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Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York
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.
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.
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.
- GenresArtNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
Published July 2, 2024
12 people are currently reading
183 people want to read
About the author
Marin Kosut
1 book2 followersMarin Kosut lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Purchase College, State University of New York.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 21, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC!
There’s something patently absurd about Marin Kosut’s Art Monster, but that is perhaps the book’s greatest strength.
Let’s get it out of the way—art is kind of ridiculous, particularly the highly performative variety Marin Kosut describes in this book. It’s often incomprehensible and estranging, but it’s also completely necessary.
The same could be said for Art Monster, a book ostensibly about art and New York but really about much more and also nothing in particular.
It’s a glorious mess.
The book wrestles with the commercialization of artistic practice—the need to turn everything into a “hustle” as a “creative.” Refreshingly (and annoyingly), Kosut scoffs at the mentality that everyone is an artist. Her exclusionary attitude is grating, but it feels like a definitional necessity. We can’t talk about what we can’t name. That said, for a book that positions itself as a critique of capitalism’s influence on art, she’s arguably too preoccupied with production and the social capital of the artist’s role. While she would—and does—claim the opposite, much of the book feels like an attempt to have it both ways.
For a book about New York, it’s also odd how poorly the city seems to fit in here. Each chapter about it feels tangential, even when the author attempts to broach substantial analysis. Kosut writes about gentrification pushing people out, and she frames it as a crisis because artists aren’t able to create in the same way once they leave—they need the city. But do they? Isn’t art a response to the conditions surrounding it? Again, Kosut slips into a focus on production—art isn’t lost, but a certain kind of output and lifestyle might be. It’s a self-serving eulogy. Normally I’m skeptical of critiques that an author is too privileged to broach certain subjects, but that feels like the case here. So much of the book feels disingenuous as Kosut mourns barriers to outsider art with the liminal privilege of an insider. She has a great deal of social—and literal—mobility due to her academic status, and while I think the systemic issues she addresses are certainly problems, we never see them as such—they appear only as problems to her. It gets extra sticky when she explicitly identifies artists as a minoritized class alongside the “working class and the undocumented.” Yikes.
Art Monster is also odd in that it reads like the excessive ramblings of a corkboard conspiracy theorist, with fraying threads barely connecting all of the ideas. Each chapter has a topic, but it is often disposed of quickly and violently to entertain Kosut’s other thoughts. It frequently doesn’t work. This is a semi-academic text with the constant, button-pushing digressions of a provocateur—what if COVID was political? Maybe we shouldn’t trust doctors. It gets to a point where it’s actually difficult to tell what she’s saying, and I write that as someone who reads academic texts for fun.
This lack of focus is further compounded by recurrent, explicit rebuttals to early reviewers who found her arguments untenable. Rather than clarify her points, she resorts to little more than, “well, they’re wrong.” I’m not sure how a book can hold together when its chief advocates—friends and early readers–are viewed as antagonistic.
And yet, despite all these critiques, I found myself really energized by parts of Art Monster. Marin Kosut has an irresistible conviction about the importance of art, particularly with how it interacts with different kinds of capital. The implications of that conviction are often quite muddled—as noted, this book makes almost no sense—but I still found myself drawn into its orbit. The author’s discussions on artistic practice are exciting, tapping into the incongruity between the need to create and public disinterest. There are moments when the free-wheeling anecdotes transform into something wonderful amidst the chaos.
In the end, like all art, Art Monster invites and resists a single simple question: What does it mean?
Maybe nothing. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we can’t know.
I think readers’ enjoyment will hinge entirely on whether they need an answer to the question.
There’s something patently absurd about Marin Kosut’s Art Monster, but that is perhaps the book’s greatest strength.
Let’s get it out of the way—art is kind of ridiculous, particularly the highly performative variety Marin Kosut describes in this book. It’s often incomprehensible and estranging, but it’s also completely necessary.
The same could be said for Art Monster, a book ostensibly about art and New York but really about much more and also nothing in particular.
It’s a glorious mess.
The book wrestles with the commercialization of artistic practice—the need to turn everything into a “hustle” as a “creative.” Refreshingly (and annoyingly), Kosut scoffs at the mentality that everyone is an artist. Her exclusionary attitude is grating, but it feels like a definitional necessity. We can’t talk about what we can’t name. That said, for a book that positions itself as a critique of capitalism’s influence on art, she’s arguably too preoccupied with production and the social capital of the artist’s role. While she would—and does—claim the opposite, much of the book feels like an attempt to have it both ways.
For a book about New York, it’s also odd how poorly the city seems to fit in here. Each chapter about it feels tangential, even when the author attempts to broach substantial analysis. Kosut writes about gentrification pushing people out, and she frames it as a crisis because artists aren’t able to create in the same way once they leave—they need the city. But do they? Isn’t art a response to the conditions surrounding it? Again, Kosut slips into a focus on production—art isn’t lost, but a certain kind of output and lifestyle might be. It’s a self-serving eulogy. Normally I’m skeptical of critiques that an author is too privileged to broach certain subjects, but that feels like the case here. So much of the book feels disingenuous as Kosut mourns barriers to outsider art with the liminal privilege of an insider. She has a great deal of social—and literal—mobility due to her academic status, and while I think the systemic issues she addresses are certainly problems, we never see them as such—they appear only as problems to her. It gets extra sticky when she explicitly identifies artists as a minoritized class alongside the “working class and the undocumented.” Yikes.
Art Monster is also odd in that it reads like the excessive ramblings of a corkboard conspiracy theorist, with fraying threads barely connecting all of the ideas. Each chapter has a topic, but it is often disposed of quickly and violently to entertain Kosut’s other thoughts. It frequently doesn’t work. This is a semi-academic text with the constant, button-pushing digressions of a provocateur—what if COVID was political? Maybe we shouldn’t trust doctors. It gets to a point where it’s actually difficult to tell what she’s saying, and I write that as someone who reads academic texts for fun.
This lack of focus is further compounded by recurrent, explicit rebuttals to early reviewers who found her arguments untenable. Rather than clarify her points, she resorts to little more than, “well, they’re wrong.” I’m not sure how a book can hold together when its chief advocates—friends and early readers–are viewed as antagonistic.
And yet, despite all these critiques, I found myself really energized by parts of Art Monster. Marin Kosut has an irresistible conviction about the importance of art, particularly with how it interacts with different kinds of capital. The implications of that conviction are often quite muddled—as noted, this book makes almost no sense—but I still found myself drawn into its orbit. The author’s discussions on artistic practice are exciting, tapping into the incongruity between the need to create and public disinterest. There are moments when the free-wheeling anecdotes transform into something wonderful amidst the chaos.
In the end, like all art, Art Monster invites and resists a single simple question: What does it mean?
Maybe nothing. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we can’t know.
I think readers’ enjoyment will hinge entirely on whether they need an answer to the question.
March 4, 2024
Art Monster - On the Impossibility of New York by Marin Kosut is a fascinating, vivid insight into the highly competitive art world and those who dedicate their life to their art, often consigned to working on the margins of the industry and rarely achieving a foothold to get themselves seen.
Centred around the New York art scene Kosut examines how creativitiy is being pushed aside for a more professional approach to the creation of art and reflects on how this detracts from the core tenet of art itself, expression and creativity without restraint.
Beautifully written, empathetic, passionate and highly knowledgable, Art Monster is a fascinating work and a valuable insight for all students (and lovers) of art and indeed, fringe art awy from the heavily advertised art we are told we should like, instead of seeking the art that we honestly enjoy
Brilliant
Thank you to Netgalley, Columbia University Press and the author Marin Kosut for this fascinating ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own
Centred around the New York art scene Kosut examines how creativitiy is being pushed aside for a more professional approach to the creation of art and reflects on how this detracts from the core tenet of art itself, expression and creativity without restraint.
Beautifully written, empathetic, passionate and highly knowledgable, Art Monster is a fascinating work and a valuable insight for all students (and lovers) of art and indeed, fringe art awy from the heavily advertised art we are told we should like, instead of seeking the art that we honestly enjoy
Brilliant
Thank you to Netgalley, Columbia University Press and the author Marin Kosut for this fascinating ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own
March 1, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley, Columbia University Press, and most of all, Marin Kosut.
Kosut’s ‘Art Monster’ is golden syrup for the brain. With a poetic prowess that rivals many contemporary writers, the author disperses seeds of wonder. From Valerie Solanas to pay phone art, Kosut somehow manages to plug her brain into the readers.
If you read just one non-fiction book this year, make it this one. I have visited New York three times in my life, and ‘Art Monster’ adeptly portrays the saccharine romantics of the narratives that surround it. At one point, Kosut discusses the class differences in New York, and how the language of wealth can be often limiting.
The chapter I enjoyed the most was the one on The Chelsea Hotel. That hotel is a kind of mythical creature for an artist, and Marin Kosut details this just as well, often interspersing references that pique the readers interest.
‘Art Monster’ is an absolute feat of poetic memoir meets cultural criticism. The author is removed from the book just enough to ensure that it is does not become an autobiography. Marin Kosut is a phenomenal writer and I am eager to read more of their work.
Kosut’s ‘Art Monster’ is golden syrup for the brain. With a poetic prowess that rivals many contemporary writers, the author disperses seeds of wonder. From Valerie Solanas to pay phone art, Kosut somehow manages to plug her brain into the readers.
If you read just one non-fiction book this year, make it this one. I have visited New York three times in my life, and ‘Art Monster’ adeptly portrays the saccharine romantics of the narratives that surround it. At one point, Kosut discusses the class differences in New York, and how the language of wealth can be often limiting.
The chapter I enjoyed the most was the one on The Chelsea Hotel. That hotel is a kind of mythical creature for an artist, and Marin Kosut details this just as well, often interspersing references that pique the readers interest.
‘Art Monster’ is an absolute feat of poetic memoir meets cultural criticism. The author is removed from the book just enough to ensure that it is does not become an autobiography. Marin Kosut is a phenomenal writer and I am eager to read more of their work.
January 27, 2025
Love that this book on art isn't selling me some romantic story of artists being scrappy and persevering despite their challenges. In fact, quite the opposite.
What I liked is the re-definition of an "artist". Being an artist is something people willingly opt into, and Art Monster details the actual, material RISK involved with that designation in dirty, debt fueled, uncertain detail. No seven figure auction paintings and art-world savvy in this, thank god.
To pick at this book - I don't think I needed any of the reflections on gentrification. Heard it, seen it, lived it, and I don't need any more words on the page to tell me that Bushwick used to be different! affordable! more dangerous! etc etc. Who really cares? Or, a better question - who didn't already know?
Overall a good read, and it will offer good insights for anyone who dares to consider themselves an artist.
What I liked is the re-definition of an "artist". Being an artist is something people willingly opt into, and Art Monster details the actual, material RISK involved with that designation in dirty, debt fueled, uncertain detail. No seven figure auction paintings and art-world savvy in this, thank god.
To pick at this book - I don't think I needed any of the reflections on gentrification. Heard it, seen it, lived it, and I don't need any more words on the page to tell me that Bushwick used to be different! affordable! more dangerous! etc etc. Who really cares? Or, a better question - who didn't already know?
Overall a good read, and it will offer good insights for anyone who dares to consider themselves an artist.
January 22, 2025
this is what its like. gentrified gentrifier manifesto.
February 7, 2025
There’s a constant tension in this book between the grittiness of one’s living situation and how much it lends to the realness of their art. I think she does a good job holding many thoughts and feelings at once - trying to define an Artist with a capital ‘A’ from someone who is less spiritually driven to constantly create, wanting to make enough money to not worry about money but at the same time demonizing anyone who is born financially stable or actively working to become financially stable (capitalists! but don’t we all have to be to avoid struggle?), overly-romanticizing “the old days” of NYC while also critiquing it.
I take issue with how pretentious the writing is, though. Many cringey and eye-rolling parts. Turning an abandoned pay phone (pay fauxyn) into an informal gallery with a vague intention of highlighting the nursing home beside it that was closed by developers and displaced its inhabitants. I kept thinking - but did you know them? Do they know you? You’re just another white lady that’s moved to their neighborhood because it’s affordable. Is this having any impact or is it just moral posturing? Talking about being an “art couple”, making shirts that say “renter”, complaining about having to clean up and maintain the tiny gallery you voluntarily started….ok.
It’s also funny to shake your fist at gentrification when we all know how it starts - white artists move to a rough neighborhood and make it an up-and-coming place to be. She did this first hand. Somehow she’s both proud to flaunt this “back in my day” storyline while also hating how neighborhoods have changed. That’s the story of NYC forever.
Who doesn’t get stars in their eyes for the bygone era of the “real” New York, though? I think we all wish we could’ve experienced the romanticized the 70s-00s art and music scenes.
This book wrestles with and picks apart a lot of angles of what it’s like to be an artist in New York, and it has merits for that. But ultimately it feels like she’s moved here to become one of many cool guy gate keepers of her own mini DIY gallery environment. She’s in on the joke and you’re not.
I take issue with how pretentious the writing is, though. Many cringey and eye-rolling parts. Turning an abandoned pay phone (pay fauxyn) into an informal gallery with a vague intention of highlighting the nursing home beside it that was closed by developers and displaced its inhabitants. I kept thinking - but did you know them? Do they know you? You’re just another white lady that’s moved to their neighborhood because it’s affordable. Is this having any impact or is it just moral posturing? Talking about being an “art couple”, making shirts that say “renter”, complaining about having to clean up and maintain the tiny gallery you voluntarily started….ok.
It’s also funny to shake your fist at gentrification when we all know how it starts - white artists move to a rough neighborhood and make it an up-and-coming place to be. She did this first hand. Somehow she’s both proud to flaunt this “back in my day” storyline while also hating how neighborhoods have changed. That’s the story of NYC forever.
Who doesn’t get stars in their eyes for the bygone era of the “real” New York, though? I think we all wish we could’ve experienced the romanticized the 70s-00s art and music scenes.
This book wrestles with and picks apart a lot of angles of what it’s like to be an artist in New York, and it has merits for that. But ultimately it feels like she’s moved here to become one of many cool guy gate keepers of her own mini DIY gallery environment. She’s in on the joke and you’re not.
July 10, 2024
For this former (disillusioned) gallery girl, encountering Kosut's book was like coming back to life, like gasping for air and finding your lungs deliciously re-filled, like getting a jab of anti-venom just in time. Oh, right, I DO love art (and artists too). I just hate what's been done to art and the people who make it by the market and markets, by ciphers of "importance" like fame and fame-chasing, and, most of all, by the material conditions of making that've tried so hard to make art-making a rich-person's game. Plus, Kosut has read her Beaudrilliard and her Marx and her Durkheim and her Benjamin and her Sontag and etc so you don't have to (unless of course you're into that sort of thing). I once wistfully scribbled "make art not science" in the margins of an Academic journal article. It was wistful because I didn't want to abandon what I'd learned in the hallowed halls of Academe, but I was really sick of all the didactic BS as well as it's impenetrability. Kosut rescues the best from those hallowed halls and makes a run for it. The result is a funny, smart, poignant and - wait for it - super-readable jewel. I can't wait to see what she does next. (PS: the reason that I finished this book before its official pub date is that I'd pre-ordered from the publisher, and it came early so, no, this review is not a plant).
June 12, 2024
A long time ago i dreamed of being an artist and living in New York. It was well before the gentrification and sex&the city.
I think that when you're dreaming of being an artist you dream of New York as the myths lived or live there.
Fun fan is that I find NY a sort of Shangri La that is in your mind and sometimes contact the real city.
It can be very expensive and a lot of people could not afford to live there but dreams are not based on business plans.
This is an interesting book, a well researched and thought provoking one
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine
I think that when you're dreaming of being an artist you dream of New York as the myths lived or live there.
Fun fan is that I find NY a sort of Shangri La that is in your mind and sometimes contact the real city.
It can be very expensive and a lot of people could not afford to live there but dreams are not based on business plans.
This is an interesting book, a well researched and thought provoking one
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine
December 5, 2024
I thought the writing in this book was beautiful and the author sometimes phrased ideas in a uniquely striking way. Although the book was well done at the word level, at the paragraph level, I found it fairly disjointed. The main point (capitalism is bad for art) didn't feel like the author had anything new to say.
July 28, 2024
Seamlessly transitioning between poetic musings & personal narrative, Art Monster is a hard to put down read, packed to the gills with valuable observations & hard wrought knowledge. Through a series of non linear short economic chapters, Marin Kosut sets her keen eye on the hydraheaded workings & participants of the contemporary art world in New York City.
As a musician who has been living & working in the City for over twenty years, I found the book both educational & essential. For anyone with a casual to obsessive interest in art making, I highly recommend this book!
As a musician who has been living & working in the City for over twenty years, I found the book both educational & essential. For anyone with a casual to obsessive interest in art making, I highly recommend this book!
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November 6, 2024A fascinating exploration of gentrification, what it means to be an artist, and creating alternatives to boring white boxes. Would be great to read alongside Sarah Schulman's Gentrification of the Mind.
January 1, 2026
complicated. so many aspects of institution work make me want to throw up from holding onto nervous tension and it's kind of a bad time for this actually. there's a lot to critique & Kosut does so with fervour. sad to be a fool choosing gallery work for love but there is nothing else
7/10
7/10
October 30, 2024
I strive to hate the things I’m passionate about this much
November 16, 2024
zajebiste
November 7, 2024
I’m thinking about Marin Kosut’s “Art Monster” as I walk through a former high school turned art gallery in Claverack, N.Y.
I’m thinking about who decides what is and what isn’t art; what is a well-curated show and what isn’t; about who gets to make art and who doesn’t. I’m thinking about gallery spaces that aren’t traditional gallery spaces, that aren’t white cubes, as Kosut refers to professionally-run galleries. I'm considering what she would consider this gallery to be, as it sits in a repurposed space, but is being run by a collaboration of six galleries.
I’m observing others observe the art, or not observe it, as they gawk at the rooms, try to figure out what purpose they once served ... Read full review at https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_a...
I’m thinking about who decides what is and what isn’t art; what is a well-curated show and what isn’t; about who gets to make art and who doesn’t. I’m thinking about gallery spaces that aren’t traditional gallery spaces, that aren’t white cubes, as Kosut refers to professionally-run galleries. I'm considering what she would consider this gallery to be, as it sits in a repurposed space, but is being run by a collaboration of six galleries.
I’m observing others observe the art, or not observe it, as they gawk at the rooms, try to figure out what purpose they once served ... Read full review at https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_a...
December 25, 2024
I can't think about "As I Lay Dying" and Faulkner's 3.72 rating.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews