Jack White review – art like a 12-year-old’s first visit to Tate Modern

Ai Weiwei has inscribed the F-word in buttons across the front of one of Jack White’s amplifiers, a gesture at once cynical and louche; Damien Hirst has added a model of a rotting cow’s head to another. Those dangerous, nihilistic sparks are precisely what this exhibition at Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery lacks, even as the show’s hardback catalogue includes an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and the art world flocks to befriend White.

White was huge in the 00s as one half of the White Stripes with Meg White, and his solo career remains active. The bluesy rawness of that band still haunts, despite the appropriation of Seven Nation Army at political rallies, and De Stijl recurs here as White repeats red, blue and yellow and turns a Mondrian grid into a piece of furniture.

As a visual artist, however, he largely fails to translate musical atmosphere into visual depth.

jack white, ai weiwei, damien hirst, newport street, white stripes, meg white, obrist, de stijl, mondrian, tate modern