Index
BARNEY, Matthew.
The Cremaster Cycle.
1995-2002.
£1,250 (6 vols.)
Cremaster 4.
Paris, London and New York: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Artangel and Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 1995.
(240 x 292 mm), pp.[100] (inc. 4 gatefolds). Illustrated throughout with colour photographs and video stills. 4pp insert with a bilingual text by James Lingwood tipped in to front. Colour illustrated wrappers with folding flap at front, perfect bound; light wear to edges, very light vertical crease to cover. Publisher’s translucent paper wraparound band, printed in white; some creasing and nicks, tears to one edge. Very good.
[with:]
Cremaster 5.
(Frankfurt am Main and New York: Portikus and Barbra Gladstone Gallery, 1997).
(240 x 292 mm), pp.[124] (inc. 8 gatefolds). Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white photographs and video stills. Black-and-white photo-illustrated wrappers with folding flaps, title embossed to cover, perfect bound. Additional printed translucent plastic jacket affixed to rear cover at spine; light wear to edges and scuffing to covers. Very good.
[with:]
Cremaster 1.
(Vienna and Basel: Kunsthalle Wien and Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, 1997).
(240 x 292 mm), pp.[112] (inc. 6 gatefolds). Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white photographs and video stills. Colour photo-illustrated wrappers with folding flap at front, perfect bound. Fine.
[with:]
Cremaster 2.
(Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1999).
(240 x 292 mm), pp.[160] (inc. 8 gatefolds). Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white photographs and video stills. 16pp stapled pamphlet with extracts from Norman Mailer’s ‘The Executioner’s Song’ affixed to first folding page. Colour photo-illustrated wrappers with folding flap at front, perfect bound. Publisher’s embossed blue translucent plastic slipcase. Fine.
[with:]
Cremaster 3.
(New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2002).
(239 x 292 mm), pp.[208] (inc. 8 gatefolds). Illustrated throughout with colour and black-and-white photographs and video stills. Colour photo-illustrated wrappers with folding flap at front, perfect bound; bottom outer corner lightly bumped. Near-fine.
[and:]
BARNEY, Matthew.
The Cremaster Cycle.
(New York): Guggenheim Museum, (2002).
Large thick 4to (316 x 226 mm), pp.xv, [1], 522, [6]. Illustrated throughout with photographs, video stills, and preparatory materials, texts by Nancy Spector and Neville Wakefield, design by J. Abbott Miller and Roy Brooks. Light green endpapers, one side photo-illustrated. Fine silver cloth-covered boards, stamped in silver and grey, starting at head but holding firm. White thread bookmark. Polyester dust-jacket, upper panel printed in grey and light green. Near-fine in a fine-dust-jacket.
First editions in very good to fine condition of all 5 of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster books together with the Guggenheim catalogue. The Cremaster Cycle is an ambitious work that was made over a period of eight years (1994-2002) incorporating sculpture, films, photographs, and drawings. In an interview with Hans-Ulrich Obrist Barney stated: ‘For me it is critical that all of these forms come together as one piece. The films, the sculpture, the photographs, the books… I tend to think non-heirarchically in the way that the different aspects of the Cremaster project are symbiotic. It’s the books that end up having the widest distribution, and that interested me in the way that the moving image is slowed down and crystallised in a particular way in the books, and how that informs some of the questions raised in the films and installations. Aspects of the films that are elusive become clearer in the books. For instance, the photography in the books, which is photographed rather than videotaped, tends to have a resolution and a stillness that makes it possible to study the detail in a way that cannot happen in the moving image. The books function as manuals, and bring clues to the narrative questions’ (Tate).
Refs.: Sand in der Vaseline Kunstlerbucher II 1980-2002 (5.29-5.33); Tate Magazine Issue 2, London, 2002