# Matthew Barney artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/matthew-barney/
Profile generated: 2026-05-14T19:06:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1967-03-25
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Contemporary art, Body art / Performance art
- Common media: Sculpture, Film and video, Photography, Drawing, Installation

## About Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney (born 1967, San Francisco) is an American contemporary artist whose practice spans sculpture, film, photography, drawing, and performance. He is best known for The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002), a five-part film series that interweaves biological, geological, and mythological narratives into an expansive meditation on creation and transformation. His long-running Drawing Restraint series, begun in 1987, uses self-imposed physical resistance as a generative principle for mark-making. Later projects — including Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), River of Fundament (2014), and Redoubt (2018) — continue his engagement with landscape, ritual, and the body as sites of artistic inquiry. Barney's work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and other major international institutions. Active primarily in New York since 1989, he remains a central figure in contemporary art discourse.

## Common works and media

Collectors most frequently encounter Barney's work in the form of gelatin silver and chromogenic photographs (often related to his film projects), cast-sculpture multiples in resin, plastic, and metal, drawings from the ongoing Drawing Restraint series, and editioned prints. Film installations — particularly elements from The Cremaster Cycle — do appear at auction but are less common and require specialized condition assessment. Sculptural objects combining petroleum jelly, tapioca, and other unconventional materials are also characteristic of his practice and warrant careful condition review.

## Market and appraisal context

Matthew Barney's auction presence includes sculpture, unique and editioned photographs, works on paper, prints, and film-related installations. Works associated with The Cremaster Cycle tend to attract the strongest collector interest at auction. Key factors in appraisal include medium, edition number and size, provenance documentation, exhibition history, and condition — especially for sculptural components and video installations requiring playback equipment. Barney's institutional holdings at MoMA, Tate, and the Guggenheim provide a strong provenance benchmark. Collectors should note that large-scale installations and film works appear infrequently on the secondary market, which can make comparable-sale pricing less straightforward than for prints or photographs.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine independent artist-identity research from museum, library-authority, and encyclopedia sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Matthew Barney, identity and biographical data are grounded in Getty ULAN, VIAF, the Library of Congress authority file, RKD, MoMA, and Tate records.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451185
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Barney
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500114761
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/251149066357165600713/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n94016441
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/7005
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/matthew-barney-2362
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/119376