"Comprehensive, clear-eyed books about the art world are few and far between . . . [The Contemporaries] is a vital addition to that short reading list . . . White is an ideal guide to the scene . . . The Contemporaries approaches the art world with equanimity, and a balanced measure of criticism and reporting. He is neither cynical nor craven. He gets it. The uninitiated can read it for a nuanced understanding of the art world's codes and rituals. Veterans can delight in the material White digs up and his expert rendering of it." —Andrew Russeth, ARTnewS
"For those of us who are interested in art but far removed from its business, the art world can seem like an alien civilization, with incomprehensible mores, dictates that shift every week, and shibboleths apparently transmitted by telepathy. Into this murky situation rides Roger White, not to 'expose' anything, but to make sense of art's winding social and intellectual path, using clear language and concrete examples. This book may not make you embrace the art world, but at least you'll understand." —Luc Sante
"Today's art ecosystem is utterly different from the one that intrigued so many of us in the 20th century: bigger, wealthier, and more corporate, while many an artist's garret has become someone's luxury pied-a-terre. Roger White's assessment of what this post-postmodern, post-bohemian scene means for artists is right on the mark and ultimately encouraging as he finds creators across the country working to avoid spectacle, stay rogue, and stay true." —Cynthia Carr, author of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
"Funny, scary, unique, and exceptional, The Contemporaries told me so much that I had wanted to know about art today and much that I wouldn't have known to ask. It's an ingenious book, gracefully written, demonstrating Roger White's keen intelligence and real affection for our generation of artists, whether famous or unknown. Brilliant." —Mark Greif, co-founder and co-editor of n+1 and author of The Age of the Crisis of Man: Though and Fiction in America, 1933-1973
"If you’ve ever gone to a contemporary art gallery and hovered in front of some painting thinking, 'Egads, I have no clue what is going on here,' this slim volume can give you one. Strolling around various corridors of the modern art world, Roger White’s The Contemporaries suggests just how far the business is from those romantic notions of a starving painter in his garret apartment, brush quivering." —Colin Fleming, The Washington Post
"[A]t a time when most of us probably find it more fulfilling to consider work by past generations, in part because so much of contemporary art can seem like unapproachable BS, White’s book is an excellent foray into a world that is still worth our consideration." —The Daily Beast
"The perambulatory, socio-anthropological genre of art writing receives a much-needed invigoration in Roger White’s The Contemporaries . . . Moving nimbly from the macro concerns of academy, studio, and marketplace to intimate engagements with the three artists, the titular 'contemporaries'—Dana Schutz, Mary Walling Blackburn, Stephen Kaltenback—White's essaysistic reporting is even-keeled and lucid while maintaing an energetic curiosity." —Mostafa Heddaya, Blouin Artinfo
"As the 'travels' in the title suggests, The Contemporaries is not a comprehensive guide, but rather an in-depth look at some of the debates that animate the current art scene. These debates are big, complex topics like the rise of the MFA, the dominance of the art market and the ethics of art production when assistants are doing most of 'the work.' And to flesh them out, the book goes where the art is." - T Magazine Blog
2014-11-20
Artist White draws on his long associations with academia and the art world to explain contemporary art to a confused public.The author begins with a bit of recent art history and a look at how artists respond to the circumstances that their creative imaginations encounter. Devoting half the book to three extremely different artists—Dana Schutz, Mary Walling Blackburn and Stephen Kaltenbach—really drives home the concept of the boundlessness of the directions art can take. A hard look at MFA programs asks whether they are offering career training, a professional research program or economic preparation for the realities of art and the long odds of success. The author devotes considerable space to critiques in contemporary art. If the professors ask, "what are we looking for?" and "what do you want of me?" how is the unschooled public supposed to understand? Primarily, we must see that contemporary art is concerned with the immediate present and how meaning unfolds across time and space. Next, White tackles assistantships, both paid and unpaid, and the process of making art. An artist's workshop used to be a training experience, but it is now, like Warhol's, a factory. Industrial society has interrupted the direct line between the artist and the object. Now, an assistant develops a work by bending pipe or making a computer design. The movement toward regionalism, à la Grant Wood, and away from large art centers into the country, is again a new form of art. There are also performance, conceptual, social practice and minimalist art. The author's most useful suggestion is to view a piece in the same state of mind (altered or not) as the artist. Sometimes, though, it's only meaningful to the artist. White opens the door to understanding, but it's up to readers to grasp the fact that there may not really be any meaning. That's the point.
