so as many of you know, i had the fortune of hitting up the Drawing Restraint retrospective at its only U.S. location, SFMOMA [twice!]. anyone who also owns the DR9 sketchbook either got it at SFMOMA or in Japan. or through eBay etc.

this photograph was at the entry to the floor with most of the Drawing Restraint stuff, framed and poster-size, maybe about 30" tall?

crafting an impressive title that fiercely plays with the work is kind of a feat, yeah? i wonder what kinds of words Houdini used to describe his act. on list of stuff to look up

anyway, title of above photograph;
Dear General MacArthur by Matthew Barney
part of Drawing Restraint.

yeahhhh. now that's what i am talking about.

it's only because Matthew Barney is the [semi-]rare kind of gallery artist who's managed to reach outside the world of museums that the question even gets raised about the degree to which his technique and imagery are populist. i mean: if he hadn't made a serial called Cremaster that could be shown in art houses, no one would ask why he doesn't break out of the museum world more thoroughly. but, he did; so, we rightfully do. points to anybody who followed all those convoluted sentences. i'll be clearer;

to go see Matthew Barney's shit, you're basically voting for museums/galleries as a type of venue. that's obviously where he prefers to be on display. galleries are fucking fantastic: art free for everyone to see because presumably someone is going to buy it. incredible. the environment is obviously very bourgeois, which has apparently upset a huge number of notable artists, but doesn't really upset me. with respect to museums, i like how a Barney show always makes the very architecture of the building seem more malleable, friendly, and, of course, scalable. you go into the museum and you see: this dude has had a few intense physical interactions with this building already. ok, can you experience the museum like he did? a friendly challenge to make your own visit more meaningful.

but still: punx always want the Yaleboy to take it to the street. sometimes i kind of feel bad for him when he gets called out on his education: school is just a way to meet people and kill time, you know? still, when i look at pictures _of_ him, i kind of get the rift, and maybe i get a kick out of it? i don't know yet. i mean yeah, in self-portraits and press shots alike, he is absolutely inscrutable:

that 'Dear General MacArthur', i must have stared at it for an hour when i was in San Francisco in August. with respect to the whole populism thing, i have to say i was pretty thrilled to get a free brochure with a decently scannable image of that photograph i had been admiring [along with a bunch of others]. there's lots of Barney images on the brochure actually, and if you're digital- total treasure. they're only a couple inches square, but they work. i still haven't scraped together the cash for the 3 Drawing Restraint books. man.