Category: Reviews

Being a fan of the Romeo and Juliet score by Prokofiev, my perception of the rehearsal is biased. Though the interruptions during the music did take away from the flow of some songs, I found the event still extremely enjoyable. I have never heard the New York Philharmonic and I have never heard the score played by a live orchestra. So when I heard my favorite selection from the score, “Montagues and Capulets”, I feel in love with it all over again. The sound of all the musical pieces was so crisp and so nuanced that every piece they played, with or without the interruptions, sounded beautiful.I was surprised by the range of the age of the musicians. They ranged from young to old, yet all seemed to play at a very high level. The length of the rehearsal might be good enough for the musicians, but for the listener it can start to seem way too long and make the listener inclined to sleep through a portion of it. If you enjoy classical music though, or enjoy the sound of instruments beautifully collaborating together, then this will be worth the length. The songs played were truly music to my ears.

I think going to the performance would be much more rewarding. You listen to a polished concert with no interruptions; however for someone who has never listened to the philharmonic before, can enjoy the music with the interruptions and wants cheaper tickets, this might be a good performance to attend.

On November 5, 2009 I was exposed to an form of art that I am not typically fond of, have barely any experience in, and had no intention to follow/pursue. I attended Macaulay’s Meet the Artist #6: poetry readings. Beforehand, I want to establish that I do not intend to create a fixed idea of the poets, their fans, and those who attend, and that this is my opinion. With that said I can finally say that I found borderline distasteful. No, no, I found myself with angst to get out of there and drink my coffee and delicacies that were promised at the end of the session. I attended it with my girlfriend, and several mutual friends, and I can easily say that even she got nothing out of it. And she’s the English lover!

I love science, and history. I have always tended to shy away from English and the “exploration” of the language exactly because I hate when people ‘explore it’ exactly how I saw it ‘performed’ that evening. Don’t get me wrong, I have attended Poetry Slams and do enjoy the occasional Whitman and Tennyson; I am very open to such things because I do want to give it the chance, but the themes and language use that night befuddled me. I do not doubt the talent of these writers of fiction and poetry, but they were way too overrated Macaulay! The guests were Hermine Pinson, Natalie Diaz, Jamaal ‘Versiz’ May, and Khadijah Queen. Ms. Queens was a speaker and master of ceremonies for the occasion, and her poetry was among the many that truly stood out to me as awkward and not inspiring. Among all four of the speakers I found Mrs. Hermine Pinson’s work to be the most moving, natural, and effective. The others strived too hard to make their work be accepted by the audience. Mrs. Pinson was able to move many in the audience with her memorable poem dedicated to her mother who died in a fire when she was young, named ‘Song’. Her fluid voice and the incorporation of actually singing in the poem left me leaving there a bit happier knowing I listened to truly an admirable woman. Not surprisingly, she was the oldest of the four and did not need to ‘enforce’ her words. She was soft and fluid and the words themselves were able to affect the listeners.

The other three poets chose too sick and profound of topics to concentrate on in order to affect the listeners. They were more vocally trained to read their own poetry than have it read. I personally find this sad. I want to be able to know how to feel the intended emotions as I read it and not need for it to be read to me by the poet to understand. There technique was exactly that. They focused on topics that would inevitable ‘hit’ us in the face like in-depth details of war, rape, abuse, and/or a personal way to speak the poem, to make their effect on the audience. I do not attack any of their credentials and/or experience, but I did not enjoy it. It did take on a more modern aspect of poetry which fixes itself around ‘slams’ and rhythm in one’s voice, but even as a partial fan of that, I did not like it. It was the material that disheartened me. Mrs. Prine was definitely the savior at that meeting. If it were up to me, invite her back to the next one, not the others, or entirely change the event to something where REAL artists can come.

While I enjoyed the visit to the Punk Rock exhibit at the MoMa, it was not something I would go to again. The exhibit seemed out of place and chaotic, over-packed and confusing. As we have talked about it in class, the exhibit itself belongs not in the pristine white walls of MoMa, but rather in a grungy place that would give the exhibit a more appropriate atmosphere. Even though the exhibition space was orderly, the exhibit itself confused me. I felt bombarded with music, headphones, videos, photographs, newspapers, clippings, art and collages from all sides.  I could not focus on one piece alone. The music was a good, and essential part of the exhibit, because how can one display a certain musical movement without giving the visitor an idea of what the style sounded like? Also, some of the things displayed had too much detail or information in them, like the large collage or the newspaper clippings posted together. While they were interesting pieces, I either found myself looking at the collage as a whole and not reading into the details or getting lost in trying to read or look at every photo and article in the collage. The end result of the latter is that I ended up looking at only 1/10 of the piece, was no longer interested in reading anything else, and never saw the overall picture of the collage. Maybe the chaos and bombardment of various elements in the exhibit was meant to represent the music itself, but this was not my kind of exhibit. While it was informative, I prefer MoMa’s other exhibits to this one.

Last week was my first time visiting the Museum of Modern Art, and I came with a lot of expectations. Walking through the halls and seeing just a taste of what the museum had in its walls escalated my excitement to see our main attraction. And while the Punk Rock exhibit did give me a lot of information into a genre that I admittedly didn’t know much about, the curators made a poor mistake when designing the display.

The collage was a chaotic mixture of photographs, articles, and flyers of the musicians that brought the genre of punk rock from clubs of New York to the world stage. Unfortunately, this was all the chaos we were going to get out of the display. The rest of the exhibit was organized meticulously, from the perfect alignment of the album’s samples to the square shape of the music video stations. I felt like I couldn’t get into the music while encased within the pristine-ness. “Blank Generation” by Richard Hell and “Heart of Glass” by Blondie felt like they needed to be surrounded by color. I felt weird watching Dominatrix’s “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” in the bright lighting of the exhibit.

I felt that the designers could have put a little more effort into creating a vibe within the display that corresponded with the genre. It didn’t have to be anything drastic; dimmed lighting, obscured framing of the cases, colored light bulbs, or uneven placing of the music video stations would have achieved this without breaking their budget. I enjoyed everything that I saw and heard at the punk rock exhibit, but I wished that the curator’s didn’t try to conform the genre to be cohesive with the rest of the museum. It was misleading and the genre lost its authenticity.

Although we did negatively critique the efforts of the museum and its curators in the putting together of this exhibit, I see it from a different perspective. This was my first time to the MOMA. It was my first official exposure to any form of modern art. I have- until last week- managed to stay away from anything to do with that word, ‘Modern art’. It’s not that I hate or despise it, it’s just that I never wanted to be in a situation where I had to judge it. Its always been very subjective and comes down to taste. You either love it, or you hate it. Yet it is almost satirical that I am in a situation where I am writing a review on an ironic exhibition at the MOMA, the haven for Modern art enthusiasts..

In regards to the exhibition I was able to enjoy myself. It did provide contrast to the other floors and rooms I had to pass to get there. Despite the fact that many loathed the way the generation of Punk Rock-with its discord, and anti-establishment subculture- was presented, I did not. I actually had very little criticism towards the methods the curators took to present it. I understand that many believed that the order of the exhibition was totally opposite of what Punk Rock stood for, and that the presentation techniques were way off. The class discussed the polite and ‘dainty’ manner the curators took to organize the wall of magazine clippings, newspapers, and posters, as well as the short ‘cute’ recordings on Sony headphones and television. Many mentioned that the exhibition could not even be mildly compared to the loudness of the generation. The exhibition was looked at and seen as a shortcoming of the curators to present the dirty, nonconforming, noisy, and protesting scene of the 70s, but I hardly do. To me there was no lacking aspect of rebellion, or more space to fill, or a display that needed more of a ‘garage’ look.

The exhibition was small, but it did include artifacts from the period. It included many visuals and audio recordings that gave samples of what the era was like. There was a glass case of old newspapers, announcements, ticket stubs, and photographs that were authentic and not copies of them. There was authenticity to the publicity given to the New York City scene of Punk Rock. Overall, I like to think the exhibition could be summed up by the title of one famous Punk Rock Song, ” Live Fast Die Young”. The Exhibition was fast. It displayed everything in about two rooms, but it was a lot of information. What we first see is a wall covered in clippings from the era. This was the highlight of the exhibition for me. Although they were just pieces of what occurred, there was variety and history in the pictures. There was not a space of white wall on this wall, and this did create the loudness of the subculture for me. If one actually took the time and put yourself into the pictures, you could probably gain more from them.What the wall did was create a sense of busyness for the spectator. I did see people a lot of time looking at the wall, but no one saw the entire wall! There was too much going on. There were bands playing on the same nights at different locales, bands getting famous nationally, while others were rising in the streets of New York. Everything was happening at once on the wall. This was how the Punk Rocker lived. Life was fast and expected to be short.

Although some complain about how this exhibition didn’t capture the ideology of Punk Rock, we have to remember we are in a museum. There are some things that are impossible to recreate. Jazz is a another genre of music that exhibitions take on. Do we really think the lifestyle of the people living during  the time  of ragtime, swing, or bebop is captured in a museum exhibition? Jazz Clubs even try to recapture how the scene was, but can always come short of what it really was like. When we see an exhibition on the evolution of man, it’s extremely hard to portray exactly what the caveman ‘culture’ was like or stood for. The main goal was survival, do we leave such an exhibition nodding and saying to ourselves, “That exhibition made me understand that survival was the main focus of that era”? How do you display what these eras represented? With artifacts, possibly photographs, recreations, etc. This exhibition had all of that. If you really want to experience Punk Rock, don’t go to a museum and complain that it didn’t leave you feeling the Punk Rock atmosphere or weren’t ‘taken back’. If you want that ‘garage’ feel, find a garage band and go to their garage .

Our visit to the MoMA’s exhibit on punk rock was very interesting. The purpose of the exhibit was to inform viewers of the history of this anti-establishment genre of music. Punk rock originated as a way to rebel against the Vietnam War, which was raging on as this form of music began to take shape.

As you enter the exhibit, you are immediately drawn to the collage of newspaper and magazine clippings pasted along the wall. These pieces convey certain information about various punk rock bands that were popular in the time, such as Kiss and Aerosmith. After viewing this part of the exhibit, you make your way to an area where various music from the time is being played. Records are enclosed in cases along the wall, with other various memorabilia from the time being displayed. At the end of the exhibit, you are shown a video of a “game,” where two people move two stones at a time. This video was very odd because you do not know what the purpose of it actually is. However, it can be assumed that the sound of the rocks being put back on the ground is the music in the video.

The exhibit was quite short and the opposite of what punk rock stood for. Punk rock originated in garages, as a way to rebel against the “establishment.” However, MoMA has taken artifacts from punk rock and encased them in an “establishment.” The exhibit was clean and white, while punk rock stemmed from dirty old garages.  Regardless, the exhibit itself was very interesting as it explained the history of punk rock in New York City.

Punk rock is a genre of music that I never knew much about, and our visit to the MoMA definitely gave me some information. The exhibit successfully showed the roots of the movement, where it was most concentrated, and the key figures who participated in punk rock. Our class activity at the end helped bring all these aspects together and really helped me understand the origins and history of punk rock.

Although informative, the exhibit was not one I would have any desire to see again. It was small, a little bland, and just not at all what one would expect a punk exhibit to look like. For a movement whose focal point is anti-establishment, the exhibit appeared way too organized, not nearly loud enough, and empty. I do, however, understand that the movement has not developed into much of a “history” yet, and as time goes on, there will be more pieces added to the exhibit, and it will improve.  I did enjoy being able to listen to the music of the genre, and some of the pieces really were very interesting and evocative of punk, but overall, I think that the exhibit in its present state does not represent the punk rock movement well enough.

Herb and Dorothy Review

I entered the Macaulay Screening Room on October 20th somewhat skeptical about watching a documentary following the lives of two curators. However, I walked out of the room inspired. The portrayal of the sheer talent and determination of Herb and Dorothy was enough to cause anyone in the audience to feel as thought they could achieve anything if they just tried hard enough. The fact that the film had such a strong effect is due to the main characters themselves, Herb and Dorothy, and to the director of the film, Megumi Sesaki.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel are two people who started out with nothing but drive and appreciation for art. They learned about art as they went along, and through their kindness and sincerity, they were able to make connections throughout the whole art world and obtain a huge number of expensive pieces without spending much money. The friendships they made were strong, and helped bring them to fame, as well as some of their clients. They could have gained an enormous profit, but because they love what they did so much, they donated all of their work to galleries, so that other people could appreciate art as much as they did without having to pay. Their message truly came across, and meeting them in person really cemented the idea that if you do what you love, and are determined enough, you can accomplish anything.

Sesaki herself is an inspiration, as she began directing this film with very little money or knowledge of art. She worked hard to learn everything she needed to know, held many fundraisers, and made sure to connect herself to all the right people to get this movie made. All along the way, Sesaki’s love for the movie, and for art in general, grew. One can see the amount of effort necessary to create this documentary, through both having to obtain old footage and photographs and getting in touch with some of the Vogel’s old friends, and actually recreating scenes settings that were not available otherwise.

I am so pleased that I had a chance to attend this Meet the Artist event because not only did I learn a lot about modern art and curating, I also came away with a new appreciation for curators and for directors, and with a new outlook on life.