Matthew Barney
The Cloud Club, 2002
Mason and Hamlin Symetrigrand piano with stainless steel, metals, wood, shell, plastic, potatoes, and concrete
57 x 108 x 84 in. (144.78 cm x 2 m 74.321 cm x 2 m 13.36 cm)
Contemporary Art Fund: Gift of Naomi Aberly and Laurence Lebowitz, Arlene and John Dayton, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon E. Faulconer, Mr. and Mrs. Bryant M. Hanley, Jr., Marguerite and Robert K. Hoffman, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Evelyn P. and Edward W. Rose, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and two anonymous donors; DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund; and Roberta Coke Camp Fund, 2003.24.1.a–d
© 2002 Matthew Barney, courtesy Barbara Gladstone

Resembling in large part a nightclub piano at the top of the Chrysler building in its art deco styling, The Cloud Club also contains within a host of references to art and histories past, recent, and present. Their inclusion represents Barney's efforts to forge his own aesthetic identity as a young artist coming to maturity in the late 1980s. The two clearest references seen in the work are to German artist Joseph Beuys's piano and to American artist Richard Serra's steel slab, two concepts Barney has fused by pitting the curves of a real piano against the rigidity of a tilted rectangle. Both artists can be seen as representing the two major poles of postwar Western sculpture: Beuys is the European shaman of metaphysical depths, Serra the American literalist of formal declaration and power.

However, there is much more to see and imagine in The Cloud Club than the anxiety of influence. Imagine being seated on the piano's stool: one sees ahead only an empty field with no hint at what lies behind this blank slate (whose color and texture are references to Barney's own use of synthetic gels such as Vaseline in his own work). The diminutive stool prompts a reenactment of the childhood ritual of the recital, of performing for the world for the first time, yet the seemingly implacable barrier of inexperience prevents striking the keys necessary to show one's talent. When the viewer walks around the blank slate, the weirdness and wonder of the world are suggested in any number of ways: the globs of mortar covering the harp in the piano's interior, effectively silencing the harp's music; the piano cover with its beautifully stylized and arcane symbols made of precious and rare materials; the Masonic architectural objects resting on that same cover; the metronomic silver plumb line instrument suspended in air; the strange mound of earthy potatoes spanning both sides of the blank divide—all these have been arranged by Barney in a battle between what seems a hard-won poise and incipient collapse.

Alongside the Beuys/Serra references and the evocation of the childhood recital ritual, the idea of Ireland as a source of Barney's artistic identity makes itself felt in The Cloud Club. In the interior of the piano lies the harp, a powerful symbol of Ireland that appears on the country's alternate flag that was passed over in favor of the green, white, and orange tricolor pattern of the official flag of the Republic of Ireland. Installed on the ground is a mound of potatoes, perhaps used here as a symbol of Ireland's tragic past in the famine of the late 1840s, which drove countless Irish to the United States, and hence as a symbol of Barney's own identity. The potato is also the pride of Idaho, the place from which Barney hails, further adding an autobiographical cast to what at first must seem unrelated if not downright bizarre objects and materials. Even if one were unaware of Barney's biography, however, one could still sense the potatoes represent life, food, and earth, the organic terrain in which people, culture, and art take root and germinate. Alternately, these potatoes can be seen as arising from a dark place, the cellar perhaps, and may be considered as symbols of incipient decay and the sheer plainness and banality of the natural world, which includes, of course, the artist himself and us, his audience.

The Cloud Club is a work of complexity, beauty, mystery, and toughness that represents the artist at the height of his aesthetic powers as a sculptor.