Ugo Rondinone and the Absurd

I've wanted to look further at Ugo Rondinone's work for awhile. I was first familiar with his "Hell, Yes" rainbow piece (above) that was on the face of the New Museum. Playful, fun and poppy. Yes, it made me smirk. I took him as a clever joke-ster. His sculptures of funny monstrous face blobs (beige blog smiling above) added to this idea I had about his work. I recognized a darker side in his clowns...but still placed them in a category that was closer to the quick joke than to anything deeper. I had not seen any shows of his - sadly - so I was only seeing a small part of his work and, therefore, was missing the part I would most cherish.

Now, in reading about Ugo's work, I found he was giving us more than a joke...or, rather, pointing out how WE, all of us, are really the joke. I realized this while` reading a review of his show in Australia on www.theage.com.au. In it, Robert Nelson reviews 'Clockwork for Oracle', 2004.

Nelson explains the video space set up in the gallery:

'There are three walls of 24 videos each, set up in grids. They display two films: half the monitors show a man walking along a whole lot of deserted buildings and the other half show a woman doing the same beat....The sequences roll on for as long as you can watch. The longer you attend, the more you experience an illusion, as of perspective: you expect the two to converge but they never do. '

Then Nelson hits on something I cherish - the same way I cherish Samuel Beckett:

'The illusion is psychological, because when you see a man and a woman walking in one space, you can't imagine that their movement is independent.... Our romantic will for them to be united is as absurd as expecting the man and woman to be lovers. We're hard-wired to project a vision on to the world that flatters ourselves. And finally, in this room of abstract motifs without an abstract core, sits a clown, a puppet of a man, dumped on the concrete floor, a good simulacrum of an exhausted imbecile, whose nonsense nevertheless amuses. After making everyone chuckle at so much absurdity, the clown resumes a life which lacks the humour of the stage.'

Absurdity. The clown lives a life without the humor of the stage. He is sitting slumped down on the ground. He is scary, as clowns often are. Ugo's clown looks like a clown in the face - but with it's own unique colors of a full green face, large yellow spaces for eyes and a blue mouth. Green like an alien, green. Or a sick person depicted in a cartoon. He isn't wearing the typical costume. Instead he is loosely covered in a brown fur fabric- like teddy bear skin? He has a large hair 'necklace' hanging from his neck like a member of an aboriginal tribe. Is he supposed to refer to more 'primitive' societies with this costume? Neanderthals- less civilized human ancestors? Closer to our animal selves?

This makes me think of a recent article I read: Thomas Nagel's 'The Absurd'. Nagel leads you through why and how the absurdity of our human existence is found in the situation of our consciousness (and, therefore, our ability to step outside ourselves) coupled with our inability to change being just a human and act at our lives as just a human. The absurdity is felt in our daily lives as we mundanely go through our lives building, making, striving - yet, what we do now will not matter in a million years- Earth and the universe will move along as it does.

Quotes from Nagel about the absurdity of our overall lives:

'Collision between seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt....We have to make choices, live with energy and attention that shows what is taken more serious than others....'

Nagel goes on to speak of ways people can relieve this sense of absurdity. These tactics for relief could be religion or purposely living an existence closer to our animal selves. He does point out that religion still leaves room for doubt and, therefore, the absurdity still exists. And in living a less 'civilized' existence: he reminds us of the extreme effort it would take to do this and, therefore, the level of seriousness the individual would have to take himself in order to live in this way. That level of seriousness would have its own absurdity.

I wonder if that is Ugo's clown- trying to live a more animal existence?

More of Ugo's work:

The lightbulbs. Large, handmade, useless - absurd.

Lastly: the human body sculptures at the top:

These were at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea in 2010. At first they seem to 'tame?' for his work. They lack the caricature, the cartoon-ish. They are us sad, pensive humans sitting around in non-active poses. The hybridity shown in the lines and color differences are interesting to me. They have the same lines as mannequins - a representation of the human self. All the colors are earth tones that point to our human, biological, earthly selves. The dirt, rock, ground.

Vito Acconci - Video/Performance Work from the 70s

I first heard of Vito Acconci when I learned of his famous masturbation piece that took place under the floorboards of Sonnabend gallery in 1972....his private moment made semi-public. It was called 'Seedbed.' Acconci spent 8 hours a day over a 3 week period lying under a low wooden ramp in the gallery telling his sexual fantasies of and to every viewer that came into the gallery- his words emanated over speakers in the gallery for all to hear. The video documentation of the piece shows no visual sexual content - it is all in words and suggestions. (See the top right hand photo for an image of Acconci performing this piece.)

I then learned more about his work- He dealt in the private/public, the body and the psychological- primarily through performance and video. Then, in a video class in Grad School, I saw his video 'Theme Song', 1973 (See the top left hand photo). Oh my god. I had a mixture of reactions: humor, uncomfortableness, revulsion and entrancement. He drew me into the television monitor like no one ever had. It is still my favorite video piece ever made.

In this piece, he plays a cassette player with music from the Doors, Bob Dylan etc. He brings his legs in towards the camera as if he is wrapping his body around you, his face taking up the right hand side of the frame, and then brings his legs back out behind him. During the entire video, he smokes cigarettes and tries to talk you into coming into the video space with him... He asks you to come to him with 'openness and manipulation' (Electronic Arts Intermix quote):

"Of course I can't see your face. I have no idea what your face looks like. You could be anybody out there, but there's gotta be somebody watching me. Somebody who wants to come in close to me ... Come on, I'm all alone ... "

Here is an overall view of his work - words are again from the website, Electronic Arts Intermix:

'In the 1970s, he produced a remarkable body of conceptual, performance-based film and video works, in which he engages in an intensive psychodramatic dialogue between artist and viewer, body and self, public and private, subject and object.

In his video performances, the body is a site for a physical and psychological search for self, with language as the catalyst. Video is equated with the close-up, an intimate theatrical space for face-to-face confessionals and actions. Intensely personal, often to the point of exhibitionism, Acconci's stream-of-consciousness monologues and performative acts, documented in real time by a fixed camera, chronicle the insertion of the private self into the public sphere.'

Now with the onslaught of the internet, skype, youtube...with people photographing themselves...teenagers knowing how to pose in the most flattering (above head to the side shot) poses for their fb pages...Now where is the body, the identity? It's meta compared to Acconci...he is within all of us now in this way. Many of us in this digital age are doing what he was doing in the 70s - only not with the same sense of self-awareness. Our self-awareness is a different kind of critical? We aren't thinking of the body as body...our digital bodies are obvious representations to us....how are we represented online? How are we packaging and showing ourselves?

Our ability to reach people has changed through digital means. The spread of our reach is infinite...but the depth/realness is often less so... it is less body, less face to face in the internet age...but there are more people to reach towards, to interact with - even if it is on a digital realm often or even only.

In our internet age, do we see a video of someone talking to the camera as if the viewer could come inside of the video space? Yes. Do we see someone seducing the viewer? Yes. Is this video piece a forerunner to the skype seduction between a girlfriend and her boyfriend?

The third image above is from Acconci's video, 'Open Book', 1974. Honestly, I couldn't watch much of it. It grossed me out or annoyed me or something...I couldn't understand what he was saying -which I found frustrating...but it also felt disturbing in that special Acconci way that I can't help but have respect for.

Here is a quote about this piece from online ArtForum:

'Vito Acconci's open mouth is framed by the camera in an extreme close-up, bringing the viewer uncomfortably close.. A desperte sense of strained urgency comes across as Acconci gasps, 'I'll accpet you, I won't shut down, I won'tbshut you out... I'm open to you, I'm open to everything...This is not a trap, we can go inside, yes, come inside...” Acconci continues to plead in this way for the length of the tape, his mouth help unnaturally wide open. The pathological psychology of such enforced openness betrays a struggle to accept and be accepted by others. The sustained image of Acconci's open mouth also evidences a sinister, vaguely threatening streak that is more or less evident in much of Acconci's work.'

I am especially drawn to the above section of the quote: 'The pathological psychology of such enforced openness betrays a desperate struggle to accept and be accepted by others'. I see that in all of his work. There is a beautiful humanity sitting right next to that threatening sinister streak also mentioned above...right next to each other - co-mingling.

Sue de Beer - Youth, Angst, Horror, Popular Cinema

I had seen Sue de Beer's work years ago - at the Armory- I think. It was one of her special effects photographs of body splicing horror (the first image on the last line shown above, I believe). That is mainly what I knew of her: special effects, bodily horror. I was impressed with her special effect skills. I was rightfully repulsed and intrigued with her work all at the same time. I most definitely didn't view her work beyond that initial shock though. I didn't know about other parts of her work like youth culture/angst and she has more of a relationship with popular cinema in general than I realized.

This is the point of me doing this blog in the first place....to look a little more at an artist than I had before. And in doing this with Sue de Beer's work, I have found much more than I did in the precursory viewing. In particular, I found an excellent article by Randy Kennedy from the New York Times. It is from January 26, 2011 and covers Sue de Beer with her then upcoming film "The Ghosts" which was to be playing at the Park Avenue Armory. I'm sorry I missed the film!

The article mentions that de Beer was originally grouped as Neo-Gothic (post 9/11 NYC group)- along with Banks Violette and David Altmejd. In looking at her work, I'm not sure if I completely agree with that categorization. Her work is full of teen angst and references to popular cinema (other than horror cinema) that make me think of her work as a psychological and sociological study instead of being specifically Neo-Gothic. The gothic elements could be the bloody darkness that is sometimes present and the teen goths in some of the work... but that still doesn't seem to be the dominant force.

Oh! And there is a quote from the NYtimes article I truly like:

"Over the last decade Ms. de Beer has built a cult following for the dark and often disturbing ways that she mixes the profane and the sacred - or at least a postmodern version of the sacred, a longing to escape the confines of ordinary consciousness for something perhaps more beautiful or true."

First of all, the quote 'postmodern version of the sacred' is very interesting....I want to look more into that idea. What are examples of the postmodern sacred? What is sacred in de Beer's work? I wonder if it is popular cinema... As for 'the longing to escape the confines of ordinary consciousness for something more beautiful or true' -- that is the epitome of teen angst. That actually is probably the epitome of most people's angst in life - regardless of age.

In this last year, I saw some of Sue de Beer's recent work at Marianne Boesky (last image shown here). This work seemed very different, way more theoretical and abstract, instead of her usual focus on Horror, Youth and film. It didn't have the narrative element found in her other work. Although I haven't read about it, it seemed to be about film viewing in an abstracted and empirical way. I did like these objects: these flat, perforated, decorated in pattern lighting screens. I enjoyed how the the light fell through them. I enjoyed them as objects...but I was not drawn into whatever concept she was developing. It seemed too dry and cold to me- a fully cerebral act.

Neo Gothic - Banks Violette

I first heard of Banks Violette when a colleague told me that another artist had made a melting unicorn head. I was bummed - since I was really fond of mine- and was wanting my idea to be unique. Now I see that his work and my work are actually nothing alike. The unicorn is almost an anomaly within his work - it fits but doesn't at the same time. His aesthetic is very dry, clean, masculine, shiny...and almost harsh. The unicorn's whiteness certainly goes with his other monochromatic work...and the idea of deterioration works next to partially torn down guard rails, crushed pieces of metal and scattered white tube lights.

In reading about Violette's work- his focus is on youth and subcultures. According to Interview Magazine, he celebrates 'their revolt and reveal[s] the queasy way they recycle images and slogans to keep themselves alive.'

Much of Violette's work is very pared down: to glossy black, white glowing light, white glossy objects, metal- it works around direct iconography or boils it down to image's base and individual elements (takes it apart and uses elements sparingly). The iconographic images (deer, Christ, skull, cross, unicorn) work in a separate space - where the images they represent carry their own history and weight- as iconic images do.

On the Brask Art blog - where I found the image of his studio with the upside down cross - the author describes Bank's work as:

'The cold, mimimalist visual language Banks Violette (b. 1973, New York) uses, refers to the dark side of American culture: the gothic scene, satanic rituals, death metal,....Violette's installaations evoke violence, aggression and excess, without lapsing into anecdotalism.'

With Bank's work - I'm turned off and very curious about how the cold, minimalist aesthetic carries violence across (vs. imagery that is not minimalist and not necessarily cold). I'm thinking of Barney's work which is also cold but not minimilast. Barney embraces the direct use of iconography. What does Bank's boiling down of iconography do in contrast (in those instances where it is boiled down.)? There is a way in which something cold shuts me out. It becomes institutional and, therefore, unavailable to me as a human being. (Institutional feels bigger than the indiv. human - out of our control in some way). Minimalism has its own distance. These distances from the individual viewer are different from each other - but both are removed.

If I think of Barney's work and my distance from it --- it is in it's coldness. And it's money that makes it bigger than myself. But he brings the human being back around to identifying with what is going on with iconography, historical imagery and fashion and the horror and abjection of the body. He scares us and revolts us with this abjection after we wait sitting in cold, clean well produced, gorgeous images that are familiar and otherworldly at the same time.

Barney and Violette both work with violence. I might have mentioned here before that Barney's work was described somewhere (or I made it up in my head but I don't think so) as 'violence sublimating into form.' I would say the same of Violette's work - violence is going through a different filtering process with the two artists.

A quote from Violette I found on Wikipedia:

"I'm interested in a visual language that's over-determined, exhausted, or just over-burdened by meaning. The heavy-handed one-to-one of 'black-equals-wrong' is incredibly interesting to me-- less as something that has a meaning in itself, but more in how those visual codes can somehow be reanimated. That's constant throughout my work. All those images are like zombies -- they're stripped of vitality, yet sometimes they get life back in them...and like zombies, usually something goes wrong when they awake again."

That is interesting -- he is stripping down (or boiling down) to something basic (like the use of black) and trying to reanimate it. I wonder if he has succeeded. I don't know. I only see stripped/boiled down right now. I don't see the zombie having come back from the dead.
I see boiled down death and violence - the leftover bones after the meat has cooked off.

Neo Gothic - David Altmejd

I went to David Altmejd's show at Andrea Rosen about a month ago (top two row of images). I was first struck by the sculpture in the front entryway. It was the semblance of a human body - with repetition and body parts in all kinds of places as hands repeated as if their repetition was motion against the body. There was a gaping hole in the torso with the movement of the plaster frozen in movement outwards to show it had been dug out by those multiples of hands. There were multiple ears at the bottom of where the face would be and an plaster was frozen in air like a single angel wing behind the body. It felt as if this messy plaster being was caught in building its mutilated self and torn apart by itself all at the same time. There was a raw plaster feel - nothing fine tuned except some parts of the hands and feet which seemed to be made by casts.

It's funny - thinking back - the hands all seemed to be not an individual's hand but some kind of representation of what a hand would be in a dictionary...it was a perfect, regularly proportioned hand..it was a man's hand - not too big, not too small. The fingers were perfect lengths for the base of the hand...there seemed a lack of individuality. This is purely based on memory. I didn't take notes.

I very much enjoyed the show. I liked the raw plaster building/digging next to the very large plexiglass vitrines. (Two filled a nice sized room.) I liked the juxtaposition of rough plaster next to very clean and straight lines. There was something medical in the cleanliness, yet also playful- upon seeing rows of various brightly colored noses displayed, a colorful flower built of thread and sewn through holes drilled in plexi layers. Clean. Exact. The vitrines seemed to be the location of the factory - with us viewing the human(?) body being put together in mid stream - human(ish) hybrids being constructed in clear clean boxes. Yet, some of the human parts take over and escape as hands dig through the plaster the vitrines sit on - there is some chaos here. On the wall above the vitrines, a winged figure was scraped out the walls plaster, multiple hands doing the work.

The color brought in humor. The juxtaposition of materials did too --- the hair on some of the half made abominations was something like the werewolf hair above. It was fake and campy.

Altmejd is known for using werewolf hair and crystals and making human like monsters. (I don't exactly remember crystals in this show but I don't think it matters because according to an article I read - he doesn't use certain materials to be symbolic --- it's more about mood for him.)

Altmejd has been coined as Neo-Gothic (along with Sue de Beer, Banks Violette and I'd put Wim Delvoy in that mix). I am going to look into this movement further within this blog- I am attracted to all their work....probably the dark and grim aspects that exist in all their work.... Banks Violette supposedly made a melting unicorn head (as I did in college without knowing of his)...Sue de Beer makes well done special effects horror images that are photographed and Wim Delvoy has a dark intricacy within his over decorated dump trucks...and then their are the Xrays...

According to a Wmagazine article on Altmejd - he went to school with Sue de Beer and Banks Violette. They all went to the Columbia MFA program...I would like to look further into what is going on with that school...seems like a little movement that I like has been going on there.

In some readings about Altmejd:
From that same Wmagazine article (by Catherine Hong) -

Altmejd says "A lot of people think that I'm really fascinated by death and morbidity, but I'm much more interested in life. I just think that things look more alive when they're growing on top of what's dead."

I like this for some reason... After all, we are all mushrooms in many ways. Life and death are the same thing. Personally, I think I need to look more at death. It is coming up in Kristeva's Abject/Horror book - and I'm just now realizing how much humanity, in general, is all about death. I don't want to go with horror or something super direct though --- maybe...

On the subject of death (as much as Altmejd isn't into that - it is in his work - so I'm going with it) - I just read in a separate article by Art Agenda on Portikus presenting 'The Future of Tradition: Aranda, picasso, Matisse, Miro & Vidokle'. They mention a poem written by Miro in 1975 titled Adonides.

Here is the entire paragraph from Art Agenda (written by Thomas Stearns on May 3, 2011):

"Miro's Adonides (1975) presents a short two-stanza poem. It begins in a poverty of understanding: I ignore everything I know / and know nothing at all / of all that I ignore. Once affirmed, the poem continues: How can I / believe in death / when I know/ that you will die one day. Elegiacally the poet asks, since death is an unknowable, its absence can only be felt in the loss of a loved one, a loss to painful itself to even consider. Thus, death is an uncomfortable mystery. As such, the denial and anger aroused in passing can only be alienated through a mystical faith: the cycle of life and death made whole through incarnation and resurrection - the rebirth."

I love what the poet and the Stearns is saying about the poverty of understanding!!!!!!!!! But also his noticing that death is something we can't know - really know - unless faced with a loved one dying really speaks to me.

Back to Altmejd:
Wmagazine article again- continuing in the vein of Altmejd's work being about life that grows out of decay -

Altmejd says, "I think about decay not in a negative way, but in the sense of creating a space for things to start growing, " he explains. The furry time-ravaged corpse of his giant, for instance, is full of holes and caverns inhabited by birds and squirrels.".... Meanwhile, crystals, plants and sparkling beads seem to be sprouting from the giants' flesh, which his also punctured with shards of mirrored glass. The end result is something undoubtedly horrific but also strangely seductive."

Nancy Spector is quoted in this same article as saying:

"Though his work is quite different from Matthew Barney's, both artists share a regenerative vision, one that finds expression in grotesque beauty."

Maybe this is one of things about Barney's work that attracts me too... I think I look at cyborgs the same way... human adaption and growth - whether containing technology or the organic - it is about hybridity, movement and change, growth and finally, the body.

Additional quotes from the press release at Andrea Rosen:

'Altmejd's work mimics the complexity achieved in the natural world through the continual layering of elements and structures built up over millennia. Whether Altmejd begins from a point of symmetry or from a point of disorder, his works are ultimately shaped by the individual choices made at each point of construction. these works suggest the organic logic of the crowd where individual decisions can collectively generate a more intelligent whole.......Rather than creating terminal artworks, complete and ossified, Altmejd's works are manifestations of objects that are always transforming and forever open. Rather than crafting puzzles for viewer to solve, Altmejd generates structures and landscapes to inhabit.'

Folkert de Jong

Always attracted to dark work, I immediately was floored by the Dutch artist, Folkert de Jong's, work. I have only seen it online, unfortunately, but look forward to seeing some of it, at least, this weekend at James Cohen.

Jong's signature is pastel colored styrofoam mixed with a lot of death and violence and some paint globs and some fine, fine face rendering - esp with styrofoam.

I grabbed these images from the internet and found this great article online about Folkert de Jong that I will piece through here. Mainly, I'm just writing a lot of her quotes down because I am so into everything she is saying and I want to write it down to implant it in mind.

Here are some words from Lilly Wei in 'Art in America':

'More philosophic than social-agenda-driven, de Jong is not a political artist as such. Rather, he casts a cool, appraising eye on human folly and destructiveness. For example, his challenge to the crude nationalism of conventional military sculpture takes the form of perversely humorous war monuments. Some observers have characterized these works as retrograde figuration, amounting to no more than kitsch or empty spectacle. But that judgement ignores the originality, power and seriousness with which he surveys the human comedy...De Jong in fact deftly contrasts the lightness of his medium and its seeming lack of esthetic gravitas with the hectoring grimness of his content.'

I agree with her assertion that his balancing the dark, heavy subject matter with the lighter color and chosen movement is where the power lies in his work - in the humor and macabre combo.

Later in her article, Wei points out that de Jong is criticized for using Styrofoam because it is toxic and an environmental pollutant....but that he uses it because it is integral to our lives as packing material for mass produced items and that the material's makers and environmental reputation is what interests de Jong in the first place. He also uses oil barrels, wooden pallets which speak to industry, money, trade as well.

More from the article:

"De Jong conflates past and present conflicts - the Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian and recent Easter European wars as well as those in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and other countries - to arrive at a ubiquitous human phenomenon: our passion for killing each other. His dramatis personae are not obviously good or evil, and moral imperatives are displaced by an interrogative mode, by satire and black humor. 'History needs to be questioned," de Jong says.

Nice. I like that they all bleed together --- this keeps it philosophical and not political. It isn't about who is right and who is wrong in this moment - its about the fact that it never really ends...we always act the same generation after generation.

Aside from war and death, his work also seems to have elements of fantasy, the theatrical and narrative/action structure that provides multiplicity of character and critique.

Article:

There is "Cyan-Kali which is named after the Hindu goddess of time and transformation, death and annihilation....she is both seductress and slayer, ferocious but sometimes benevolent, the deity is an ideal de Jong subject in her multiple and opposing attributes, her ghastly, strange beauty."

One last thing from this article -- ( I really am into this piece)

Pertaining to de Jong's grandfather...
"He remembers being riveted, as a child, by the enchanting stories -as well as the elaborately tattooed arms and chest- of his grandfather, his last forebear to go to sea. (He comes from a long line of fisherman). In retrospect, de Jong realizes that those tales and body markings helped to reshape a meager workman's existence into something bearable, even heroic. Ultimately, the old man was intent on deluding himself more than others. Truth, the artist learned, has many facets, and life is seldom truly glorious- observations that undergird all his work."

I have multiple feelings on this quote. First of all, I love the very correct observation about life and glory. That is beautiful. Second, I'm a little turned off about how the grandfather is talked about.... I mean even if its the truth - it is as if 'the old man' is stripped naked by his grandson.

Barry X Ball - Portraits

I'm interested in the slickness and texture of Barry X Ball's work and how that works with his human subject matter.

Skewered Portraits: Obviously, the skewered heads are violent - human heads (multiple or single faces) float in the air, skewered and hanging from the ceiling. The drape of material off the back of the neck is representative of skin/flesh hanging? What does it add to have this extra flesh instead of just the head? Only aesthetics? The skewer draws some of what would be skin from the top of the head towards the ceiling like a moment frozen of the skewer moving upwards through the skull.

I am writing this and becoming disgusted....yet I look at his work (only digitally so far) and it is mesmerizing and gorgeous. It is slick -marble or rock- (his work uses rare materials with intensive technical labor). The color of the stone contains (naturally?- i think at least on some of them) textures and colors that make the sculpture less representative of human - they become more of an object. The skewered hanging heads are displayed in a bare white gallery space with dramatic lighting. This slickness of the environment - how does that affect these pieces? Maybe they are more clinical? Maybe they are more revered and god-like, mysterious? Maybe they are fetishized or their object-ness is more apparent?

So many questions! What happens to a human representation that becomes so much about texture and color? The human element leaves to some extent....there is an interesting line there...between a human being represented and erased into the sculptural material's qualities.

I need to find more out on the Baroque (?) romantic nature of his work. How does that speak in comparison to other human representation in art?

From the article "Romanticism and the Work of Barry X Ball" by Monroe Denton:

"Ball embraced the theatricality of a Roman Catholocism that was at odds with the Christian fundamentalism in which he had been raised....the extreme emotionalism of wonder, totally bypassed in the art of the time, was Barry Ball's element. " (He arrived on the nyc scene in the 1970s)

The top photos here are of Barry's sculpture of Matthew Barney made of onyx (the skewer is 24K gold). In speaking of Romanticism, Denton says:

"..Prometheus, Faust, Hamlet form the melancholy triumvirate. Barney is an interesting contemporary emobodiment (the theatricalized masochism - the stretched scrotum of Cremaster 1, the bloody mouth of Cremaster 3 would, one thinks, supply him with sufficient scares of his suffering".

That is interesting.... I never really thought of the masochism of Barney...although its obvious with his sport endurance tests too...

New research topic: Romanticism and Pain and Masochism
I wonder if its different for men and women.