The Contemporaries: Travels In The 21st Century Art World

Description

It's been nearly a century since Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal and called it art. Since then, painting has been declared dead several times over, and contemporary art has now expanded to include just about any object, action, or event: dance routines, slideshows, functional hair salons, seemingly random accretions of waste. In the meantime, being an artist has gone from a join-the-circus fantasy to a plausible vocation for scores of young people in America. But why--and how and by whom--does all this art get made? How is it evaluated? And for what, if anything, will today's artists be remembered? In The Contemporaries, Roger White, himself a young painter, serves as our spirited, skeptical guide through this diffuse creative world.From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential book offers a once-in-a-generation glimpse of the inner workings of the American art world at a moment of unparalleled ambition, uncertainty, and creative exuberance.

Author description

Roger White received an MFA in painting from Columbia University. His work is represented by the Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York, and he has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tokyo. In 2007, he cofounded the art journal Paper Monument, and he has since coedited two Paper Monument pamphlets: I Like Your Work and Draw It With Your Eyes Closed. His writing has also appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Artreview, and Modern Painters. White splits his time between Vermont and New York.