Having left pre-med for art at Yale, Matthew Barney recalls he quickly found the process of making things "more interesting to me than the things I was eventually making."

Subsequently, his career in the plastic arts -- and film as well (the "Cremaster" cycle) -- has largely been about the textures, materials and processes through which the artist channels an impulse.

Even so, how does one approach "Matthew Barney: No Restraint," which, as a look at the artist and his work, is a film about the making of art -- and is itself the making of art? It's to the credit of director Alison Chernick, whose film is wonderfully uncluttered by visual stylistics or dogma, that the ultimate sense we get is of a telescoping in, rather than out, of Barney's vision, intention and execution.

As with Barney's "Cremaster" cycle, "No Restraint" is not about conventional story, but it is about story -- as Barney points out, while filling with petroleum jelly the huge molds that later will serve as whale blubber. The links are prehistoric: Whales connect us to Earth's dinosaur past, as does petroleum; whales also were once a source of fuel oil. What he seems to be aiming for is a visceral re-experiencing of primal connections, while at the same time locating aesthetic joy in the most grotesque atrocities.

There's a bit of the worshipful in Chernick's treatment of the artist, not in the text so much as the way her camera eyeballs him. But Barney is a charismatic figure, whose looks (he once worked as a model) and modest manner create an appealing screen presence.

Anyone who is willing to assemble the resources that Barney has to create such personal work -- including Japanese whaling ships and Japanese crews -- has an ego, of course. The work is ego-driven -- what art isn't? But we don't hold it against him. His face? His money? His wife (the singer Björk, a sometimes-collaborator)? Those are another story. But in her restraint, Chernick makes us admire an artist with none.