Leonard Cohen

As many of you know, Leonard Cohen is a famous Montreal singer, poet and songwriter who past away on November 16, 2017. He has 14 albums under his belt, two books and about a half a dozen poetry collections, He was well known for is singing voice and a "dark" quality to his music. Being a Montreal native, the city mourned his death when it was announced. A mural was already planned to commemorate his life and work when he passed and so was an exhibit at the MAC, which made these events much more meaningful. The mural is quite well done and is located on Crescent street. It can be seen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Below is the unfinished mural I photographed earlier in the year during the Mural Festival of Montreal.

I went to the Leonard Cohen exhibit at the MAC Museum earlier today and here's my review. Please note this is my personal opinion, others will have a different view of the show. First with my critics:

1. Lack of material

There's been a long build up for this exhibit, it was nearly a year waiting for this exhibit to debut, so you can imagine, like many, was happy when the MAC finally opened its doors for this show. Well, I was quite a bit disappointed, although I am not a fan of the artist myself, I couldn't wait to see what was presented. I found myself wanting more from the exhibit, not as far as quality is concerned, but rather in quantity. There was a total of approximately 15 exhibits, most of which were audio presentations. I was expecting there to be closer to 100 so I felt it was lacking. It would have also been an opportunity to add material to the audio presentations: Explaining the history of the song being plaid, photos of Cohen on tour, his life and times, etc.

1. Small spaces and almost labyrinth like lead ups to the next exhibit

Although I understand that the MAC museum isn't exactly the largest museum in the world, it doesn't even have that title in the city, so they have to make do with what they have: The way the space was divided made the little spaces that were left feel cramped and I dare say, claustrophobic. And this is coming from a small girl that doesn't need a lot of space to begin with. I don't know how taller and/or bigger individuals will manage. To add to this problem, it often got a bit confusing as to where to go next! Although they did have a map of the layout of the exhibit, it was at the entrance of the exhibit, who wants to go back to find out where to go next?! Plus there was no handout map, so you either had to take a photo of the map from the get go and go back to it whenever necessary, or you just had to hope you were going in the right direction and didn't miss seeing anything...

1. Signage

Being able to quickly and easily identify what you're looking at or listening to is helpful in so many ways. Often the signage was a bit out of place or hard to see due to lack of lighting. This is particularly important for photographers such as I who try to identify and describe what we're photographing.

The good things:

1. Heavy emphasises on the audio

Cohen's main medium was his voice, not having a lot of audio would have been a dishonour. So I'm glad they at least had the intelligence to have his music being played, people interpreting his music, interviews and the like. It was a decent mix of things just playing out loud, others where you had to put head phones on to listen to, others that were a part of an entire presentation.

1. The selection of what was presented

Although they did select some of the most well known Cohen works, it also happened to be his better quality work. Cohen is one of the few artists that quality and popularity go together. His best work is what made him famous because it was his best work, it is quality entertainment.

1. Made me interested in Cohen

Although I am not a Cohen fan, the overall presentation did make me more interested in him, and I believe that's the point of an artistic presentation. Yes, you should have already some interest in the subject matter, but if an exhibit is truly successful, you'll leave wanting more in some way, shape or form.

Here are some of the photos I took at the exhibit:

Intro photo to the exhibit

Various songs including Feist, Moby and Lou Doillon

Performance by various artist