reviews BookS
What do you do when you leave art school?
Arriviste is an enjoyably rambling satire by and
about a recent London art-school graduate and
her entourage of vacuous would-be artists and
random Shoreditch twats. Protagonist Alice’s
East End boho life is one immediately familiar to
fans of cult TV sitcom Nathan Barley (2005) – a
aggressive, while Alice frets about a stylish
world of style over content and all-consuming
theme, mainly so that she can plan the clothes
social snobbery.
and accessories. Today’s young British artists
Alice shares the prerequisite grubby
are stuck in limbo land: between the legacy of
loft apartment in Hackney Wick with two ex-
the Frieze generation’s go-getting-ness and an
students, who languorously alternate between
overstretched art market that pays lip service to
flicking through porn mags, foreign editions of
newness but is too busy with the next art fair to
Vogue and the latest Artforum. Her friends, who
visit every artist-run space in Hackney.
all aspire to look the same but a bit different,
Cushioned by credit cards and parental
have interchangeable names like Lucy, Lara and
handouts, not much bread-and-butter work gets
Laura, and worry about the rightful hairstyle
done either. Having a job is decidedly uncool and
successor to the mullet, and whether Krakow is
bourgeois, especially if you’ve got a rich boyfriend
the new East Berlin. They might style themselves
or a trust fund. Possessing neither, Alice half-
as young, beautiful and arrogant, but over-self-
heartedly toys with the idea of a job, weighing up
consciousness and spoiled-brat laziness prevents
the glamour factor of the various low-skilled jobs
Alice and her gang from actually doing anything
and internships for which the art graduate might
radical. The tone of the book is set somewhere
qualify – gallery girl, magazine intern, cinema
between the back-stabbing materialism of
usherette – against the responsibility-delaying
American Pyscho (1991) and the nihilistic London
potentials of a residency or an MA. Like many
grubbiness of Withnail & I (1987).
a disappointed idealist, she ends up working in a
Not much art gets made. In an attempt
Waterstone’s bookshop.
to reconcile her predominant interest in designer
At the end of the novel, it’s unclear whether
fashion with her ideals as a painter, Alice argues
or not Alice will make it as an artist. Having been
for a revival of beauty in art. As a self-proclaimed
offered so little passion from our protagonist,
Romantic, her hero is Fragonard, although
however, it’s unlikely any reader would care. The
her main cultural outings are spent prancing
point we’re left with is that the pressure to live
around the tea rooms and gift shops of boutique
an appropriately artistic lifestyle has become
museums like the Wallace Collection. She
a greater preoccupation than the hard graft of
spends the duration of the book contemplating
actually making any art. If getting a few column
an enigmatic fourth painting, while she and
inches in Time Out will certainly draw the envy
flatmate Chris discuss curating another exhibition
of your peers, the right outfit and after-party
unlikely to ever materialise. Macho conceptualist
invitation more than compensates in terms of
Chris wants the show to be controversial and
effort. Arriviste is no literary masterpiece, but its
poignant observations make it a cautionary tale
for any student dreaming of a ‘career’ in art.
Jennifer Thatcher
ArrIVIsTe
By Susan Finlay
Five Lines in the Sand, £16.99 (hardcover)
Artreview 132
JAN_books.indd.indd 132 4/12/07 15:12:52
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142