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None can make a phone call as a well-known artist. When he was invited to customize rock star Jack White’s amplifiers, Ai Weiwei wrote the F word in large and colorful buttons on the front. It’s sarcastic, sarcastic, and surprisingly free-spirited, reminding you of the fierce, carefree but creative spirit that this exhibition of White’s art is missing.
White was big in the 00s as one half of the White Stripes duo, with Meg White, and her solo career is still going strong. Apparently the art world wants to be his friend. The exhibition is taking place at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery and his superb hardback collection includes an interview with him and uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Hirst redesigned the amp and – guess what? – an example of a cow with a rotting head. In addition, he collaborated with White on Hirst’s stringed works: a floating ping-pong ball and a circular painting.
You can see why these lights would want to mate with White. The bluesy sound of the White Stripes remains unsung even after Donald Trump takes over Seven Nation Army about his meetings. This was the rock of art. They named the album De Stijl, and the Dutch modernist movement is unavoidable here as White repeats reds, blues and yellows and transforms Mondrian’s grid into furniture.
However, art rock is not art. In a live performance or on vinyl (White’s favorite way), words and words, gestures and words, create an atmosphere that can be rare and fragile in their loving power, even if the words are forbidden or meaningless. But as an artist, White is without beginnings.
The show begins with a series of works that pay tribute, I think, to the deep American music that White loves – he’s a country and blues lover, he respects Son House and lives in Nashville. So he’s found an early 20th century painting of a ukulele player that speaks volumes about American music history and he’s created an experiment for this guy he calls Ukulele Joe. But instead of paying poetic homage to lost highways and forgotten troubadours, these beautiful scenes are merely decorative japes.
And this is odd, because White’s obsession with the sounds of what the critic Greil Marcus called “Old, Weird America” seems real: he once. paid $300,000 to produce Elvis Presley’s first single and The White Stripes covered Robert Johnson’s songs. This would have been an impressive exhibition, what a wonder it would have tried to open the legacy. Instead, White prefers bold, bright colors and a sense of humor that doesn’t allow for light, or darkness.
When he thinks he’s original, he repeats the idea of a well-dressed artist. You will find a tree painted pink, on an artificial lawn, with chairs to look at. Wise, Jack, profoundly wise, I hear Hirst fawn, who would think to put a price on an art gallery? Well, Anselm Kiefer and Giuseppe Penone for starters. And they wouldn’t paint it such a dumb color.
White’s confused and arrogant idea of what modern art is – ready! Installation! – is at the intellectual level of a 12-year-old who has just visited the Tate Modern for the first time. The closest he comes to delving into the true magic of American art is a series of projects in which he arranges wooden pallets used to transport commercial goods and hang them upright. There are echoes here, though dark and distant, of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Maybe this is good. Maybe not. It’s hard to manage.
Then comes his first design of De Stijl sofas – he was trained as an upholsterer – and the terrible plastic panels that seem to exist to fill the walls. Newport Street is a generous, well-stocked space, but White doesn’t have enough imagination to fill it. There are electronic drums, keyboards and a Moog Theremini to play through custom amplifiers. This can be loud enough to make the show seem entertaining, but only if you ignore the lack of passion or purpose.
The biggest surprise is not White but Hirst. They created a great free space but they ruin it with a show like this. He keeps telling musicians that they are artists – he confirmed it Ed Sheeran is the new Pollock and now they have given White the perfect stage to die skillfully. Surely Hirst can still remember what true art is, because when he was young he created it as loud and electronic as it gets. It’s hard to believe that a Leeds boy once put a real, not fake, rotting cow’s head in a fly-infested vitrine and called it art. Now that it was rock’n’roll.
