My Life as a Work of Art: The Art World from Start to Finish

Why is this art?

The world of contemporary art can seem intimidating, absurd, and self-obsessed, while the sums of money exchanged are baffling. Writing on contemporary art is often tortured and confused, ignoring the important questions:

What is contemporary art?

How does it relate to money and power?

How is it made?

Will it survive?

To answer these questions, Katya Tylevich and Ben Eastham offer a series of short biographies on eight great works of twenty-first century art by Martin Creed, Barry McGee, Camille Henrot, Marina Abramovic, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, Erwin Wurm, Michaël Borremans, and Gregory Crewdson. They follow these paintings, films, installations, experiences, experiments, sculptures, and performances through all the key stages of their existence so far – from the delicate quiet of the studio to the grand chaos of the art world.

A funny, engaging, personal guide through the world of art today, My Life as a Work of Art takes as its starting point the only really important thing: the work of art itself.

Ben Eastham is the co-founder and editor of The White Review. As an arts journalist he has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, Elephant, and the Art Newspaper. He has previously worked as a journalist at the BBC and curator at Hannah Barry, London.

Katya Tylevich is a writer and essayist. She is Editor-at-Large for Elephant and Contributing Editor for Mark. She contributes regularly to Domus, Pin-Up and Frame among other journals, and has contributed to books, monographs and exhibition catalogues on topics in art and architecture. With her brother Alexei, she founded Friend & Colleague, a platform for editions, fiction and special projects.