A salmagundi of tedium: The White Pube podcast reviewed

The White Pube started life as an influential art blog, written by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente. The name announced iconoclastic intent, playing on the White Cube gallery — which certainly deserves mockery (like a city law firm, it has outposts in Hong Kong and Manhattan). But The White Pube podcast is as inanely conventional as the gallery it makes fun of.

Each episode is an hour-long salvo by the hosts, or ‘art critic baby gods’, and as with their exhibition reviews — rated with emojis, not stars — conversation is appealingly informal and spontaneous. But they have little of interest to say, especially about their ostensible subject. Three episodes into this art criticism podcast, hardly an artwork has featured. Unsuspecting listeners must instead swallow a salmagundi of tedium, including a detailed account of the hosts’ driving lessons (Muhammad passed on the third attempt; de la Puente prefers manual to automatic; tune in for more revelations).

What they do discuss is pop culture, especially reality TV, stemming from their rejection of culture’s high/low divide (in their scheme: ‘pop or snobby’).