Jack White's debut art exhibition is underway, and not without drama. White brought an exhibition called These Thoughts May Disappear to Damien Hirst's Newport Street Gallery in London on Friday after a Thursday night opening event. Its running until Sept. 13, and admission is free.
White famously worked as an upholsterer in Detroit before becoming a rock star, and his art show includes "sculptures made with found objects including interactive works, installations, and furniture design products," presented in a lot of primary colors. This man has always loved primary colors.
The show has sparked some discourse in the art world, including general skepticism and dismissiveness online. Instagram art commentator Jeff Magid shared a video explaining that White's art show has received extensive coverage while many artists, established and up-and-coming alike, struggle to gain any attention for their work. Per Magid, within the art community and other creative fields, there is a general resentment toward the idea that you need to be a celebrity to get press. He points out similar tendencies on Broadway and in the world of literature, even dating back to the time of Jack Kerouac.
Seema Rao, a former museum professional who publishes art criticism online under the name Art Lust, published an overwhelmingly negative review of White's installation on Instagram last week. "This isn't art," she begins. "No, it is art. Even this, which is awful, is art." Rao continues:
I do love a rust belt band. I wanted to like him. But heavens to Betsy, there was not a single original idea in all of this. And then, to decide to partner with Damien Hirst, the hero of the unoriginal idea and the stupidity of the art world? Like, what? The installation used yellow because everything was so poorly done they had to pull it together somehow. I try to find something even in the worst of art. Here all I see is recycled ideas.
Later in her video, Rao remarks, "The art world consistently validating this kind of stuff, vanity art, just supports people's belief that crap is seen as good art."
Not long after Rao's video went up, she published a Substack post titled "I got doxxed, harassed by Jack White Stans, and It's a Sign of We're in the Dark Ages." The post is extremely long and philosophical. Before we get to the account of her interactions with Jack White fans, there's a whole other section about how a curator corrected the spelling in one of the auto-generated captions in her video, then doxxed her and accused her of cyberbullying when she pushed back. Eventually, after many paragraphs about power dynamics in the art world and her feud with this curator, she writes about her interactions with White's stans:
Jack White learned upholsery before he made it big, and his stans would like us all know this is why his art is amazing. I’d made the mistake to make an 90 second video complaining about his art. One commenter needed my credentials because if I was just an influencer my opinion didn’t matter. Another person informed me art is subjective. Still a third stan said anyone has the right to make art. Yet another decided critique was equivalent to hate. All in all, none of them did anything but undermind [sic] White’s art.
A couple paragraphs later, there's this:
Their comments highlight how our online ecosystem deifying celebrities or special individuals. In a sense, pop culture has its own type of credentialling, not unlike academia. (Indeed, the parasocial nature of the online system means curators will necessarily lose against online personalities just by virtue of reach.) In 1922, Max Weber already saw the power of charisma to enveigle people into blind appreciation. He wrote, “devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him.” One’s aura often keeps people from judging actions. Chris Rojek in Celebrity (2001) sees these types of relationships as parareligious, and so celebrities clout transfers from one field to another. (If only curators could have such clout.) Someone who is good in music therefore is given a pass in other fields. Their sancity also make their products above discursive action. No opinion but the valid one is allowed by stans.
At least one Jack White fan on Reddit agreed with the critiques of his art in a comprehensive post about the exhibit, describing it as low-effort work that would not pass fifth-grade art class. White, meanwhile, told the AP it's a "curse" to be known for one creative discipline when you want to explore others:
Whatever you're known for first in the mainstream is kind of a curse in a way because everyone wants you to just do that for the rest of your life. So this is one of those things where I hesitated for decades to share this in an exhibition, but now I guess I just finally relented and did it.
Below, check out footage of White walking Artnet through his exhibition, as well as photos and behind-the-scenes video.
