Matthew Barney is greedy for your time. After a good four hours spent between two separate visits to MoMA, I am now the proud owner of a limited understanding of what Barney’s work over the past two decades is all about. Drawing Restraint 9 is the umbrella term title of Barney’s latest exhibit at SF MoMA, and before visiting, consider the following questions: Do you enjoy art made of self-lubricating plastic? Are you curious about whaling ships? Do you want to see Björk sans eyebrows? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, Drawing Restraint 9 is for you.
Barney’s show not only occupies the museum’s theater but several large gallery spaces. The major component of his new series is a feature-length film screened daily at MoMA at 2pm. Choosing to see the exhibit and forgo the film is equivalent to boarding the Godzilla ride at Universal Studios if you haven’t seen the movie — there’s still a lot to look at, but you’ll be wondering what’s up with the big lizard.
Though Barney’s flick has little dialogue, the peculiar nature and beauty of this big-budget operation holds your attention. Barney’s baby’s mama and alt-electro-pop queen, Björk, composed the score of the film, which opens with her tell-tale harp-infused beats playing while a woman elaborately packages two fossils. The lyrics of the music narrate the scene and — I later found out — were inspired by a letter written to General Douglas MacArthur by a Japanese citizen when a whaling moratorium was lifted after World War II. The thankful whaler sent some fossils to the general as a gift. Does this explain why the exhibit that accompanies the film opens with footage of Barney drawing on MoMA’s atrium wall dressed as MacArthur? No, but I hear he hung from the sky bridge on the fifth floor as if it were monkey bars while drawing on the walls, and that’s enough for me.
Back to the film. Welcome aboard the Nishin Maru, a powerful whaling ship in Japan. The story follows the journey of Occidental Guests 1 and 2 played by Barney and Björk. The latter, dressed in a fetching pink fur-trimmed red cape and retro hiking boots boards the ship first and takes a bath in a stainless steel tub of water and lemons (hello, iconic film still). A bearded Barney in a bear’s fur coat comes aboard next. He settles down for a nap and sleeps like a baby, even when his eyebrows and part of his head are shaved by one of the ship’s crewmembers.
Both guests are then dressed in fur kimonos and elaborate regalia in a lengthy ritual. A tender moment occurs when Barney — dressed and waiting in his new, stick-on fur eyebrows — hears his woman clomping towards him down the ship’s narrow hallway in her brand new whale bone flip-flops. They share an awkwardly sweet silence before crawling through a tiny door to feast on a funky green concoction.