A Crack in Everything
Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, the legendary musician and artist, passed away just short of three years ago. However, Cohen has served as an influential source of inspiration for dozens of artists, musicians, and all sorts of creative individuals. In a soon to close show at the Jewish Museum in New York called Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, the iconic artist is examined by other artists and their interpretations of his cosmology.
Leonard Cohen undoubtedly was (and still is) a major figure of popular culture, but also one of immense and unusual poetry and soulfulness. This provides many artists with plenty of fodder to rework, reframe, and examine Cohen. Jon Rafman, for example, uses references to Cohen’s music and pairs them with dreamy digital scenes in his video Legendary Reality. While never relying too heavily on Cohen, Rafman extracts the musician’s emotionality and creates something awesome and foreign.
Another artist who takes on Cohen’s work, perhaps more literally, is Candice Breitz. In 2017, the artist created a video called I’m Your Man (A Portrait of Leonard Cohen.) where she filmed men of a certain age singing that famous Cohen song. It was a song that came to be a career rejuvenation for Cohen, but in this video, it feels bittersweet. It is emotional and earnest, but melancholic, too. When considering these men and Cohen himself, the realities of human experience and mortality can envelop a viewer in powerful ways.
Exhibitions on celebrities or untraditional artists or creatives have become commonplace lately. David Bowie, Alexander McQueen, and many more could be placed on that list, but A Crack in Everything uses a less direct approach than most of these shows. Instead of unearthing clothing, ephemera, writings, or whatever else Cohen may have possessed, personal context is not key. This is Cohen’s world refracted by the relationships today’s artists have to this man.
All works commissioned and/or produced by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
