Eric White

I find myself in a difficult position.

Last night I went to see Eric White's show LP at Sloan Fine Art (until October 10, 2009). I can't be neutral about Eric: I own lithographs of two of his paintings. I bought them years and years ago, before I started writing about art, back when I had a real job. Since then I've followed Eric, not too closely, but I've met him a couple of times and I've gone to his openings in New York.

That's not what's difficult. The difficulty is this: I'm not thrilled with his latest work.

The show up at Sloan is a series of pastiches, or satires, spoofs, or riffs on various famous record album covers. So Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles becomes the Bagels' Greatest Pubic Tatts, Black Sabbath morphs into Stack Cabbage, and so on. At twelve inches square each one is slightly smaller than an old-fashioned LP sleeve (the records themselves are twelve inches, the sleeves are over a quarter-inch larger).

I'm a big fan of pastiches like this. I've even committed a number of them. A goof like modifying the cover of Who's Next to read Who texted and showing Pete Townshend and the rest checking out their mobile phones? Very funny. The kind of thing I might have spent several hours doing in Photoshop. And I love album covers. As an old airbrush artist I've even copied a few. I once did a lovely version of Billy Joel's Glass Houses on a t-shirt for my mother.

But as fine art I don't think it's such a good idea. It's too shallow. It hardly seems worth the effort. It doesn't strike me as something that can last much past its immediate context. I happen to be smack in the middle of the perfect generation to appreciate album sleeves and to recognize almost all of the sources for these paintings, but that's a pretty narrow window. And even I don't get all the references (although I own an embarrassing number of these recordings).

That said, in terms of pure painting, Eric's better than ever. His mastery of putting paint on a surface continues to improve. Most artists tackling a series like this would attempt to mimic the smooth surfaces of the printed source. Eric's not content to do so, however; instead he'd rather use the originals as a foundation for showcasing his own inimitable touch. This brings to life what could be a dead exercise. You can't see it at all in the JPEG here, but the background colors of his version of the Bad Brains album are all swirled around in a wonderful kind of wormy paint stroke. The faces of the Knack erupt in thickly textured impasto and Elton John's entire photo becomes an Impressionist surface. And from the obsessive-compulsive department: On some of the panels, Eric's even painted and lettered the edges to match the record sleeves.

I asked Eric briefly what he was doing with this series. We couldn't talk too much because the opening was very crowded and I think he was a few beers into the evening, but he did tell me the inspiration for the Elton John pastiche came to him in a dream; he just had so much fun with it he took it from there. I made him promise to write back to me so we could discuss it in more detail, so maybe I'll be able to follow up on this in the future.

I've seen a lot of this sort of appropriation, pastiche, satire kind of thing -- whatever it is -- in the art world over the years. I've seen rethinkings of Old Masters and I've seen comic book covers done in needlepoint. Of them all I'd have to say Eric White's work is some of the best. I'm just not sure it's something anyone should try to be the best at.

I feel really bad about this. It's Eric White. I want to love everything he does. I want him to be my friend. I don't want to upset him. I don't want him to think I'm a jerk or to be mad at me the next time he sees me. But at the same time, I feel I have to be honest. I want to encourage him to be the best artist he can possibly be, and I don't really think this show is it.

It's worth noting that clearly plenty of others disagree with my assessment: Checking the price list I saw that five or six of the paintings have sold at $3500 each. That, at least, is good news.