I watched the documentary on the making of multi-hyphenate artist Matthew Barney's latest project Drawing Restraint No. 9 titled "No Restraint." I was surprised he used to be a football player(!) I knew he liked to cover things in vasaline from art world press but I did not fully understand what he meant by 'restraint'. The Cremaster volume that I have found on DVD is but one episode so I have not been able to see the complete piece. Though somewhat dated I liked it a lot and I bought his conceit; namely, there are forces within you or outside you that prevent you from creating and that you must fight against them. Simple, but O so true.

In many respects however, speaking of the doc "No Restraint" , many folks should not be given a behind-the-scenes look of an artist at work. I know there are valid arguments in favor of it, but I feel it needles something that is dark and hard to grapple with in human nature, not least among the artistic or creative. Yes, it inspires the latter and quickens the mind's heartbeat (a good thing) but it also shows how fragile (ridiculous, childish, arrogant, hubristic, sadistic...) the creator can be. In short, it seperates the artist from humanity in some way (some argue it brings the two together) which I feel in my gut is not so healthy.

The scenes in No Restraint of Barney and companion/collaborator Bjork discussing, and subsequently showing, their mutual dismemberment was like a magician explaining the trick while he was performing it.

Vanity.

Such is the pitfall of an artist, no? I gotta go now. My vat of vaseline just arrived.