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MATTHEW BARNEY: NO RESTRAINT
Directed & Produced by: Alison Chernick.
Director of Photography: Toshiaki Ozawa & Robert Leacock.
Edited by: Aaron Lubarsky & Helen Yum.
Music by: Raz Mesina.
Released by: IFC First Take/Weinstein Company.
Language: English & Japanese with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: USA. 72 min. Not Rated.
With: Matthew Barney & Björk.

Documentaries on living artists can be tricky. It’s so easy to follow one with a digital camera, record a few shows, show some stills of decade-old sketches and hope for the best. But director Alison Chernick (The Jeff Koons Show) picked the perfect subject to keep her documentary interesting. Whether you’re uninitiated in the hallucinogenic language of Matthew Barney’s work or you’re a proud, dedicated fan, you will leave this film with a better perspective on his art.

Chernick treks alongside Barney as he shoots the only feature film released in theaters from his 11-part “Drawing Restraint” piece, Drawing Restraint 9. The series has been Barney’s primary focus before he left Yale in the late ‘80’s, and it’s driven most of his other work since – or at least that’s Chernick’s point. Her assertion is backed up by interviews with everyone from Barney’s first gallery manager to his bemused father.

It began as an exercise. In one “Drawing Restraint” segment, he took a charcoal pencil and tried to draw marks high on a wall as he was tethered to the floor. That’s as literal as Barney has ever been in his professional career: he was drawing restraint. The footage of his subsequent pieces gets increasingly fascinating. His obstacles by design included being covered in Vaseline, being engorged with a dildo, being chained in a harness while propelled by a springboard.

He explains that it was always about limitations: the pleasures of goals, the frustrations of boundaries, and how we excel in our restraints. That kind of statement might sound a little pretentious, but Barney is never condescending in his explanations. It’s almost surprising how down-to-earth he is here. He is a charming, affable person whenever we’re privy to moments between him and his longtime girlfriend Björk, his Brooklyn production crew, and with his baffled Japanese accomplices on the world’s last whaling vessel as he asks them, through a megaphone, to break apart his bizarre petroleum jelly sculpture (which is in the same iconic design that has confused casual viewers of Barney’s work since the ‘80’s). He comes across as just another guy who’s proud of his work and eager to help people understand it.

Perhaps that has to do with Chernick’s editing, which is superb. By stringing together consistent trends in two decades of Barney’s work and keeping interviews brief, one of the most indecipherable artists working today becomes an open book. She points us to some hilarious footage of Barney playing high school football and how a mentality of being a lifelong athlete materializes in his work, particularly in the “Drawing Restraint” series. Not only is there an obvious fascination with athletic equipment (some of his earliest pieces sold in New York include incline benches covered in Vaseline), but Chernick underscores his obsession with physical extremes (from his appearance in his “Cremaster” series to the prevalent theme of sexualized physical pain). If there was one contemporary artist whose work needed a step-by-step explanation, it’s Matthew Barney. So to say that what Chernick has done here is rare would be an understatement. This is one artist documentary that will never bore you and will enlighten you at every turn. Zachary Jones
December 19, 2006