large plasma TV screens, and installed speakers throughout the exhibit, through which music and sound effects from the films are played.

Everything was presented in a fragmented, non-linear fashion. When we first arrived and started looking at the very strange photographs and sculptures, Steve and I had not even figured out that there was a single-artist exhibit going on. A few minutes into it, we realized that it was indeed a single-artist exhibit. A little while later we figured out that this was all part of a complete work of some kind.

All along the walkways, we encountered these strikingly brilliant large color photographs housed in custom plastic frames, often arranged in diptychs and triptychs. Flags hung from the walls. All over the floors and were very strange sculptures, often made from plastic and Vaseline. Many (all?) of the sculptures are props from the films, just as the photographs are actually stills; yet the sculptures truly are sculptures, and not simply props, just as the photographs stand on their own beautifully. On the walls, a series of TV screens showed the Cremaster films, which are bizarre and transfixing. At this stage in the exhibit, we still had no idea that there was a storyline behind this whole thing, so seeing fragments of these movies out of order gave us more hints of what was going on.

Halfway through the second level, Steve and I stopped and looked at each other in disbelief. It was clear that neither of us could believe what we had gotten ourselves into, what we had stumbled upon. Many times, we would both be laughing to tears, much to the consternation of to our equally perplexed (if not in every case equally awed) fellow patrons. I’m certain that there were many points at which I could be seen with my mouth hanging open, eyes transfixed on one of the many spectacles.

By the time we got to the top, we had seen the whole cycle from start to finish, but only in bits and pieces. For the final stage of the exhibit, Cremaster 5, Barney enclosed an entire room at the top of the spiral and painted everything black (everything up to that point had been steeped in white), turning it into a replica of a set from the fifth film. In the center of this room as a piece from the set, while on the wall a loop from the fifth movie featuring this set piece played. The sequence was somehow even more bizarre than everything else we had seen, yet not as bizarre as the side room filled with pigeons dressed in little fluffy costumes. I think Steve and I had both reached a point where we could not take much more.