Art Review: Mathew Barney's Fixations on Fabulists, Hermetics and Mysticism

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

Matthew Barney, KHU: Djed, 2011, Brush and ink, gold leaf, iron,
and lapis lazuli on black paper in polyethylene frame, 12 3/4 x 10 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches 

NEW YORK---The Morgan Library, with its Gospels, missals and reliquaries, is just the right place for “Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney,” the first survey of graphic work by the most medievalizing of American contemporary artists. Mr. Barney, who was born in 1967, first came to the art world’s attention with a New York solo show in 1991. He was just two years out of Yale, but as an undergraduate had already developed a version of the body-centered, performance-based work that would bring him fame. There’s a lot of work to see, none of it simple. Mr. Barney’s recurrent themes are death and resurrection, or transformation, and they’re the abiding subjects of his drawings. [link]

“Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney” runs through Sept. 2 at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street; (212) 685-0008, themorgan.org.