Artist’s Obsession with the “White Album”: A Plain White Square, and Yet So Fascinating
By ALLAN KOZINN Published: February 22, 2013
On a rainy afternoon recently Rutherford Chang sat at a desk near the window of the Recess Gallery in SoHo, listening to “The Beatles” — the two-disc set, released in 1968, and commonly known as “The White Album,” and showing a visitor a computer printout listing of several hundred copies of the album he owns.
Mr. Chang, a soft-spoken, 33-year-old artist who was born in Houston and grew up in California, is fascinated with “The White Album,” particularly with first-edition copies. As readers of a certain age will recall, the original release sported an embossed title, and each copy carried a serial number, as if it were a limited edition. Actually, about three million numbered copies were printed in the United States before EMI stopped numbering them in 1970. The embossed title was replaced with gray printing in 1975.
Through March 9 Mr. Chang is presiding over “We Buy White Albums,” an installation at Recess devoted to this fascination and its artistic ramifications.
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