Stuckism (A Conversation)

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/2/1/58/720105/artm_a_00033.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 STUCKISM (A CONVERSATION) octavian es¸anu For tHe artmargins coLLective Stuckism is an international art community, founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. The initial group of British Stuckists began regularly to catch the attention of the media from the early 2000s, when they protested (dressed as clowns) in front of the Tate Gallery’s annual Turner Prize exhibition. Over the years since, the British Stuckists have depicted themselves as defenders of the fi ne arts, of traditional artistic skills, particularly of—mainly fi gurative—painting (one of their manifestos states that “artists who don’t paint aren’t artists”), of spirituality, authenticity, integrity, and truth in art. They have repeatedly denounced contemporary artists’ deskilling and the dematerialization of the artistic object, particularly targeting practices inspired by conceptual art and the ready-made. Stuckists in Britain have also been the most outspoken critics of British art world elites, condemning the sensationalist Brit artists or YBAs (Young British Artists), together with their corporate and government patrons.1 Historicist ideas—albeit of a conservative tone—play an important role in the rhetoric of the Stuckists, fi nding expression in one of their key concepts: “remodernism.” The Stuckists regard themselves as “remodernists” who seek to compensate for what they regard as a 1 The word Stuckism was coined by Thomson and Childish, whom the YBA celebrity Tracey Emin (Childish’s one-time girlfriend) once accused of being “stuck! stuck! stuck!” For an extensive bibliography on Stuckism, see www.stuckism.com. 58 © 2013 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology morally defunct postmodernism. Remodernism is often understood as a kind of contemporary Renaissance, and the Stuckists do indeed see themselves as drawing on or reinterpreting historical modernism in such a way as to avoid the profanities of postmodernism and to restore genuine artistic, spiritual, and humanistic values. In this way, Stuckism issues a contemporary rappel à l’ordre, echoing some of the 20th-century revisionist art movements that critiqued the ideology of modernism from a conservative standpoint. Stuckism has united dis- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/2/1/58/720105/artm_a_00033.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 senting voices in many other provinces of the global art world. Today there are 233 groups of Stuckists in fifty-two countries. The international success of Stuckism also may be considered the direct result of the emergence and growth of the World Wide Web, and Stuckists often stress its importance in promoting their cause. This makes Stuckism perhaps the only widely known contemporary “ism” that has come of age with the Internet. Along with its many global supporters and followers, Stuckism also has its critics—not primarily within the much-loathed art world establishment, which for the most part ignores Stuckism, but among those who might appear to be on the same side of the barricade. The London Surrealist Group, for instance, has been one of the harshest critics of Stuckism, seeing in it a mirror image of Britart, a conservative child of the art establishment that deploys vague and undefined notions of “spirituality” and “truth” in order to voice resentment or to compete for the same share of the commercial cake.2 This short introduction cannot fully account for the complexities at work in this global art network, but a few parallels to other historical art movements can in any case be drawn. What, for instance, Surre- alism and Stuckism have in common is not only their “-ism,” a suffix that has traditionally connoted widely embraced ideas and a strong ide- ological current. Both have mobilized international communities of artists, both have positioned themselves in opposition to an establishment, and both see art as an effective instrument of social revival. But there are also significant differences. While the surrealists have formu- lated an elaborate aesthetic and political theory firmly grounded in Freudo-Marxism, and in some cases have proposed clear political goals, the Stuckists’ humanism remains indefinite, revolving primarily 2 London Surrealist Group, “Coming Unstuck,” April 2004, accessed July 18, 2012, http:// anu | stuckism (a conversation) ¸ londonsurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/2006/04/12/coming-unstuck-tract-2-april-2004/. e s 59 around variously defined notions of “truth,” “skill,” or “spirituality.” In many cases, furthermore, Stuckism does not provide an articulate aesthetic critique of its archenemy, conceptual art, and the latter’s impact on artistic labor; the Stuckists’ interest in mounting a convincing social critique of the current corporate takeover of major contemporary art practices and institutions also tends to be limited. This may come as a result of the Stuckists’ lack of a common political or even spiritual base, which again contrasts with the Surrealists’ shared militant Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/2/1/58/720105/artm_a_00033.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Marxism. That said, one has to take into account the fact that Stuckism does not insist on being an intellectual movement; on the contrary, most Stuckists prefer “sticky paint” to words and ideas, or the “expression of feelings” to “empty concepts.” Stuckists are expert unveilers of the central cultural contradictions in our late phase of global capitalism, marking out, so to speak, its landmines. They have raised a range of questions very relevant for artists today: On the global level, for exam- ple, who decides who can or cannot call himself or herself an artist? Where can an artist focused on traditional media turn for support? What is the global impact of the dematerialization of the artistic object and the deskilling of artistic labor? What might be the relationship between financial speculation and the “speculations” of conceptual art? Most importantly perhaps—and in contrast to the left-wing artivism that has theorized its way around the notion of multitude and solidarity in global institutional venues—Stuckism has managed to provide a feasible model of artistic cooperation on a global level, a model that perhaps should be taken into account. ///////////////////// Octavian Es¸anu: For many, Stuckism is known for its call to spirituality, truth, and integrity in art. On the artistic level you have insisted on a return to painting, to the figurative in art, to the prevalence of subject matter over technique or form. You oppose conceptualism; you don’t like the ready-made; you cannot stand the sensationalist Young British Artists and perhaps their precursor, Duchamp. Your emphasis on subject matter and truthful content in painting often makes me think of the Soviet Socialist Realists. artmargins 2:1 Why this sudden interest in pictorial content and figuration? 60 GOdfrEy BlOw (australia): Your comparison of the Stuckists with the Soviet Socialist Realists is not very appropriate since the latter were artists entirely supportive of and supported by the Soviet government. In our case the reverse is true. I think that the Stuckists occupy an opposite position today, when governments and states run such key institutions as Tate Gallery, or when they support and promote the current crop of YBA (Young British Artists), or when the contemporary art world is run by an elite of self-interested curators, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/2/1/58/720105/artm_a_00033.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 who alone decide who can exhibit and whose works must be bought by collectors. NevdOn Jamgochian (BanGkOk, thailand): This is not a sudden interest in figuration and content (and I should add, skill-based art) but rather a representation of the continued interest in representational art, albeit with more critical cachet than at any time since the 1930s. What is different is that the hucksterism of conceptual art has shown enough flaws that it is now legitimately assailable by art groups, and moreover the unfair linkage between realism and fascism has recently faded in the public mind. People do not flock to conceptual shows and they never have or will. The dominance of conceptual art has made visual art a self- referential backwater and many people—not just the Stuckists—have realized it. Visual art has never been less popular and conceptualism is one of the main reasons for this. The reason that conceptual art was such an unarguable force in the post–World War II world was its rejec- tion by fascist regimes—hence the unfair linkage between totalitarian governments and realism in the critical mind. In popular culture, conceptual art has never resonated beyond freak show appeal. lapskinG hamEd Dehnavi (Tehran, iran): Regarding our interest in the figurative, I believe that it is easier for the public to relate to figurative rather than to abstract art because we live in a physical, three-dimensional world. On the other hand, representing a three- dimensional world on the two-dimensional surface of the canvas is in fact an abstraction, so Stuckism is the combination of the abstract and the figurative in art. artista Eli (mÁlaGa, spain): You state in your question that the anu | stuckism (a conversation) ¸ Stuckists remind you of the Soviet Socialist Realists and I agree with e s 61 you in certain respects, especially when it comes to the notion of equality. Most of the Stuckists are not in the privileged position of being able to buy their way into the contemporary art institutions. I have been personally approached to show my work in several prestigious galleries on the condition of paying a higher fee than I could afford—so, opportunities may be available to us but finances are not. Also, many Stuckists have been rejected by galleries because of existing age dis- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/artm/article-pdf/2/1/58/720105/artm_a_00033.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 criminations.

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