Poor Artists: A Quest Into the Art World

De la Puente and Muhammad, founders of the arts and culture website The White Pube, debut with an innovative critique of the contemporary art world. Taking the form of a novel, the story follows Quest Talukdar, a British South Asian artist who’s finally found some traction by making bizarre pieces that she hates, but knows will sell (for example, a plaster cast of rotting fruit). Quest has trippy conversations with “a pile of leftover art” that serves as the head of an art university, psychologist Abraham Maslow, creator of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (“If an artist is not able to make art... we can expect discontent and restlessness in the individual”), and 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet (recast here as an Uber driver). All the while, Quest struggles to create meaningful work without being overwhelmed by the harsh economic realities of the art world—exorbitantly priced studio spaces, scarce funding opportunities, and competition with rich kids who can pay their way into galleries. Quest’s recognition of the absurdity of her situation (an ex boyfriend accuses her of being “married to the idea that being an artist is a job”) is accompanied by her dawning realization that creativity necessarily defies logic (“Art is lawless,” a friend tells her, “and it has to remain so in order to open up new channels of understanding”). The result is a sharp and original take on the privilege and passion of the modern creative economy. (Nov.)