An Eye Within Club 57
Frank Holliday’s piece, “The Lingerie Family” intrigued me the most from the MoMA exhibition, Club 57. Holliday created a painting that displays multimedia with both acrylic paint and a video of an eye that was commissioned by a filmmaker, Eric Marciano. At a quick glance, I did not realize that the eye behind the middle person was real but simply thought it was an empty white space. However, as I approached the painting, I realized that the eye moved and blinked showing a real person’s eye. The painting included the eye movements of a live performer, which was Holliday’s eye. The painting also had very bright colors of the three people in the front which contrasted the dark background with different faces behind them. Two of the people within the painting seemed to be customers to the club and the woman to the side seemed to work there. The faces in the background also looked like they represented the audience at the club especially the ones that were near the woman. An interesting detail is the hand that seemed to be holding the turnstile of a wind-up toy which seems to be what the man in the middle represents. However, it can also symbolize Holliday’s opinion on Club 57 as the eye of the man is his eye and it continues to blink and watch the viewer. It was also interesting to see different mediums working together and how it portrayed the overall message of Club 57. The painting also evoked the environment of the club and showed how interactive it was. Holliday’s work also serves as experimenting with new modes of presenting paintings and film by combining the two together to show vibe of the nightclub.
Club Insanity
This picture challenged my ability to judge the message of the exhibit. My biggest issue was understanding whether this image was supposed to portray an emotion or a theme. At the first glance, I thought the image was supposed to represent the craziness associated with the club. That the face was the aftermath of exposure to alcohol and drugs. The facial expression of the person leads me believe that the person is either suffering or feeling a great deal of anxiety. The way his teeth are clenched and the way his eyes stare leads to believe that this person is not aware where he is. The way his hair looks leads me to believe that it is the a representation of what is going on in the persons mind. The long bright strands of hair could indicate that the person is experiencing a multitude of strong emotions. These emotions hinder his ability to focus and comprehend what is going on around him. I felt like this picture perfectly fit into the museum because it represented the craziness in clubs, theatres, and perfomances. There is so much anxiety when auditioning for a play. There is also a lot action and social interaction at the clubs. Additionally, clubs can also secretly deal in drugs. Finally, perfomances involve a lot of emotions. One character responds to another and vice versa. Essentially, I believe this picture is a prime example of insanity, how having fun and expressing yourself can sometimes lead to your own destruction. What challenges me the most about this picture is the background. The contrast between the dark blue and the light blue could mean the lack of perception of time. It could also mean the cycles of thoughts that run through the person’s head: going from calmness to anxiety. Nevertheless, this is a picture that has the title of “taboo”. Perhaps it was a representation of what sin looks like.
MoMA’s Club 57 Exhibit
Of MoMA’s Club 59 exhibit the most intriguing installation was Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Closet. This exhibit was so unique and I can safely say that my senses have been sufficiently overrun with the details. Everything from the different shapes, objects, colors, and lighting harmonized together to create a very different bold art. The art had no real boundary, was very abstract in the sense that the room became a conglomeration of random objects to create something psychedelic. The neon paint and the overall fluorescence is something that you might imagine to see if you are hallucinating. It is such a change and not at what I expected which meant I naturally was surprised at this choice of form and took time to digest everything that I was looking at. This is appropriate for the theme of the exhibit Club 57. This exhibit is fitting for the nightclub scene associated with the theme. You can almost imagine all the different people at the club and how they all look and represent different things and they all assume different roles. This shows how important the social aspect of art is in New York City. Just like the nightclub was a place for people, who might not necessarily have similarities, to come together and support one another; art has a similar role as art evokes a sense of community and identity. The cosmic closet, true to its name, catches the essence of Club 57 and how it was meant to create a secluded and isolated place for something novel and exciting.
57 Drawings
(I want to write about the Cosmic Closet but I’m pretty sure almost everyone is going to write about that one, so I’ll choose 57 Drawings instead. Here’s a picture of the Cosmic Closet anyway though.)
As a venue for music and film, Club 57 is a place which supported the amalgamation of culture, art, performance, and movies. Identity was a big motif of the club, as is exemplified by the piece “57 Drawings”. The caricatures show many different people of different identities, as well as how they capture the nature of socializing among Club 57’s members. Each person’s poses and clothes offer clues to their own identity, personality, and duties hey performed at the club. It’s easy to see how different people in these pictures were invested in performance, video, photography, fashion, modelling, cruising, and drug dealing. Some people look like pirates and vampires, and others wear outlandish clothing as a representation of fashion. Some people are seen socializing, and others lament in their isolation. Some people are drawing pictures or writing, and others are watching movies (which can relate to the movies shown in the exhibit, which were some put on in Club 57 originally). These pieces fit in well into the exhibit because they show how so many different people with so many identities and interests can still have one common goal and support each other within the club. Personally, I really like how some of the pictures use negative space to create a feeling of isolation and “a bubble” of people in their own world, because that’s something that Club 57 was really all about.
Club 57
I was extremely fascinated, and actually mesmerized, by Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Closet installation at MoMA’s Club 57 exhibit. It is a psychedelic experience, overwhelming with bright colors, fluorescent lighting, and unfamiliar shapes. I appreciate this piece of art as a unstructured, flamboyant response to the austere art forms he grew up being taught to pursue. It is certainly unexpected and carries a physiological response that requires viewers to take a step back and adjust to their new environment. It is also contrasting to more traditional art forms because it makes ordinary objects, even ones that may be dysfunctioning, art. There is perhaps no setting better to create this experience than a nightclub. Although Scharf promotes this as art, Cosmic Closet undoubtedly takes roots in the nightclub scene. This fit into the greater scheme of the exhibit because it exemplifies the social nature of art in New York City. In a sense, Scharf is saying that art is a way for people to get together and enjoy. I respect that MoMA chose to capture a typically underrated and lesser-known scene of NY history, and am especially glad they included this particular piece.
Club 57
One of the pieces that intrigued me (and probably many other people) in the Club 57 exhibit was the Cosmic Closet. It was a secluded room in the exhibit with two black curtain entrances and inside was a large collection of random things. Some things I took notice of were posters, toys hanging from the ceiling, and a few pieces of furniture. I can clearly recall a headless doll hanging in front of me. Everything was covered haphazardly in bright neon paint and there was some artificial light in the room to make the paint glow a bit. Even parts of the floor were neon, while others were mirrors. It was a very bright and surreal room, especially because other than the paint, nothing seems to connect the objects in the room to one overarching theme.
A big theme in Club 57 was the combination of different and alternative art forms to represent the scene change happening underground – literally. Below a Polish Church on 57th Street, people came there to experience new forms of expression and new ideas. The Cosmic Closet is an example of this because it combines random objects, light, and bright neon paint to make a very bright, surreal, and psychedelic form of sculpture. The objects with no correlation except the bright neon paint seems to represent the different kinds of people that would attend this club. They all have colorful personalities and open minds to new ideas, different ones from the “norm” above ground. The sculpture represents the purpose and the fun of the club and is itself a place where people can experience something new and exciting. The bright lights, or new ideas, give another dimension to the room, make the paint glow, and is what made Club 57 so intriguing to those who were looking for an exciting and different group of people.
Respond to one piece of art included in Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983 that most intrigued or challenged you. How did this work fit into the exhibition overall?
M. Butterfly
The production of M. Butterfly was unlike anything I’ve seen before. It most likely seemed so out of the ordinary since a few days before we had seen a classical opera in which the whole thing was sung in Italian. The sudden transition from an opera that made me want to sleep to a Broadway show that had me laughing constantly made M. Butterfly seem that much more interesting.
One aspect of the production that intrigued me was the set design. In the beginning of the show I was wondering how they would be able to create a variety of different settings with those gray panels but the changes surprised me. It was similar to the set design in Madame Butterfly in which they also had those sliding panels. The difference was the wallpaper and patterns shown, which made it very clear that they were in different locations. I wondered how much practice it took to bring out the right panel each time and how many of them there were backstage.
Another thing that I enjoyed was the acting – when Rene would break the fourth wall, it made me feel like I was a part of the piece and drew me in more. For example, when Rene and Song argued over whether or not to show the audience a particular moment, I felt like I was actually there watching someone telling a story instead of watching a show. While we were watching, I kept wondering how the actors felt when they were nude in front of an audience for the first time. Overall, the show was very intriguing and it pulled me in so much that I didn’t even realize that hours had passed when we left.
M. Butterfly- Acting and Set Design
M. Butterfly was one of the most unique plays I’ve seen. Not only did the acting completely break the 4th wall, but the set design was so mobil and fluid which I believed allowed for such fluidity in the acting. The show starts as a story told in the perspective of Rene Gallimard but as the story grows more complicated and intricate we begin to get glimpses of Song Liling’s perspective and see what he had to go through while Gallimard was going through his own problems. This style of acting is so interesting to me because it makes me feel as if I am the person he is talking to; everybody in the audience feels interconnected with the story as if they are the only ones in the room. The ending shows an interaction between Gallimard and Butterfly and what I like about this interaction is that you don’t know if it is the story or if its out of context and a moment they share away from the story as the ending becomes a mix of storytelling and actual story. My favorite moment was when Gallimard says to Song Liling that the story is over and we actually see the set designers get on stage and begin stripping the set design. It was such a raw moment where we got the chance to see Gallimard’s emotions without anything else to focus on.
Set Design allowed the piece to move as smoothly as it did. There were scene changes that took place during Gallimard’s monologues to the audience and it just worked. I feel this is one of the many aspects of the play that made it so unique from the rest. It allowed for scenes to occur at the same time, for our own interpretation of some scenes, and for the actors to participate in the set design as we saw when the soldiers were spinning the huge “walls” that represented the pride in the revolution. All in all, I feel that this play was created beautifully and really allowed for the story to come to life in our own eyes.
M. Butterfly Production
In the production of M Butterfly, there were numerous aspects of the play that caught my attention but two of the biggest ones were the ideas of nudity and setting. Nudity is a concept that’s been seen and taught as being taboo and sensitive, and perhaps which is why it caught my attention. M Butterfly takes what’s meant to be censored and shows it in a very real and normal light. The actors aren’t only brave but comfortable with showing their bodies, and it’s especially important in the context of the play where an authentic story is being told. It gains the audience’s trusts because nothing is hidden. Additionally, it reinforces this idea of irony in expecting the norm. Additionally, since gender was one of the biggest themes in the play, I felt the showcase of the body of very important to the play and I noticed this pattern that very gender-specific nudity was shown. Also, it was interesting to see how the French Diplomat loved the singer when he had clothes on but didn’t when he was naked even though, “the skin is the same.” The setting was also really interesting. They utilized a series of boards that acted as a blockade from the rest of the stage. They brought focus into a certain aspect or part of the scene and this was excellently complimented with the lighting. This was also the first time I saw the setting set right in the moment right in front of me once again keeping nothing hidden from the audience. I found the setting to be very balanced, it did add to the scene and it gave it much context but it wasn’t too distracting from what was going on stage. Additionally, the use of the boards was effectively used in the first and last scenes because it successfully represented confinement, which does feel like walls caving in.
