“I’m dying. Or this is a panic attack … This is what art has done to my poor body.”
Poor Artists is the debut novel by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente, the art critics and industry renegades behind The White Pube. The book follows Quest Talukdar, a fictional art school graduate, as she navigates the trials and tribulations of pursuing a career as a young artist. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Poor Artists incorporates dialogue from interviews with artists, curators, technicians, teachers, and museum directors – alongside a few ghosts, a mountain, and a communist messiah. Some of these characters may seem absurd, but they act as seamless ventriloquists for the real voices of art workers. Who better to represent the sacred wisdom of a fine art tutor than a preaching pile of discarded studio art (“Hello, child … What have you brought me?”).
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 – all things Quest must decide whether to conform to or reject. As she wrestles with this dilemma, spiralling down its path like a Tim Burton fantasy, early memories emerge of a time untainted by capitalist ownership, when her love of art was childlike and pure. 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.
Here, The White Pube’s Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente discuss some of the key influences and themes behind Poor Artists.
Alexandra Diamond-Rivlin: Poor Artists explores the bizarre politics of the art world through the lens of Quest Talukdar, a fictional art school graduate. Why did you want to centre the perspective of an aspiring artist?
Zarina Muhammad: I think a lot of people in the industry go to art school and study a BA in Fine Art as their way in and end up in other places as a result of certain material conditions. Art school is where so many begin. Also, the industry works in a specific way where artists produce the value – the artwork – and yet they are paid the least. They’re treated almost like service workers within the arts economy even though they’re the ones who create the value. It felt like a useful perspective for us to take because the majority of people we interviewed were either speaking from this position or were talking about it; it had this centrality that ran through so many of those conversations.
ADR: In the book, absurd characters – a talking baby or a mountain – appear in everyday settings like art school studios or galleries. Do you think absurdity and humour can have an important role in art criticism?
Gabrielle de la Puente: Yes, that is the entire tone of The White Pube. Even just being called The White Pube is about taking the piss out of the White Cube gallery and professionalism at large. I think the reason it works for us, whether we went into this consciously or not, is because places like the Royal Academy exist in huge, old, historical buildings and take themselves very seriously – curators wear asymmetrical outfits and have terrible haircuts and buy Jo Malone candles. It’s a culture of money and conservatism. So our job as critics is really to go in there and use humour as a way to undermine the idea that these people will be in control forever. They don’t need to be that way, so why do we? We quite enjoy poking fun! We want to show how it’s actually worth poking fun, too.
ZM: In the book, one of the characters, Mo, talks about certainty as a potentially fascist concept. Humour is uncertain: it can cut through the certainty of the institution, or the idea that the institution will exist forever; it sort of functions in that destabilising way.
“Our job as critics is really to go in there and use humour as a way to undermine the idea that these people [curators at old art institutions] will be in control forever” – Gabrielle de la Puente
ADR: The book blends factual and fictional storytelling. It seems like an apt way to reflect on the mystification of the art world and its narratives about value, talent and success. Was your intention to demystify art?
GP: Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was an artist. They were all like ghosts in galleries, to me. I did hear Common People by Pulp during family parties, though (“she studied sculpture at Saint Martins college”) and I was obsessed with painting in my nan’s kitchen, so I was basically like, “I’m gonna be an artist when I grow up”, and, “I’ll just go to the art school Pulp sings about!” It felt like a funny joke that I was genuinely going to see through to the end. I didn’t know anyone who could advise me or provide more details, so when I got to university and the mystification became a bit more obvious, and I was meeting other artists who were invested in it, I thought, so that’s what I’m meant to do?
I remember, near the end of university, Zarina and I were in a lecture by the critic Morgan Quaintance, who spoke about his financial circumstances after he graduated: his lecture meant we could visualise how art graduates actually live – how they navigate phone bills, for instance. It was the only moment in about four years of education when things felt real, but in that realness it also felt terrible, hopeless and scary. It didn’t feel like a fun joke anymore. In Poor Artists, Quest ends up going through the same experience of whiplash. She gets to this point where all she wants is just to go back in time and be a kid again.
ADR: In one of the chapters, Mark the Mountain preaches, “Art education is like scaffolding”. How much of your own experience of art school is in the text?
ZM: I’m an art school apologist. My experience of art school was very positive. It was like a switch flipped on in my brain. When I was younger, I was not that kid who painted every hour of the day, so my relationship with art began at art school. I was going to do a politics degree, and then I got to the end of my art foundation course and was like, “MIA went to art school and I love her, so why not!” It’s so funny how both of us chose Central Saint Martins because of musical references. Anyway, I’m aware that Quest’s experience of art school was actually quite different from mine because I did find it so positive. I think the fear of post-graduation life only really hit me once I finished studying there. I honestly spent three years at CSM being mostly oblivious about the fact that I would exist after then.
GP: There’s a part in the book where Quest describes a conversation she has with a tutor, who’s basically like, “You’re only painting because you think you can sell them,” and she struggles with this comment because she doesn’t know if she’s being told if that’s a bad thing or not. That was a real conversation between me and my tutor, and it’s one that really affected me. I didn’t paint in third year because I was like, “Well, I don’t feel like I’m allowed to paint. I feel like I’m not supposed to.” To this day I wish I stood up for myself. Quest goes through this experience too: she doesn’t feel like she should paint because the tutor advising her is in a position of authority and she feels like they know best. I think art school is best when you realise that you’re there to be in conversation with the tutors. Maybe they don’t know best, and maybe they’re just figuring it out like you! But it’s hard to internalise that when you’re 20 years old.
ADR: One of the central ideas in Poor Artists is that capitalism makes creating art almost impossible, whether due to time, money or access to space – and yet people persist. Do you see the book as a testament to those who continue to create despite these barriers?
ZM: I suppose even when an artist is barely holding it together, it’s that fundamental need to create that drives them, usually because art affirms something within them, or some understanding of themselves, and it’s just got to come out. It’s like doing a sick – it comes out against your will. That felt like a common link between all our interviewees: they’re like “I don’t know why I do this, I just have to!” It just happens, it’s a compulsion.
I think the word “testament” is an interesting one. Obviously, there are people who make art despite barriers, however, I think the way that Quest ends up is not necessarily a happy ending. I think it’s the happiest ending that’s available; it’s narrative closure, but it’s not a solution to those barriers. I don’t know if, in a way, seeing the book as a testament would be to celebrate what happens to Quest as the answer. I don’t understand how artists in London are meant to pay rent for both their home and studio, as well as find the time to make work, see friends, maybe go for a run and make dinner. Ultimately, I wish artists had a better time. I just wish it was easier to make art.
Poor Artists by Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad is published by Particular Books, and is out now.
