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Poor Artists

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Poor Artists

By: The White Pube, Gabrielle de la Puente, Zarina Muhammad
Narrated by: Gillian Kearney
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Brought to you by Penguin.

'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.

'A landmark for art writing' Nathalie Olah


© Gabrielle de la Puente, Zarina Muhammad and The White Pube 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

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Critic reviews

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
Excoriating and energising . . . interweaves impassioned real-world critique with an exuberant narrative that’s by turns satirical and surreal
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)
An aspiring young artist’s journey makes for a critique of the art world, in novel form . . . as it gathered pace, I could feel the strength and hopefulness of the authors’ narrative . . . The book is, at its heart, trying to get at the slippery, eternal problem of what art is (Eliza Goodpasture)
In a world where art is as much about capital as it is creativity, Poor Artists arrives like a Molotov cocktail in the gallery lobby... the book delivers its most striking message: true artistry can flourish beyond the industry’s broken framework (Dilsah Kondakci)
A surreal yet gut punching insight into the often foggy world of art (Isaac Muk)
Through striking bathos and playful prose, Poor Artists takes us through the doors of a surreal and sometimes nauseating art world governed by myth, mysticism and strange rituals.. And yet, Poor Artists is not about simple nostalgia or authenticity. It is a story about power and alienation, success and compromise, creative survival and self-preservation (Alexandra Diamond-Rivlin)
A manifesto for hungry young artists
A patchwork of myth... Fact and fiction blur, genres bend...If Poor Artists is poison for institutions, it is a tonic for the people. It’s for art students at orientation and computer programmers who can still remember the painting in their grandmother’s bedroom. It’s for job-seekers who wish they could sleep under their old Buffy posters instead of in front of their laptop
A scathing yet darkly humorous critique of the contemporary art world... It is not just a book for art world insiders, it’s for anyone who’s ever felt like a creative outsider trying to survive in a system that seems designed to eat you alive
All stars
Most relevant
a book that is true about the expectations artists put on themselves. and narrated amazingly. love it

a must for qll that dare to create.

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One thing I enjoyed was how Poor Artists talks about art being controlled by the aristocracy and funded by them throughout history and talking about how the recession has made lots of safe commercial artwork that's easy to digest and gets us jobs where we fit in with what they want.
This has made me think about my own positionality within my practice and how I want to make work that's weird and
'aggressive' and raw and doesn't fit in.
Anyway go read it!

Empowering The Working Class

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This book resonated with me on every single level. As an artist, it’s given me direction. It is so honest, so refreshingly clear - I feel like I know how to move forward now. It’s like somebody took my brain out and examined it and put my thoughts / feelings into words! And I want the whole world to read this book, right now.

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Much anticipated reading matter and could not put it down. I laughed and cried at this book as it spoke to much of my own experience with the codified world of exhibitions, art school and the weight of others expectations on my practice. I recognised so many of the characters described here as my friends and acquaintances- and saw my own reflection in the mirror it held up. Such a valuable and heartfelt insight into what it’s like to be an artist in the 21st Century. A valuable reminder to keep on making in the face of adversity.

An essential allegorical journey for artists navigating the peaks and troughs of the contemporary art world

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…more then being an artist.

Thank you for let me realised that!

I’ll carry on no matter what.

I want to make art…

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