I planned on going to see the Björk show at MoMA this past weekend. I thought the intersection of Björk’s visual output and Icelandic Poet SJÓN‘s involvement would provide great fodder for a MobyLives Post. Hell, seeing that weird lesbian robot video on a big screen would be worth the price of admission alone.

But due to an avalanche of terrible reviews, warnings about long lines, and the recent acquisition of a PS4 at the Adly residence I stayed home.  But don’t fret I will still be writing about the Bjork show!  This article will be about the critical response to the show rather than a personal account.

From what I can piece together from critical descriptions and photos online, the show is kinda like if Madame Tussauds was owned by Mathew Barney and the only famous person ever was Björk. The show is filled with realistic life-size replicas of Björk wearing outfits from various stages of her carer. All the classics are included. Swan dress Björk, puffy orange hair Björk, sex puppet cyborg Björk and brooding Dancer in The Dark Björk.

Most of the thrashings begin with copious adulation of Björk’s musical and visual output. Jerry Saltz begins by saying “Don’t get me wrong: I love Björk and her fabulous amaranth persona, her videos, and her music.” And is typically followed by lamenting MoMa’s recent obsession with pandering cash grab exhibits. “MoMA [is] destroying its credibility … in its self-suicidal slide into a box-office-driven carnival … Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass vitrine, Queen Marina staring at smitten viewers in the atrium, the trashy Tim Burton show, last season’s gee-whiz Rain Room.” 

The next step in the trashing pertains to the insultingly tiny space allotted for the show. Most of your time at the exhibit is spent waiting on line in a cramped makeshift pavilion waiting to enter eight small cramped chambers. The small spaces combined with Björk‘s massive fan base seems like an obvious recipe for disaster. Roberta Smith of The New York Times thinks the mistake goes beyond mere incompetence and ventures into outright insult.

“Björk exhibition stands as a glaring symbol of the museum’s urge to be all things to all people, its disdain for its core audience, its frequent curatorial slackness and its indifference to the handling of crowds and the needs of its visitors. To force this show, even in its current underdone state, into the atrium’s juggernaut of art, people and poor design is little short of hostile.” 

I know pretty harsh right! Critics even had issue with the narration from everybody’s favorite Icelandic poet Sjón.  Most found his whimsical yapping to add insult to injury. Instead of providing a much needed narrative glue to the show, the audio “guide” served as a self indulgent bore-fest. A New York Times article adds that the “singsong children’s-book tale is ludicrously infantilizing and tedious. Its 40 minutes are more than twice the time needed to take in the material at hand.”

Esh. The trashing goes on and on. Artnet even composed a list of  “The 6 Best Takedowns of MoMA’s Appalling Björk Show”. I am happy I spent the weekend playing The Last of Us on PS4.  I didn’t have to leave my couch to roam around a disaster hell-scape.