Poor Artists

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What to expect

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

Critics 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
FRIEZE
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
Guardian
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
Flux Magazine
A surreal yet gut punching insight into the often foggy world of art
Huck Mag
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
AnOther Mag
A manifesto for hungry young artists
The Big Ship
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
Skinny Mag
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
Canvas Magazine

User Reviews

Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
5.0
5.0
Passionate and creative; Reading excellent. Authentic and persuasive text that is incredibly relevant to our situation way beyond art and artists to learning and to the crisis of humanity in this weird world we seem to inhabit, right now. Worth listening to at least once.
jo tait 08/08/2025
5.0
5.0
The most honest, meditative, and hopeful account of what it is to be in love with art that I’ve ever read. You both broke me and rebuilt me in one sitting!!!!
lucky___meli 26/03/2025
5.0
5.0
This book was really enjoyable for me. It was especially comforting since I found a lot of the same thoughts I had through my life as an artist.
The narration was kind and nice.
sodalitea 16/03/2025

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