u/EquivalentElixir

While tastes vary on style and substance, one thing that unites almost the entire the art world is an unspoken agreement that very low-effort art is undeserving of the public's time and consideration. Unfortunately that makes a up a large part of the Heni Jack White art show. Replica after replica of 3D-printed statues, some left wholely unpainted, others dipped entirely in one color of paint, top to bottom, most half-painted with a single color drowning the entire head, the bodies left raw and unfinished, fresh off the printer. The kind of work that wouldn't pass a 5th grade art class. You'd have to stay in from recess until you put in some more effort, applied a skill you'd learned in class.

Another major component of the show is industrial pallets. One of the cheapest, most widely available products one could conceive of, which wouldn't have mattered if he had done something interesting or unique with them. Instead most are shoddily painted, many looking unfinished, others badly spray painted in clashing colors. It's low-effort on top of low effort: "I'll get the cheapest materials known to man and paint them in the quickest, most haphazard manner". The pallets and clone statues give the impression Jack was going for volume above quality. Maybe he was pressured to fill more rooms than he was able to with quality works, maybe he wanted to impress with sheer volume, for people to use words like "prolific".

At first glance a larger and unique statue of a woman looks like something that might be a nice peice that some effort was put in to (her hair and clothes are both painted, and different colors! Only her skin is left unfinished), but on closer inspection there's blue overspray on her chest and shoulder, visible from 10 feet away, that the artist never bothered to clean up. It's listed for sale for thousands of dollars.

Then there are the heavily-edited digital photos blown up to be larger than the average spectator. Like the statues and pallettes the photos are random, with no uniting theme or underlying message. A doll on a couch. A floating leg on a sofa. A closeup of block of wood with a hole drilled in the center. The exterior of movie theater. The randomness feels even more senseless given how strongly Jack critized digital photography for most of his career.

"What's he trying to say here?", you wonder, but there is no message. It's just some photos he thought looked cool and, being a wealthy celebrity with a connection to the world's most random, purpose-less artist (Hirst), he was given the opportunity to show them off. This is the kind of exposure non-rich and famous artists work their whole lives for. The celebrity art show isn't a problem that began with Jack, but his low-effort collection is especially egregious, which is why it's understandably ruffling so many feathers in the nepo-weary art world.

Aside from the excessive repetition of pallets and statues, there's a series of near-identical paintings called "eclipse". Each piece is a monochrome canvas with a darkened circle in the middle. They too are spray painted, each one named after the only color used on each particular canvas. "Red Eclipse", "Blue Eclipse" etc. Even the names lack creativity.

The low point of the show is a black and red slice-of-pie wooden block, poured over with white paint to look like icing, with a dozen long nails haphazardly sticking out of the top (it resembles the kind of yard waste you might step on in the overgrown, neglected yard of a condemned house and need to get a tetanus shot for). Several holes are drilled in to the sides, with a limp turtle head falling out of one, the way a turtle's head droops out of its shell when it dies.

The only caveat I see to the backlash being deserved is there are a few interesting pieces, maybe with real artist value, buried beneath the slop. Ukelele Joe Fordite Model, the chrome charlatan and pallet, Sunflowers, Ohio, some of the amplifiers he decorated, an abstract painting called Yellow Panda. These pieces exhibit artistic merits like balance, harmony, and visual interest. A little effort was put into these. But they're drowned out by all the filler.

I'm reminded of something Jack said a long time ago - that if you want a photo album to be good, you have to throw away the bad photos. He remarked how this was shocking for many people to conceive of doing, but it was essential, because no matter how good some photos in the album may be, they'll be dragged down by the worst ones. For Jack's art show it seems he added a lot of hastily made, bad pieces, when culling his collection to showcase the good was really what was needed.