‘The Cremaster cycle tries to take on a cinematic language that I had not dealt with before. I wanted to see how this sculptural project, which is what it is, could align itself with the cinematic form, and still come out as sculptural.’
Cremaster 3 is the culmination of Matthew Barney’s epic five-part Cremaster cycle. Slow moving, hypnotic, and with scarcely any dialogue, the series comprises five feature-length films intentionally created out of order; Barney made Cremaster 4 first (1994) and Cremaster 3 last (2002), thereby forming an unconventional and non-linear narrative consisting not only of the films but also of related photographs, sculptures, drawings, and books. In conversation with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Barney noted, 'The Cremaster cycle is in itself a narrative, but not necessarily a linear one.'
Filmed in various locations including Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, and a Saratoga Springs racecourse, Cremaster 3 is set in part in the fantastical, art-deco 1930s. It narrates the construction of New York City’s Chrysler Building, itself a main recurring character laden with symbolism. In the present image, The Entered Apprentice, played by Barney himself, and The Apprentice's Moll, portrayed by Aimee Mullins, pose as mirror images of each other in the sumptuously reimagined Cloud Club bar on the 66th floor of the Chrysler Building.
Of the Cremaster cycle, curator James Lingwood wrote, 'It is without parallel in contemporary culture – an odyssey of pyscho-sexual drive and desire, spanning five films set in different geographical locations, from a stadium in his home town of Boise, Idaho, to an opera house in Budapest. Dense, compacted and multi-layered, the cycle reaches back to the mythology, biology and geology of creation and forward into a world of modified genetics and mutating identity' (quoted in 'Artist Project: Matthew Barney,' Tate Magazine, issue 2, December 2002).
With a running length of over three hours, Cremaster 3 is the most slickly-produced and traditionally cinematic film in the series. It premiered at New York’s Ziegfeld Theater on 1 May 2002 as a benefit event for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum before opening for wider release at Film Forum. All five Cremaster films are in the collection of The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
