Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • The Contemporaries

  • Travels in the 21st-Century Art World
  • By: Roger White
  • Narrated by: Tom Parks
  • Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
The Contemporaries cover art

The Contemporaries

By: Roger White
Narrated by: Tom Parks
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Nothing Is Lost cover art
1959: The Year Everything Changed cover art
American Mirror cover art
Yoko Ono cover art
Eyes on the Street cover art
Boom cover art
Keith Haring Journals cover art
How Creativity Rules the World cover art
Becoming a Marine Biologist cover art
Clear Seeing Place cover art
Inside the Dream Palace cover art
Fraud cover art
LEGO cover art
Broad Strokes cover art
Playing to the Gallery cover art
How to See cover art

Summary

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. White takes us into the halls of the RISD graduate program, where students learn critical lessons that go far beyond how to apply paint to canvases. In New York we meet the neophytes who assist established artists - and who walk the fine line between "assistance" and "making the art". In Milwaukee White trails a group of friends trying to create a viable scene where rent is cheap but where the spotlight rarely shines. And he gives us an intimate perspective on three wildly different careers: that of Dana Schutz, an emerging star who is revitalizing painting; that of Mary Walling Blackburn, whose challenging art defies market forces; and that of Stephen Kaltenbach, a '70s wunderkind who is back on the critical radar, perhaps in spite of his own willful obscurity.

From young artists trying to elbow their way in to those working hard at dropping out, White's essential audiobook 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.

©2015 Roger White (P)2015 Audible Inc.

What listeners say about The Contemporaries

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.