Poor Artists

The White Pube author Gabrielle de la Puente author Zarina Muhammad author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:3rd Oct '24

£20.00

This title is due to be published on 3rd October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Poor Artists cover

A moving, eye-opening journey through the world of contemporary art from one of the most innovative voices in the field

At a moment in which working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, art criticism duo The White Pube investigate why so many artists try anyway. Labelled “the Diet Prada of the art world” by British Vogue, in Poor Artists writers Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad ridicule a contemporary art world that has turned art into artworks, art schools into art universities, and creative expression into cut-throat competition.

Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.

Praise for -- The White Pube
Their genre of “embodied criticism” aims to redefine what we consider worthy of our aesthetic attention … making judgements about artwith their guts rather than their heads, with feelings rather than facts -- Kitty Grady * Vogue *
Female duo the White Pube have the energy and opinions to liven up an art world full of stale, male voices … their frank political stance is clearly resonating with a younger audience in a way traditional art publications aren’t able to -- Kate Goh * Guardian *
Their criticism verges on storytelling, and not only makes art approachable but offers a refreshingly currentmodel for interacting with it -- Akash Chohan * SSENSE *
Reviews, essays, and podcasts on contemporary art that break down power structures within the industry, injecting the stuffy, exclusionary language of criticism with some much-needed personality (and lols) -- Lexi Manatakis * Dazed 100 *
The White Pube presents one of the first truly new voices in British art criticism in the twenty–first century … informal yet stylistically innovative, art historically rigorous without the staid academicism or florid pomposity of much established writing, the pair’s mix of reviews, essays, podcasts, and social media posts are bound together with a singular critical voice grappling with contemporary issues of race, gender, sexuality, aesthetics and ethics -- Morgan Quaintance * e-flux *

ISBN: 9780241633762

Dimensions: 222mm x 138mm x 25mm

Weight: 400g

288 pages