Stuckism

Commentary: Historical Perspective

Richard Bledsoe Commentary, Culture War, Establishment, History, Optimism, Remodernism, Richard Bledsoe, Stuckism, Video
I recently posted this on Facebook, attached to a video of Stuckism founder Charles Thomson discussing art history (see video here)
Remodernism founder Charles Thomson discusses the changes happening in the art world, which is of course a harbinger for changes happening in society in general. This is a time of the failure of the “experts.”
The self-absorbed post modern/conceptual art bias of the cultural industries has created a contemporary art bubble, where essentially valueless works exist to pander to creative class shibboleths.
Valuelessness doesn’t refer to price-it means there is no intrinsic human worth in the artifice that is passed off as art all around us. It explains why visual art is so marginalized in our current culture-what the “experts” present fail to fulfill the human need for art. They attempt to substitute an intellectual approximation of art. And no one outside of their echo chamber is interested.
But this is why I’m optimistic about the future of art. The monopoly of thought is being broken. Individuals are creating and promoting work that does not cater to the establishment expectations for art, and does not rely on the official channels of distribution. We don’t need or want their approval-they’ve been dead wrong for decades.
The current culture of nihlism, aloofness, and conformity encouraged by elitists cannot endure historical perspective. Remodernism presents the alternative of positive creation.

Video: How Stuckism Got Its Name

Richard Bledsoe Commentary, Culture War, Establishment, Genres, History, Remodernism, Stuckism, Video

Remodernism grew out of a painterly art movement called Stuckism.

Like many art movements, the name of Stuckism grew out of an attempted criticism.

The Stuckists have generated much attention and controversy by their willingness to tackle art world dogma and celebrity worship. Stuckism is a much more recognizable “brand name” in the insular world of art, compared to the more generalized term of Remodernism.

Both movements were founded by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson, artists of great vision and integrity. They were able to precisely articulate the failings of establishment art, and suggest constructive alternatives.

The Stuckist Manifesto

Richard Bledsoe Commentary, Culture War, Establishment, Optimism, Quotes, Remodernism, Stuckism

Long but worthwhile-the original statement about the Stuckism by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. They later decided Stuckism was just a facet of the larger art world reformation of Remodernism. These two principled men were able to critique the folly the art world has become, while at the same time launching not one but two open source art movements that are destined to finally bury the rotting corpse of Post Modernism. I am grateful for their wisdom and generosity. -Richard Bledsoe

THE STUCKISTS

(est. 1999)

“Your paintings are stuck,

you are stuck!

Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!”

Tracey Emin

Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego–artist.

 

1.      Stuckism is the quest for authenticity.  By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.

2.      Painting is the medium of self–discovery.  It engages the person fully with a process of action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving breadth and detail.

3.      Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic.  It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public.  Modernism is a school of fragmentation — one aspect of art is isolated and exaggerated to detriment of the whole.  This is a fundamental distortion of the human experience and perpetrates an egocentric lie.

4.      Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.

5.      Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.

6.      The Stuckist paints pictures because painting pictures is what matters.

7.      The Stuckist is not mesmerised by the glittering prizes, but is wholeheartedly engaged in the process of painting. Success to the Stuckist is to get out of bed in the morning and paint.

8.      It is the Stuckist’s duty to explore his/her neurosis and innocence through the making of paintings and displaying them in public, thereby enriching society by giving shared form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.

9.      The Stuckist is not a career artist but rather an amateur (amare, Latin, to love) who takes risks on the canvas rather than hiding behind ready–made objects (e.g. a dead sheep).  The amateur, far from being second to the professional, is at the forefront of experimentation, unencumbered by the need to be seen as infallible.  Leaps of human endeavour are made by the intrepid individual, because he/she does not have to protect their status.  Unlike the professional, the Stuckist is not afraid to fail.

10.  Painting is mysterious.  It creates worlds within worlds, giving access to the unseen psychological realities that we inhabit.  The results are radically different from the materials employed.  An existing object (e.g. a dead sheep) blocks access to the inner world and can only remain part of the physical world it inhabits, be it moorland or gallery.  Ready–made art is a polemic of materialism.

11.  Post Modernism, in its adolescent attempt to ape the clever and witty in modern art, has shown itself to be lost in a cul–de–sac of idiocy.  What was once a searching and provocative process (as Dadaism) has given way to trite cleverness for commercial exploitation.  The Stuckist calls for an art that is alive with all aspects of human experience; dares to communicate its ideas in primeval pigment; and possibly experiences itself as not at all clever!

12.  Against the jingoism of Brit Art and the ego–artist.  Stuckism is an international non–movement.

13.  Stuckism is anti ‘ism’.  Stuckism doesn’t become an ‘ism’ because Stuckism is not Stuckism, it is stuck!

14.  Brit Art, in being sponsored by Saachis, main stream conservatism and the Labour government, makes a mockery of its claim to be subversive or avant–garde.

15.  The ego–artist’s constant striving for public recognition results in a constant fear of failure.  The Stuckist risks failure wilfully and mindfully by daring to transmute his/her ideas through the realms of painting.  Whereas the ego–artist’s fear of failure inevitably brings about an underlying self–loathing, the failures that the Stuckist encounters engage him/her in a deepening process which leads to the understanding of the futility of all striving.  The Stuckist doesn’t strive — which is to avoid who and where you are — the Stuckist engages with the moment.

16.  The Stuckist gives up the laborious task of playing games of novelty, shock and gimmick.  The Stuckist neither looks backwards nor forwards but is engaged with the study of the human condition.  The Stuckists champion process over cleverness, realism over abstraction, content over void, humour over wittiness and painting over smugness.

17.  If it is the conceptualist’s wish to always be clever, then it is the Stuckist’s duty to always be wrong.

18.  The Stuckist is opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system and calls for exhibitions to be held in homes and musty museums, with access to sofas, tables, chairs and cups of tea.  The surroundings in which art is experienced (rather than viewed) should not be artificial and vacuous.

19.  Crimes of education: instead of promoting the advancement of personal expression through appropriate art processes and thereby enriching society, the art school system has become a slick bureaucracy, whose primary motivation is financial.  The Stuckists call for an open policy of admission to all art schools based on the individual’s work regardless of his/her academic record, or so–called lack of it.

We further call for the policy of entrapping rich and untalented students from at home and abroad to be halted forthwith.

We also demand that all college buildings be available for adult education and recreational use of the indigenous population of the respective catchment area.  If a school or college is unable to offer benefits to the community it is guesting in, then it has no right to be tolerated.

20.  Stuckism embraces all that it denounces.  We only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!

Billy Childish

Charles Thomson

4.8.99

The following have been proposed to the Bureau of Inquiry for possible inclusion as Honorary Stuckists:

Katsushika Hokusai

Utagawa Hiroshige

Vincent van Gogh

Edvard Munch

Karl Schmidt–Rotluff

Max Beckman

Kurt Schwitters

Establishment “Art” : The Bricks Controversy of 1976

Richard Bledsoe Commentary, Culture War, Establishment, Quotes, Stuckism
“Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.”
Carl Andre “Equivalent VIII”
CURATOR: Behold, a three-dimensional manifestation of essential modular forms; a configuration of material purity actualized in an industrial aesthetic.
PUBLIC: But that’s just a stack of bricks on the floor.
CURATOR: You obviously do not understand art.
In 1976 London there was some tabloid excitement about the Tate Museum’s tax-payer funded purchase and display of Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII-a group of 120 bricks arranged in a rectangle. The piece was originally part of an installation in New York in 1966. When no one bought the work at the time, the artist returned the bricks to the supplier. He had to obtain new bricks for the Tate.
This piece has since been vandalized with paint, mocked in editorial cartoons, and met with general bewilderment. This hostility is seen as a badge of honor by elitist cultural types.
But the limitations of material as message render the piece itself as dull and inert. Without lots of art blather to support it, the piece is simply a stack of bricks out of its normal context, without any inherent interest of its own.
Carl Andre went on to be put on trial for the murder of his wife during a domestic dispute (he was cleared on the charges).
“The sensation of these pieces was that they come above your ankles…”
-Carl Andre