Good Example Of Matthew Barney: No Restraint (2006) Critical Thinking

Matthew Barney: No Restraint (2006)
The documentary narrates the journey of the crew of Nisshin Maru, a Japanese whaling ship, on a whaling expedition that takes months in the open sea. Barney and Bjork are dressed in traditional Japanese attire while riding in the shipping expedition. Barney is an alumnus of Yale University where he was recruited as an athlete to play football. Initially, is intentions were towards a career in medicine. Nonetheless, he graduated with a degree in arts. While Barney was an artist by profession, he did not necessarily earn his living from his artistic pieces. He had a day job as a model, often posing for catalogs marketing wares. Proceeds from this job helped him fund his work as an artist. His partner, Bjork was among other things a producer a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer. It was from these diverse talents that she made her living.
The documentary explains the artistic process of he celebrated art guru, using rather unconventional material like petroleum jelly. The documentary argues that the impediments of the artistic process help enhance the final product. The major themes in the art include art, music and musical performance and fishing. However, fishing serves as a peripheral theme because the entire documentary is dominated by the art styling’s of Barney and Bjork. In talking about the impediments to the artistic process, Barney alludes to his visual motif of a filed shaped by a capsule crossed by a bar (Chernick, 2006).
I find the specificity of this visual motif very confusing, especially because the intention was to compare the sustained creative conflict between a body and forces of resistance. I also found his attempts to explain this artistic process with the aid of the enormous amounts of petroleum jelly as it appeared he was not in control. The work was interesting, not because of its significance, but because it highlighted the exploits of two artists in diverse fields.
Chernick, A. (2006). Matthew Barney: No restraint. New York. IFC/The Weinstein Company