It’s the summertime now and I am gainfully unemployed. Every morning, I wake up at 2PM and take in the stunning views of downtown Toronto from my over-priced high-rise apartment. I recline (lengthwise) on my lumpy futon-couch and while away the hours reading about The White Pube’s (TWP) adventures in the art world. Love Island USA plays in the background, (my flatmate’s latest obsession), and occasionally distracts me from my reading. 

I don’t remember how I came across The White Pube, (probably doom scrolling on Instagram tbh), but it filled a gap that I didn’t know existed in terms of my experience reading art & cultural criticism, and my understanding of the forms critical writing could take. For those not familiar, The White Pube is a UK-based collaborative identity created by writer-curators Gabrielle de la Puente (GDLP) and Zarina Muhammad (ZM). As the name suggests, The White Pube plays on the modern concept of “the white cube,” satirizing the almost religious approach to art writing and criticism that authors often take, which according to TWP, leaves exhibition reviews “boring, lifeless, overly academic, or too polite.”¹ 

In addition to art exhibition reviews, TWP publishes book reviews, cultural criticism, video game reviews, film reviews, food reviews, and more! They also have a podcast and write long-form essays exploring a variety of topics, typically related to the art world and their experience as cultural workers.

The White Pube initially began as a joke between de la Puente and Muhammad in 2015 in response to their shared frustrations over the way art is written about and its largely white-cis-male-upper-middle-class authorship. After nearly a decade, TWP has amassed a substantial audience, with over 90k followers on Instagram and 25k on Twitter (now X), and between 10,000 to 30,000 website hits per month (in 2023).²

The duo’s style, which has been termed “embodied criticism,”³ grounds their encounters with art, culture, and the art world in their feelings and personal experiences, resulting in writing that is accessible, entertaining, and informative. In an essay for e-flux in 2017, artist and writer Morgan Quaintance describes TWP’s writing style as “informal yet stylistically innovative, art historically rigorous without the staid academicism or florid pomposity of much established writing.”⁴

The success of TWP is even more impressive considering the fact that they are an independent publishing platform, meaning they’ve created a name for themselves without the support of major publishing or granting bodies.⁵

Quaintance continues, “Rather than the brattish, sneering insider defamations of anonymous online blogs of the past…The White Pube’s irreverent criticism comes from a personal perspective that is publicly attributable to both authors.”⁶ Like Quaintance, I also think this is what’s really made all the difference in terms of understanding their popularity.

It’s that personal voice that makes The White Pube feel familiar. It reads as though a real-life human person is talking to you. That’s the weird part! TWP doesn’t read like the art criticism that I know, and yet it’s the clearest picture into another person’s encounter with the world of art that I think I’ve ever received. In truth, I find most art criticism and curatorial writing largely incomprehensible, and close to impossible to parse without a sustained amount of concerted effort. 

I remember one time I took a trip to the MOCA in Toronto with an artist friend I was recently acquainted with. We spent a good deal of time walking around Liz Magor’s solo exhibition, The Separation, trying to figure out what the exhibition was about without looking at the curatorial text. 

It was the type of show where the possibilities were really up in the air: stuffed monkeys hanging from ceiling lights; rows upon rows of clear boxes filled with cups, trash, animal figurines, tiny skulls—the type of stuff you’d find buried on the beach; and what looked to be dead stuffed animals on a taxidermist’s table. Our guess was that it had something to do with environmentalism. We went back to the text and surprise surprise, it was no help in explaining what tf we were actually looking at. 

This is the thing about art galleries, and Zarina mentions this in an interview with Nordic Art Review: “Exhibitions are strange places to be. It’s a specifically mediated experience, where special objects are placed in special rooms. The exhibition wants you to have a specific experience and it relies on certain things, takes things for granted, and asks for your complicity.”⁷  And the work of art critics, art writers, she continues, is to “write about the gallery as if it’s normal.”⁸

This issue in the art world of using language that seems designed to mystify rather than elucidate is not new. It’s so prevalent and problematic that we even have a word for it—“artspeak”—which is perhaps just a more polite way of saying “utter nonsense.”⁹ The problem with artspeak is that it’s the formal language (or code) of the art world, but because the art world is extremely insular, it’s very alienating to those who aren’t familiar with it. This is the persistent catch-22 of the art critic or writer: wanting to speak to a wider audience but being forced to speak in a language that people outside of the art world can’t understand, (and the people inside of it struggle to comprehend).

Now that we’ve established the main actors in this production and the central conflict they’re facing—that is, the problem of art writing and criticism—it’s time to introduce the inciting incident, or the catalyst for this text, de la mode à la The White Pube. 

I want to talk about humour and one of the alleged “crises” of contemporary art criticism. That is, who do critics write for now?¹⁰

I’m not sure if art criticism was ever meant for people without some knowledge of the art world and its inner workings. Historically, art criticism grew out of the academic tradition of writing. The audience for art criticism was supposedly informed enough to keep up with the critic and any external references they may have made, but also somehow not as informed, since of course, you had to go to the critic for an “educated perspective.”

Nowadays, I think criticism in general has changed to an environment where everyone is both encouraged and discouraged from having an opinion. As the saying goes, “everyone’s a critic,” but also, no one is a critic, since the official output of “art criticism” as an industry barely goes beyond reporting what’s there in the gallery. (In a very wordy academic way, mind you). 

The “crisis” of an audience for art criticism isn’t so much because there aren’t enough normals to enjoy it, but rather because art criticism has always been for a specific kind of reader, (hello there~), and that reader just represents a very niche part of the population, even within the art world itself. Art criticism, despite its very modern canon, has its rules. And these rules shape what art criticism can look like, and accordingly, who can read it (and actually get something out of it).

Thanks to the Internet (thanks Internet!), the potential audiences for criticism and art writing have exploded beyond the capacities of print media. People blog, text, tweet, and share their thoughts about art on a regular basis. TWP emerged out of this Internet culture. However, what makes The White Pube different from other publications of art criticism at this time is that they’ve been able to speak to a different kind of reader, someone who may have previously never been interested in art or art criticism. 

While major outlets still address the same audiences they had prior to the Internet and mass social communications, TWP has been able to draw non-experts and new audiences into relevant state of the field discussions through their creative and strategic engagements on social media, varying methods of dissemination (available as YouTube videos and podcasts), and public-facing projects such as the Your Space or Mine “ideas for a new art world” billboard and poster series, as well as through the development of their “Successful Funding Application Library.”¹¹ 

The White Pube has bent the rules of criticism to redefine who the critic is and what their relationship is to their audience, ultimately changing the shape of art criticism in the process. 

And honestly? Thank god for that.

PART 2: A few thoughts on the rules of art criticism, as I see it…

1. Art criticism must be serious (i.e. not fun).

For the past year or so I’ve been thinking about fun. Fun as a concept mostly, which admittedly isn’t very fun, but more to the point, fun and its place in my personal and professional life. 

I feel like fun often gets relegated to the realm of childish things and childish endeavours. It’s like, instead of unlocking a new zone of exploration in a video game, you get locked out of the one you just came from. 

You grew up and so now you have to work until you die. You get told, either explicitly or implicitly, “You’re an adult now, playtime is over. No more fun for u, sorry about the inevitable.” I’m not really talking about the loss of childhood innocence here, but more so that fun—that manifestation of pure joy & freedom—gets pushed to the side. 

For most adults, fun is a frivolous, immature pursuit. It’s indulgent and not relevant to their day-to-day. And the worst, most damning aspect of it all, is that it is unproductive. (There’s probably something to be said about how capitalism holds us back from truly having fun with how it encourages us to monetize allll our time, but that’s not really my focus here.) 

As you become an adult, there’s also a social imperative to professionalize so that others will take you seriously.¹² This is pretty consistent across all manner of “professional” industries. When it comes to academic and/or creative industries, the same standard holds up.

I don’t think there’s anything more horrifyingly-terrifyingly embarrassing for a writer than being told their work is “not serious,” or being accused of not being a “serious writer.” (This is the equivalent of being told you are a bumbling boob and have no business picking up a pen). Personally, I do consider myself to be a serious writer, but more in the way a stand-up comedian must always commit to the bit. 

This self-awareness I have about my own writing rarely makes it into the final draft though. In the same way, I feel like typical art criticism, (and by this I mean the type that wants to get published in big deal publications), isn’t really given the chance to embrace and grow that self-awareness. 

Conversely, some of the most famous artists in history acknowledge the constructedness of their art in a kind of cheeky self-critique. (See Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and the surrealists, postmodernists, and a lot of institutional critiquers, tbh). In effect, they undermine separation of artist, artwork, audience, and setting.

In general, there’s a lot of work around humour in art, but not humour in art criticism. While humour frequently appears in the arts in the form of satire, gags, irony, irreverence, and play, art criticism is not afforded the same freedom. The question, of course, is why? What is it about the form of art criticism that pushes critics to want to appear tepid, unaffected, and drier than an ashy knee? What is it about normal art criticism that makes reading feel like some weird form of intellectual masturbation??? 

To be clear, I’m not in support of anti-intellectualism or anything like that. Nor is this an absolutist position. I don’t believe all art criticism needs to be humorous or “not wordy” to be worth reading. (Most of it is in fact not that way and is still very, very good). However, I really want to know what may be gained by loosening the tight grip these conventions seem to have on the discipline.

In contrast, TWP‘s embodied criticism practically oozes self-awareness. It’s as though the writers go through the layers of Freud’s iceberg model to explore their conscious reactions and unconscious motivators.¹³

Now maybe I’m simply a blunt and inelegant person, but I much prefer when writers state their opinions clearly rather than obscuring it in vapid wordplay and allusions to things only a very small number of people have actually read about. I Can Appreciate Subtext, But Help Us Out A Little?????

Earlier I spoke about seriousness and the social imperative to professionalize. What I think I really meant to do was underscore the connections between professionalism, seriousness, social capital, and power. Ultimately, what the imperative to professionalize really comes down to is the imperative to gain social capital—that is, authority and power. Insisting on professionalism is a way of safeguarding who has the social capital (the power and authority) to make decisions and influence people.

Comparatively speaking, TWP wields its social capital in a lateral way. Instead of conforming to the performance of mainstream critical art writing and emphasizing their expertise, there is an insistence on a form of writing that is non-authoritative and grounded in individual subjectivity. Instead of joining the ranks of “the elevated,” they remain down-to-earth and approachable in terms of language and format.¹⁴

I heard somewhere that academics are trained to write in a very aggressive/violent manner: anticipating attacks, defending, riposting. Art historian and critic James Elkins writes in an essay titled, “What Is Interesting Writing in Art History?” that “the feeling of art historical texts is often this sort of ambition [for professional prestige], mixed with fear or anxiety about embarrassment or mistakes.”¹⁵

He laments further, “I can hardly read contemporary art history these days, because so much of it is actually about these tightrope acts of assertion and defense, even though the authors and their readers agree to read only for what’s said about the art.”¹⁶

I find myself nodding along in agreement with Elkins. I sense that same anxiety in most art criticism too. These days, I avoid reading too much art criticism to preserve my mental energy. The brain drain sneaks up on you rather quickly. Sometimes it feels like art criticism hates my guts.

2. Art criticism cares about your feelings, (just make sure it’s not too much).

In many prominent publications of art journalism or criticism, I often encounter exhibition reviews that read sort of like you’re on a safari—with the critic acting as an informed guide, writing on what they see, hear, (and sometimes) smell, and sense. 

There’s a lot of description which is nice, and inevitably there’s a section on what the show means in the larger context of something else (probably art history, contemporary culture, or the artist’s oeuvre as a whole) and the critic’s own opinion on the show’s strengths and weaknesses is relegated to a little squeegee stain at the end of the text. 

Tbh, for the most part by the end of these reviews, I’m still left wondering if the show had an impact on the critic. What did they think of it? Did it affect them in some way? 

Of course, while the purpose of an exhibition review is to communicate information about the exhibition, it’s also being mediated through a specific viewpoint. Yet who the critic is, how they move through the world, often seems to only be mentioned when the author is a woman or POC.

The thing about a critique is that there’s no Absolutely Correct view. Ultimately, it’s all very subjective. Maybe the problem is that the type of exhibition review that appeals to the widest audience focuses less on the critic’s individual experience as a visitor and more on the artwork, on the facts. Or maybe that’s just what feels safest to put out into the world. 

By contrast, TWP regularly acknowledges its partiality, its bias, subjective perspective and blind spots. They write reviews in bad moods and in 30-degree heat and acknowledge that it affects the way they encounter art. 

In a review for Mauro C. Martinez’s exhibition, RateMySetup at Unit London, GDLP begins with narrating her experience of walking to the gallery:

I turned up to Unit London hot and bothered. Dungarees slipping, glasses fogging up. My phone was running out. The usual. There were no benches on the beige curve of Regent St on the walk up to the gallery, only Uniqlos, a police presence, and these terrible planters with thin edges and angled sides for anti-homeless, anti-disabled, anti-happy architecture. London can be so hard. I was on my way to see an exhibition by Mauro C. Martinez, an artist whose work I’ve only ever seen online, at a gallery I’ve only seen in install shots. In the twenty minutes it took to walk there, I listened to the beginning of an interview Martinez did with the Artist Decoded YouTube channel. I’m hot and bothered when I reach the show because of disability and because of the conversation I’ve just listened to.¹⁷

Right from the get-go, you’re immersed in a world that extends beyond the gallery and its conventions. This is reality. This is how people truly encounter art. They have to come off the street first! GDLP observes how disability affects her experiences at exhibitions—even before she sets foot in the gallery! TWP’s embodied criticism demonstrates how no one ever encounters art in a vacuum.

Imo, it feels like a whole buncha art criticism is produced in sterile white rooms (LOL). Personally, I always try to write in a controlled environment. Is it possible that this affects the type of writing I produce?

I think TWP’s insistence on embodied criticism grounds that sometimes slippery-slope of intellectualizing feelings or emotions in response to art rather than just feeling them. Living in our bodies rather than our heads. 

As a writer, I find there’s something addicting about the challenge of trying to find the exact words to express what I’m thinking. I’ve been taught to strive for acuity, for conciseness, thus all the pre-draft word searching I do for meaning and sensation gets left out of the final text. I never let my brain spew (first thoughts) become my quote-unquote real thoughts on the matter. But that’s always the starting point.

I don’t think there’s anything necessarily unique or “special“ about embodied criticism—but that’s what makes it so great! It’s an immediately accessible form to both readers and writers. However, it requires that critics get rid of that impulse to edit themselves out of the writing. It requires them to stick their necks out, “be implicated in their own opinions,”¹⁸ and be real about how the work makes them feel. To really be true to themselves through writing.

3. Art criticism should be critical…but don’t be critical!

Help. Ok how to start this bit…. Let me just say a few things on self-censorship.

First: At least from my POV, critics do carry a certain amount of social responsibility. That is to say: words matter. It’s important to recognize the power of the written word goes beyond watching how you phrase things to being aware that words hold the potential to damage your career, or possibly someone else’s, if what you’re saying is something negative, unpopular, or overtly critical. (That is, not in the pre-approved press release.)

We are def more socially conscious these days, (I think, perhaps cynically, in part bc of a globalized Western neo-liberal progressivism in the art world and the prevalence of social media), but the positive of that is that we’re able to recognize how interconnected we all are. 

However, when it comes to giving and receiving criticism, there seems to be a struggle around finding a middle ground for it to exist as a healthy way of obtaining feedback. At the risk of upsetting someone else, we shut down our more “extreme” critiques or possibly hurtful opinions. We don’t nitpick and instead avoid any confrontation. It’s a cold war of passivity and platitudes out there AND I JUST DON’T THINK THAT’S VERY HELPFUL!!!!!!!! ¹⁹

Second: From the perspective of a WOC, (idk about anyone else here), I feel even more pressure to watch what I say and not inadvertently paint other POCs or WOCs in a bad light by being more than a little critical.

Even if I have issues with the work they do, or I don’t really care for it, I don’t want to take away any potential opportunities they might have in the future by saying what I honestly think. Even now I’m nervous to inject too much of my real feelings into this piece and not maintain enough distance. 

There’s also something about the written or printed word. To see it laid out on paper where you have to COMMIT to it. The phrasing, the implications—I think that can cause people to hesitate or censor themselves. To speak in half-truths to avoid being indicted and socially reprimanded for it later. I think it’s important to recognize that both members of TWP are from marginalized groups. They are also both women of colour existing and expressing their opinions on the Internet. And as we all know from experience, the Internet is often not a very welcoming place.

I really want to underscore the amount of courage it takes to risk your reputation and safety, yes, safety: TWP have been subjected to hate messages and death threats as a result of their writing,²⁰ to express an opinion on the Internet. 

If in general women are heavily policed online, there’s even less leeway for women of color. And as a WOC myself, I also recognize that it takes a different type of courage to be honest with your peers—the members of your community, your support base—about their work, as well as with the world at large.

I have personally been warned about the risks of coming across as overly (or overtly) critical, especially this early in my career, towards people who have the power to help or hurt it. And while I recognize this as practical advice, at the same time, I feel like this advice can also stifle relevant and justified criticisms. 

Honestly if it came down to it, I think I would regret not saying anything more than the way I said it. And maybe this is a naïve outlook bc who actually gets to defend themselves when they’re getting canned or shut down or professionally reprimanded—take for example, curator Wanda Nanibush’s dismissal from the AGO in 2023 following her expression of solidarity with Palestinians²¹—but in a world of “sit down and blend in,” authenticity is like a lucky, kinda-smushed four-leaf clover.

PART 3: Humour, criticism, and the role of the art critic

One wonderful and blessed thing about humour is that it allows us to say things we may be too afraid to admit. For example, a lot of stand-up comedy functions as a form of social, political, and institutional critique, and often becomes a subversive tool used to expose the absurdity of the world in plain view. I love humour that makes you go, Wait a minute…you’re right! 

I’m reading The White Pube again and a huge grin is creeping over my face. I’m hunched over at my desk, chuckling (not creepily!). My back hurts but I’m gonna damn well sit here and finish this article! It’s culture shock—but like in the good way where it’s like—am I finally home?

Ok ok. I’m starting over here to ask—what if art criticism was actually fun to read? What if art criticism was flavorful? Or as TWP like to say, crunchy or chewy?! What if art criticism made you smile? Raise your eyebrow? Stare out of a window pensively?? What if art criticism surprised you? Made you outraged?? Made you want to start writing art criticism yourself in retaliation???

I think one of the key differences about reading The White Pube compared to other publications of art and/or cultural criticism is that they seem to express a genuine enjoyment of writing. I think that’s part of the reason why TWP really confuses some people. The actual shock and surprise that art critics could what? Be funny? Witty? Personable? Have a sense of humour? 

Now while I identify humour as a quality of TWP‘s work, I don’t believe it to be as specific or intentional as a methodology. However, (if I can be meta for a second), I do think it serves certain functions in the work from a writing perspective.

To that end, I’ve compiled a short list of reasons why art criticism can benefit from humour:

1. It allows the reader into the writer’s headspace, fostering moments of connection with writers and their audiences.
2. It makes critical writing more engaging and enjoyable to a broader readership.
3. It encourages art writers, critics, and reviewers to invest in describing affect and feeling. To locate themselves and their bodies in their encounters with the artwork, rather than writing from a place of detachment.
4. It encourages close and careful observation of the artwork and the skill of communicating its literal and affective qualities.

Similarly to the way comedians guide audiences through a joke, humour helps build rapport and trust in the writer: it helps audiences to see the author’s humanity. 

Additionally, I think moments of humour act as grounding points for the writer to check-in with the reader. It wouldn’t do in the creation of interesting and engaging writing, the way some academics are wont to do, (speaking as an academic myself), to take off like a shot, leaving the reader in the dust. 

On the points of affect, feeling, and close and careful observation, we can look to the tradition of observational humour as a point of reference. This style of humour is perfectly suited to art criticism since it’s based on analyses of everyday activities. 

In the art world or in the exhibition review, this might look like analyzing conventions of form or content—really questioning why this choice was made or what it really means.

There’s one more point I’d like to make on humour as a stylistic choice and this idea comes from Episode 14 of The White Pube podcast; that is, the distinction between verbal and ambient coherence.

In this ep., Zarina and Gabrielle discuss Gabrielle’s 2016 review of Jesse Darling’s exhibition, The Great Near, at Arcadia Missa. (This is the text that essentially canonized The White Pube).²² Later on, Zarina notes the text reads as though, “You’re spitting these words out like you don’t even know what they mean to you until they hit the page. It has like a poetry to it, that text.”²³

She elaborates, “Poetry doesn’t work as verbal coherence, it works, as like, ambient coherence, right? It’s about mood and flavour and feeling and vibes. It’s just like a vibey thing. I feel like that’s what this thing is doing–speaking in the same rhythm as the exhibition.”²⁴ Zarina analogizes this to the action of shaving down the sides of a bar of soap. The more you shave, with one imperfect simile after another, the more you start to close in on the feeling you are trying to convey. 

By reading The White Pube, I’ve been reintroduced to the idea of writing as a kind of search for language and means of expression. Again, I don’t think all art writing or criticism needs to be like this. But at the same time, if the goal of art criticism is to package a full and complete Thought, where does that leave the “Open to Interpretation” sign that gets asterisked onto, (depending on who you read ig), art at the end of The Discourse? 

To return to the question I posed at the beginning of this text of “who do art critics write for?” I’m no longer thinking of this as a question as it relates to the demographics of an audience, but more so what it means for the critic’s relationship to the audience as a speaker. 

In other words, who does The White Pube write for and why should anyone read them as opposed to the hundreds of other art critics currently active? If someone were to ask me, my answer would be this:

I think The White Pube has developed a new role for the art critic; where the critic is not an untouchable transcendent, not necessarily an expert or the ultimate arbiter of taste. Instead, the critic is your peer. The critic is your friend. TWP reviews evolved from text messages between ZM and GDLP. The very foundation of TWP is their friendship. TWP reads like how my friends and I talk about art. They’re love letters from that artsy pal of yours, updating u about her life.

As a reader, I feel a certain kinship with the writers of The White Pube. Maybe I resonate with this style of writing because I have a similar educational trajectory, having been art school-ed and then released into the wild. I loved art school (I still do), but I’m aware that it causes you to put on certain blinders to the ways things could be—to ways you could branch out instead of growing within the confines in which you’re placed. 

I don’t think that most readers of this text necessarily consider art critics to be their friends. The art critic sort of seems to live on another plane of existence, being more informed, cultured, and attentive to the nuances of ~art~ that any normie could possibly discern for themself.

Idk if I’m onto something here or not, but I’d like to be friends with The White Pube. I think we could be friends. We haven’t met before, but I think if we did, we would be. 

1. Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente, “About Us,” The White Pube, accessed October 2, 2024, https://thewhitepube.co.uk/about/.
2. Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, interview by Live Drønen, “Critics at Large,” Kunstkritikk / Nordic Art Review, February 17, 2023, https://kunstkritikk.com/critics-at-large.
3. The origin of the term “embodied criticism” came from a suggestion an audience member made following a lecture by TWP in 2018-2019 as a way to describe their writing practice. See: Gabrielle de la Puente, and Zarina Muhammad, interview by Hannah Vollam and Emily Palmer, “It’s just who we are –The White Pube’s somatic art criticism,” metropolis m, August 6, 2023, https://metropolism.com/nl/feature/49802_het_is_gewoon_wie_we_zijn_de_somatische_kunstkritiek_van_the_white_pube/.
4. Morgan Quaintance, “The New Conservatism: Complicity and the UK Art World’s Performance of Progression,” e-flux conversations, e-flux, October 2017, https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/the-new-conservatism-complicity-and-the-uk-art-worlds-performance-of-progression/7200.
5. The White Pube is funded solely through voluntary donations given by readers. Neither member of TWP have previous affiliations with the arts publishing industry. Additionally, TWP does not receive private or public funding for their activities. Previously, TWP offered a monthly Creatives Grant which was fully funded by the cultural platform, Creative Debuts. Since June 2024, the grant has been funded by TWP readers and supporters. (Creative Debuts funded 46 recipients from September 2020 to June 2024).
6. Quaintance, “The New Conservatism: Complicity and the UK Art World’s Performance of Progression.”
7. Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, interview by Live Drønen, “Critics at Large,” Kunstkritikk / Nordic Art Review, February 17, 2023, https://kunstkritikk.com/critics-at-large.
8. Ibid.
9. The more diplomatic expression of “artspeak” is “International Art English” (IAE), originally defined by Alix Rule and David Levine for Triple Canopy in 2012. Their analysis is really quite fascinating. Alix Rule and David Levine, “International Art English,” Triple Canopy, July 30, 2012, https://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/international_art_english.
10. As it happens, art criticism has been “in crisis” for a very long time. (My guess is probably for as long as it’s existed somewhat independently of art historical writing). As it also happens, this is a recurring topic that art critics seemingly lovee to write about, (see: this very text). Tbh, it feels like art criticism has never not been in crisis. Go figure.
11. https://thewhitepube.co.uk/funding-library/
12. I think the biggest scam of adulthood is the idea that fun is only for really old people and really young people.
13. Apologies for the Freud jumpscare!
14. A significant amount of TWP’s texts are also available as audio recordings on their Spotify channel.
15. James Elkins, “What Is Interesting Writing in Art History?: Chapter 5,” What Is Interesting Writing in Art History? (blog), 2024, https://305737.blogspot.com/2013/06/chapter-5.html.
16. Ibid.
17. Gabrielle de la Puente, “Maruo C. Martinez @ Unit London,” The White Pube, February 26, 2023, https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/mauro-c-martinez.
18. Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, interview by Live Drønen, “Critics at Large,” Kunstkritikk / Nordic Art Review, February 17, 2023, https://kunstkritikk.com/critics-at-large.
19. Note: This observation comes specifically from a Canadian/Torontonian context. I can’t say for certain if this atmosphere is widespread or not.
20. Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente, “Origin Story,” The White Pube, accessed October 1, 2024, https://thewhitepube.co.uk/podcasts/podcast-origin-story/.
21. In a deeply cringey and depressingly ironic move, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) fired Wanda Nanibush, its first curator ever for Indigenous art, for expressing solidarity with Indigenous populations in Palestine amid Israel’s decimation of the Gaza Strip. According to an article on Artnet, the AGO received a letter from Israel Museums and Arts, Canada (IMAAC) that accused Nanibush of “hate speech.” A month later, Nanibush departed after a “mutual decision.” … Right. Long story short, the whole situation was very suspicious and no one from the local arts/cultural community in Toronto was really buying it. If you want learn more, I’d recommend checking out these sources: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/fallout-over-the-surprise-departure-of-art-gallery-of-ontarios-indigenous-curator-escalates-2422632 and https://ago-no.ca/.
22. As the story goes, less than a year into writing The White Pube, Gabrielle publishes this short (literally two paragraph) review online and gets at-ed by Jesse Darling on Twitter. At the time, TWP had a very small following (like 100 followers) and had yet to really garner much notice, so they were surprised that the artist (or anyone) had responded. In her short yet frank review, Gabrielle muses on the pervasive “okay-ness” of the exhibition, dryly stating in the last line, “This exhibition is like a stomach settling.” In response to TWP’s critique, Darling replied via Twitter, “not facetious or ironic, this might be the harshest, most true review because the White Pube channel somatic currents, not just fucking with discourse.” Since this exchange, Darling’s tweet became a turning point for TWP in recognizing the importance of their writing and methodology. To read the full review, visit: Gabrielle de la Puente, “Jesse Darling @ Arcadia Missa,” The White Pube, January 4, 2016, https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/jesse-darling-arcadia-missa/.
23. Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, “REVISITED: THE ULTIMATE WHITE PUBE REVIEW,” The White Pube, December 2, 2023, https://thewhitepube.co.uk/podcasts/ultimate-twp-rerview/.
24. Ibid.

Feature Image: View from the author’s writing desk, October 2024. Photo courtesy of Madalyn K. Shaw.