Don’t Panic, Matthew Barney Is Free

Dan Cameron has very strong feelings about art, especially about Matthew Barney’s Cremaster film cycle. While pondering whether or not to enjoy the lengthy films, Cameron notes:

I was struck by some odd wording in the newspaper listing. Apparently in an effort to gloss over the fact that unlike nearly every other cinematic creation still extant, Cremaster would never, ever be available to the public in DVD or other mass-market formats, the listing cited vague “licensing agreements” as shorthand for something readers shouldn’t waste any effort trying to unravel. For the first time, it occurred to me that the conditions surrounding Cremaster‘s distribution constitute one of the costliest and most pointless blunders in recent art history

Why would a licensed distribution be a costly and pointless blunder? Cameron believes that there’s a large pro-Barney audience wishing to view his works, and that this audience will only grow in time. True enough. Why not make his works available on YouTube and pirated DVDs? To answer this question, we would have to delve into the public/private debate (a bit tired at this point).

However, I’m a bit confused. In reading Cameron’s article I gathered that the fundamental question he is asking is: what is property? I work with visual artists, and the hardest concept for them to grasp is the one of “assets.” This comes of course from art school dogmans, but it does not erode the fact that each artist is entitled (property) to exploit her work as she sees fit. This includes the intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks) as well as tangible property called, art. I understand Cameron’s preoccupation with mass access and the loss of cultural experience by the general public, but in seeing this “issue” raised more and more by more free culture and open source proponents, I wonder why it has been made the norm; the correct way to do or distribute something.

It is ironic that as I type this, NPR is running a story commenting on whether an artist should ever choose money over art. This troubling question of course as we face one of the biggest financial disasters in the last 100 years. Theory is one thing; practice another.There is one remedy should one dislike the manner in which an artist distributes her work: don’t watch or buy it (it’s called “free market”). If the answer to this is that the work is a great testament to the culture of our time, why divorce the “capitalist” aspect of it from its reading? After all, isn’t the commodification and exploitation of it just as much part of it as is the cinematic experience, editing, sound, and point of view?

Thanks to Dan for writing his article, Free Matthew Barney. It gave me an opportunity to comment here.