Review by ReviewerWhoPrefersToBeAnonymous for Matthew Barney: Pace Car for the Hubris Pill
Rating:
Matthew Barney’s works are possibly artistic revelations, or possibly just weird, or possibly both. This book, one of the earliest by/about him*, may help you decide. It complements a 1995-1996 exhibition which traveled from Museum Boijmans** van Beuningen (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) to capc Musée d’art contemporain (Bordeaux, France) and Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland). Barney was involved in designing both the exhibition “of ten related [c.1990-1995] projects” and this book.

It does not resemble any exhibition catalog I’ve seen. Starting from the outside, there is a translucent somewhat-stiff 16cm-high plastic wrap-around band with the title in a bold italic silvery font on both the front and back. The book itself is paperback, 24cm by 17cm. The front cover shows a photograph of a gynecologic speculum embedded in a tapered bar of what appears to be frozen Vaseline petroleum jelly (but may be plastic or wax). The back cover shows the same photo as the front, but upside down, and with ISBN 90-6918-148-7 and UPC at lower right. The spine says “Matthew Barney PACE CAR for the HUBRIS PILL.”

The endpapers both have the same photo of what appears to be a flag with the Oakland Raiders football team logo on the left and “COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE” on the right. The front and rear free endpapers would be pages “1″ and “92″ if they had been numbered.

Pages 5-8 have Acknowledgements; pages 9-19, an untitled essay by Neville Wakefield (which is on the obscure side, e.g., “…the hubris pill is offered as the intermediary or transporting agent to the bio-sculptural space the other side of hypertrophy”); and pages 21-35, an essay “Notes on Digestion and Film” by Richard Flood. Each of these texts is first given in Dutch*** then English.

Between pages 35 and 82 are unnumbered pages with uncaptioned images from CREMASTER 1, facility of INCLINE, OTTOshaft, facility of DECLINE, CREMASTER 4, and DRAWING RESTRAINT 7. Here’s where the going gets rough, in that these pages are difficult to appreciate without the essay “Only the Perverse Fantasy Can Still Save Us” by Nancy Spector on pages 3-91 of the book “Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle” (which I’ll call “CC”) published by Guggenheim in 2002. I’ll touch on the Cremaster sections only briefly (see CC for more details). For the non-Cremaster sections, I’ll give page numbers in the Spector essay as “CC14″ etc.

“CREMASTER 1″ (1995): 9 pages of photos. The main feature is a black-and-white production photograph of Goodyear (i.e., Marti Domination) on a gatefold which opens to a large photo of the Goodyear chorus girls in Bronco stadium with photos of the air hostesses on the sides.

“facility of INCLINE” (1991): 3 pages. Sternal retractor and hole close-up (aka “REPRESSIA, 1991 [detail]” per CC14), Jim Otto (aka “HYPOTHERMAL PENETRATOR, 1991″ per CC11), and woman (aka “DELAY OF GAME [manual A], 1991 [detail]” per CC15). CC14 says that “INCLINE” took place in Los Angeles, and that in this version of the TRANSEXUALIS project, the Character of Positive Restraint wears “a West Coast… poolside number” as “camouflage to hide from Otto.”

“OTTOshaft” (1992): 3 full and 2 half pages. The main feature is a gatefold of Jayne Mansfield (?) on the left and Jim Otto with Super Bowl trophies on the right. This opens up to a picture of someone walking down a curved hallway with the Otto character. Separate photos of “bagpipers” are on the sides. CC17 says about the OTTOshaft video: “Otto and the Character of Positive Restraint plot to hijack the hubris pill… they impel the pill to travel from glucose… to pure sucrose. After passing through petroleum jelly, it moves on to the starches — tapioca — and then meringue. If they are able to make it reach the state of pound cake… the bagpipe will play ‘Amazing Grace’ and thereby communicate with God.” The “shaft” part of “OTTOshaft” refers to “various elevator shafts… [like the] drones of an enormous bagpipe.”

“facility of DECLINE” (1991): 3 pages. Detail of “TRANSEXUALIS (decline), 1991″ with silicon gel pectoral form, Otto character with mat, and woman (aka “Production photo from RADIAL DRILL, 1991″ per CC15). CC15 says that “DECLINE” took place in New York, and that the Character of Positive Restraint “undergoes similar transformations” to that in “facility of INCLINE,” but “here she disguises herself in elegant evening wear….”

“CREMASTER 4″ (1994): 11 pages. The main feature is a gatefold of two settings of the Manx triskelion opening to a photo of Loughton Candidate flanked by photos of the Hacks.

“DRAWING RESTRAINT 7″ (1993): 5 pages. Limousine interior, four satyr photos (2 color, 2 B&W). CC22 says the video shows two satyrs wrestling in a limousine “which is driving at night across and through the bridges the tunnels connecting Manhattan to the lands surrounding it.” (See also a separate out-of-print book on this video published in 1995 by Cantz.)

Pages 82 to 84 give a list of exhibits, which include some not illustrated by name in the book: “Unit Bolus, 1989″ (see CC6); “Anabol (A): Pace Car for the Hubris Pill, 1991″ (despite the book’s title!)****; “Drill Team: screw Bolus, 1991″; and “VERTICAL GAME, 1995″. Pages 85 to “91″ have the artist’s exhibitions, a bibliography, credits, etc. As the other reviewer here states, the book is unfortunately out of print (the edition was limited to 2500 copies). Click the “Order it used” button at top right, and maybe a copy of this fascinating book will show up again on Amazon.com for you!

* “Matthew Barney: New Work, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art…” (1991) appears to be the first.

** Spelled “Boymans” in the book.

*** The WorldCat (OCLC) record says that the text is in “German and English,” which is incorrect.

**** The sculpture consists of “internally lubricated plastic,” “cast glucose capsule,” etc. and is apparently pictured on the right of the top figure of CC14.