Overview

Why do people choose the life of an artist, and what happens when they find themselves barely scraping by? Why does New York City, even in an era of hypergentrification, still beckon to aspiring artists as a place to make art and remake yourself? Art Monster takes readers to the margins of the professional art world, populated by unseen artists who make a living working behind the scenes in galleries and museums while making their own art to little acclaim. Writing in a style that is by turns direct and poetic, personal and lyrical, Marin Kosut reflects on the experience of dedicating your life to art and how the art world can crush you. She examines the push toward professionalization, the devaluing of artistic labor, and the devastating effects of gentrification on cultural life. Her nonlinear essays are linked by central themes-community, nostalgia, precarity, alienation, estrangement-that punctuate working artists' lives. The book draws from ten years of fieldwork among artists and Kosut's own experiences curating and cofounding artist-run spaces in Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Chinatown. At once ethnography, memoir, tirade, and love letter, Art Monster is a street-level meditation on the predicament of artists in the late capitalist metropolis.

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9780231186742

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Reviews

Art Monster can’t be contained in a blurb. Light on its toes and sharp in its wit, it’s both a celebration and an excoriation of New York’s art world. An absolute delight to read a book that deftly describes those of us who “yearn for the mud”— I loved it. -- Alexandra Auder, author of <i>Don’t Call Me Home</i> Kosut combines ethnography, cultural analysis, and personal essay in a way that feels seamlessly elegant and exceedingly smart. She possesses a sharp eye for the most telling of details, a level of analytic insight that would be the envy of even the most seasoned ethnographers, and tremendous literary skill. Engaging, lively, and beautifully written, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social meaning and definition of artistic identity, what it means to do artistic labor, and the role of the arts in the social lives of cities. -- Anne Bowler, University of Delaware Art Monster is both an ode to and an interrogation of New York—amid the city's history, ambition, and impossibilities, what kinds of art can survive and flourish? Marin Kosut's pursuit of this answer is not to be missed—this is an important book for anyone making art right now. -- Chelsea Hodson, author of <i>Tonight I'm Someone Else</i> A must read for artists who don't believe in selling out, fear the inevitability of doing so, and are looking for company as they lay their course through late-stage art capitalism. -- Jenni Quilter, author of <i>New York Painters and Poets: Neon in Daylight</i>

Kosut combines ethnography, cultural analysis, and personal essay in a way that feels seamlessly elegant and exceedingly smart. She possesses a sharp eye for the most telling of details, a level of analytic insight that would be the envy of even the most seasoned ethnographers, and tremendous literary skill. Engaging, lively, and beautifully written, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social meaning and definition of artistic identity, what it means to do artistic labor, and the role of the arts in the social lives of cities. -- Anne Bowler, University of Delaware

Author Information

Marin Kosut has published fiction and nonfiction in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Cabinet Magazine, Hobart, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. She founded Pay Fauxn, a gallery in an abandoned pay phone shell at a Brooklyn bus stop. A MacDowell fellowship recipient, she holds a PhD in sociology from the New School and teaches the sociology of art at SUNY Purchase College. She lives in Brooklyn.

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