The Contemporaries: Travels in the 21st-Century Art World by Roger White

Category: 50 Books

Roger White covers a ton of ground about contemporary art and manages to do so in less than 300 pages. His writing is concise and very journalistic, he shows us things but rarely critiques. In fact, even though he is an artist (painter) and art professor himself, he comes across as a kind of Nick Carraway of sorts, like he’s standing in the Art World and witnessing what’s going on but not really part of it.

White breaks his book into 6 parts, the ones I enjoyed most were the one about MFA programs and if they are necessary anymore, and the last three parts about the individual artists, Dana Schutz, Mary Walling Blackburn, and Stephen Kaltenbach. I was pleasantly surprised that he chose 2 female artists to highlight.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I’m not sure it really answered any questions about the contemporary art world, in fact it left everything pretty open-ended. But that’s art for you.

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