Description

‘Irreverent, provocative and funny’ Dazed

‘This book might change the way you look at art, or change the way you feel it’ Daisy Hildyard

‘A full-throated defence of the inherent value of making, experiencing and talking about art’ Frieze

‘Let me stay there, let me paint. Let me go to bed when the sun comes up. I don’t want life to sharpen me.’

Why make art? Faced with a capitalist system that has turned art into artwork and creative expression into cut-throat competition, why do so many artists try anyway?

In this eye-opening journey through the bizarre world of contemporary art, criticism duo The White Pube tell the story of art like never before. Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar through childhood obsessions, art school lessons and her professional debut. In surreal encounters with other artists, Quest learns profound truths about money and power, and must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself.

Blending imaginative storytelling with dialogue from anonymized interviews with real people in the art world who have all had to wrestle with the same decisions – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a few ghosts, a Venice Biennale fraudster and a communist messiah – Poor Artists is a powerful testimony to the emotional, existential and financial experience of artists today.

Publisher Review

Irreverent, provocative and funny . . . at some points it reads like a memoir and at others like a wildly surrealist novel . . . I found it fascinating as someone who knows basically nothing about the art world, but I’d also highly recommend it to anyone who went to art school or works as an artist – I’m sure the experiences it depicts would resonate deeply * Dazed * Excoriating and energising . . . interweaves impassioned real-world critique with an exuberant narrative that’s by turns satirical and surreal * Telegraph * Reads like a page-turning novel… What I love about this book is that it doesn’t descend into cynicism and despair, instead balancing the more challenging aspects of living a creative life (including, but not limited to, crippling student debt, predatory gallerists and dealing with rejection) with a full-throated defence of the inherent value of making, experiencing and talking about art — Chloe Stead * FRIEZE * The art world memoirs for our Internet generation that none of us knew we needed but now we can’t live without. An indispensable read giving insights on an ‘art world’ at the edge of collapse. Living for it — Legacy Russell, author of Glitch Feminism ‘I was surprised, challenged and affirmed – everything I love in a book . . . There are a lot of superlatives I could throw at Poor Artists, yet I finished the book overwhelmingly grateful that it exists. The White Pube continue to be a duo that add such a refreshing, thoughtful and critical but fun voice to an often stale art world. Poor Artists is that in tenfold — Travis Alabanza, author of None of the Above This book might change the way you look at art, or change the way you feel it . . . I love the energy, deep humour and alive thought in Poor Artists, which zooms through galleries, universities, a hospital ward, and a spaceship, capturing what is tragic, and what’s glorious, about art and the world right now — Daisy Hildyard author of Emergency Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad have crept in through the back door of the artworld and left it open for the rest of us. This is a landmark for art writing – a treatise on the difference between art’s right to mystify and confound, and the crimes of an industry that discriminates and excludes — Nathalie Olah, author of Bad Taste