The White Pube

Gabrielle de la Puente

Zarina Muhammad

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

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

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

A surreal yet gut punching insight into the often foggy world of art

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

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

I am intrigued by the creativity of this book… A compelling object...the writers' playful and expanded approach to criticism straddles different literary genres

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

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.

Zarina Muhammad

Praise for Poor Artists

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 ...

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 no ...

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 ...

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 no ...

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 ...

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 no ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter