Abstract
When talking or writing about the American artist Matthew Barney, critics and historians of art always start with the traditional biographic descriptions which in the case of Barney are quite pleasant and are justified by the fact that the artist himself uses autobiographic references in his own oeuvre and has created what it is called since 1969 with the Harald Szeemann's exhibition When attitudes become form, a personal mythology. This is why I will not go through his life but will focus on the notion recently attributed to Matthew Barney of Gesamtkunstwerk and his recent works. Obviously, the most difficult problem to overcome will be the lack of hindsight for an analysis of a contemporary artist. The first European stop for Matthew Barney's last exhibition, Drawing Restraint, was the Serpentine Gallery in London from September 20 to November 11 2007.
