Jack Early FOREVER AND TODAY by Elizabeth Kley

Sharing an immaculate sense of design and a love of popular culture, Pruitt and Early was a win/win combination at the height of their short-lived career. But as soon as Rob Pruitt and Jack Early split in 1992, their pathways dramatically diverged.

Pruitt sold couture dresses and dreamed up craft projects for Martha Stewart Living, while Early painted houses and started writing music. Later, Pruitt laid out a feast of cocaine for art world insiders and then exhibited his work at Gavin Brown. Meanwhile, Early impeccably decorated a 10 x 16 room in a Times Square SRO.
The couple had moved to New York in the late ‘80s, at the height of the exploding art market. After cannily starting at the top with blue-chip jobs -- Early at Leo Castelli Gallery and Pruitt at Sonnabend -- they had a solo show at 303 Gallery in 1990 called “Artwork for Teenage Boys.” Their readymade accumulations of six-packs, head shop stickers, heavy-metal idol posters and iron-on motorcycle logos could be described as warmer versions of Cady Noland’s scathing beer-can installations.
But with “Red, Black, Green, Red, White and Blue,” their 1992 show at Leo Castelli, Priutt/Early resoundingly put their feet in their mouths. Mass-market posters of black celebrities and naked women -- athletes, entertainers and even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- were mounted on obelisk-shaped posts inside a paint splattered gallery lined with gold foil. A year before the “political” 1993 Whitney Biennial and in the midst of a dramatic economic downturn, their (white) examination of the kitsch manufactured for African American consumption was critically lambasted -- the New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman called it “degrading” and “sensationalistic.” Pruitt’s now-flourishing career went on hold for five years and Early’s was kaput.
“I didn’t step one toe in a gallery for over thirteen years,” Early recently explained in an ArtSlant interview with Trong Gia Nguyen. “I couldn’t even look at an art magazine without feeling sick. I sort of just went off and painted houses, became a doorman, worked in a thrift shop, raked yards. I suppose I should have been sad, but something happened; I began humming songs in my head, nice songs with melodies and everything . . . I had never been happier in my whole life.”
Pruitt burst back into the art scene in 1998 with Cocaine Buffet, a rather sadistic (or generous) installation that consisted of a line of genuine powder laid out along a mirror that ran all the way across the floor. Enticed into self-abasement, partakers got down on their knees. The piece disappeared up their noses in ten minutes flat, possibly even destroying some recoveries. Pruitt’s star has been rising stratospherically ever since.

Titled “Pattern and Degradation,” Pruitt’s most recent one-person exhibition took place at Gavin Brown and Maccarone in September, 2010. Over 8,000-square-feet in the two enormous galleries were filled with huge self-portraits along with paintings of cinnamon buns, Ikea wall art, T-shirts and Amish quilts and oversized sculptures of tires.
Early, in contrast, has been more modestly edging his way back into the art world only over the last three years, with well-received solo shows in 2008 in Athens at E321, in 2009 at Brooklyn’s Southfirst Gallery, and at Daniel Reich this spring. Drawing on his love of music, he has exhibited two versions of Jack Early’s Ear Candy Machine, a musical installation featuring a day-glo rainbow in a room painted black.



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