A question on the Stuckist Manifesto

i read on another stuckist site that "if you don't sculpt, you aren't a sculptor." I think the same applies for all the other categories of art.

Then shouldn't it be 'if you don't paint, you arn't a painter'?

I have a hard time accepting painters as the only true artists.

i think it was just an umbrella term that went wrong.
Painters were one of the very first to be named "artists" in the beginning of time.. but now they share that term with people who have become innovative and conjured up new forms of art.
So everyone has a right to be named as such.
Anyway, there are stuckist film-makers and photographers and such..but if you still don't agree with that phrase.. be a revolutionary and start your own movement. :)

Hi.

The manifesto is polemical in nature, but it must be taken into context. Billy Childish had a personal history with Tracey Emin going back to the early 80s (they were lovers and hung out in the same art scene.) Childish heavily influenced her work. From what I've read, after they split up, they continued to have a rocky relationship, lots of spats at art gelleries and the like. In the 90s, she moved into conceptualism, and became a celebrity of the "Brit Art" scene. She accused Childish of being "stuck stuck stuck" in his painting, so he, Charles Thomson and others took this word to be the foundation of their new remodernist movement.

Modernism has a history of art movements gaining momentum when a firm statement such as a manifesto is released, and a name identifying an art style is introduced. Manifestos are political in nature, and, given the popularity of Emin and her conceptualist contemporaries, and her sworn disdain for Childish's art, postmodernism became the primary target in the manifesto. That is, they needed to distinguish their movement, and do it by sharply contrasting themselves with postmodern art forms. So, I think we can look at the rhetoric as being a document that integrated all of the factors above.

It must be noted that Childish is also a musician, poet and novelist (though he has left the group), and Thomson is a poet.

So we may be able to look at it as a rhetorical slip in their battle against postmodernism. Or...

Painting may be considered one of the "purest" art forms, especially when practiced in the spiritual Stuckist style. Concept does not drive the painting, feeling and intuition does. With other forms of art, the Stuckists may view them as being less "pure," or involving more conscious cognitive processes (eg. writing), or being too much of a construct (eg. film, music). These other art forms seem more susceptible to commercial exploitation, in that, once an artist is discovered, her work may become tainted by the manipulation of capitalists, the market and the seduction of fame.

I rub this explanation all over my hot belly meats like so many soft sweet marshmallows

Artists who don't paint aren't artists

There are some very intelligent comments so far on this statement from the manifesto. The art world doesn't seem to get so hot under the collar when people make equally (and oppositely) extreme statements such as "painting is dead", or "boring repetitive bits of video which would normally end up on the cutting room floor are actually incredibly significant if you call them art and say you're an artist" (OK that's not how it's normally phrased).

It's curious how much focus is given to one point out of a twenty point manifesto, and that no one ever takes any notice of the concluding point "Stuckism embraces all that it denounces....etc".
What could be more tolerant and open-minded than that?

I had a debate once with a curator from the Ikon Gallery who said the manifesto was a bit dumb in its heavy-handed blatant statements. I pointed out to him that if he were presented with any other art world document he would apply a sophisticated deconstruction of it with a view to such tactics as double bluff, irony, deliberate provocation, knowing use of the naive etc.

He suddenly realised he'd been 'had' and fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

The statement "Artists who don't paint aren't artists" is logically impossible; it contradicts itself within six words. That doesn't mean I object to people interpreting it in the way they normally do, and it doesn't mean that I don't believe the implication they get from it. It just means that that actual statement doesn't say what people think it says. But it does a good job nevertheless.

"The Stuckists... don't call lines of words on a page contexualised, site-specific, spacially-challenging, interventional text-based art. They call them poems. And they call a dirty bed something in need of a washing machine." (Wideshut magazine issue one. See www.wideshut.com)

I think there's a lot of activity going by the name of art which should be called something else, as it's not deep or significant enough to be called art. We do clown protests outside the Turner Prize. Some people would say this is performance art (the proto-Mu group gave me a conceptual art award for it). I call it a protest.

There's so much bullshit and pretentiousness and self-delusion in the art world, that something drastic needs to be done. Anything less and people will fudge the issue. There's a lot of fear about making judgements and setting standards. We've had the time of anything goes (apart of course from saying that not everything goes - that's the thing that isn't allowed to go). The cutting edge is now finding value, perception and discrimination.

I've been through the whole conceptual, do-whatever thing years ago. I saw it had finished in historical terms. I just recognised what needed to be done now.

Best

Charles Thomson

Co-founder, Stuckists

Re: Artists who don't paint aren't artists

Charles,

I'm the founder of this community, and I thank you for stopping by and offering your comments. I'm assuming you were Googling for Stuckist sites, or were hipped by an artist in the Stuckist movement.

Manifestos are great for sparking revolts, and coalescing movements. Beyond that, I see them as having little real value. Too often the most impressionable persons who gravitate towards manfiestos take them literally and adopt them as dogma. This is where the artist can, if you'll pardon the expression, get really 'stuck,' as they're limiting their growth by operating within a narrow set of parameters.

Take for example filmmaker Lars Von Trier, instigator of the much-ballyhooed Dogme 95 manifesto. He made two films that fell under these guidelines, and influenced the aesthetics of several dozen other films. A few years later, he moved on. Some thought he was a traitor. No: he is an artist that is evolving and exploring other methods of making film. It seems the lesser filmmakers, the ones who are less experienced, or more inclined to follow the lead of others, take such manifestos much more seriously, for longer periods of time. Frankly, it would get old pretty fast if some Danish wanker spent his entire life making depressing "realistic" films with handheld cameras over and over again.

The real artist experiments, pushes herself, grows, changes, evolves.

I call a lot of what I do "performance art," because it is an umbrella term that covers a lot of things, and takes on more significance to me personally than if I called what I do "music with theatrical elements" or "pranksterism in costumes" or "comedy acts." I don't think anybody gives a shit what I call myself, and they can call me whatever they want in any given context in which I perform. I don't see it as carrying pretension, as I feel I am sincere in most everything I do. It certainly hasn't advanced my "career." I never trained in art school, and I tend to avoid using ArtSpeak, even when applying for grants (and people who dole out grants *love it* if you give them a good dose of ArtSpeak). What I do feels good to me, spiritually, and happens to entertain, and hopefully positively effect, people.

As for conceptual art, a lot of it is ridiculous. It almost seems sometimes there is a conspiracy amongst the posh art galleries and a cabal of "artistes" to market meaningless crap to people and call it art. Yeah, a painting someone pours their heart and soul into is art, and people can relate to it. An "artist" sticking an unmade bed in a gallery is a false construction: everybody plays along with it because they are told to play along with it. Why not take the bed of some granny in the boondocks, stick it in a gallery, and call it "outsider conceptual art?" If an unmade bed is art, so is anything and everything, if you choose to label it so.

I do agree that sharp lines need to be drawn in order to really spotlight these issues. The Stuckists have been quite successful in doing this.

Artists who don't write manifestos aren't artists

Looking at the stuckism website one could quite easily reach this conclusion.

But perhaps I'm not being totally facetious: if you don't know why you are doing what you are doing, you have a problem.

Actually, that is the problem I have every time I pick up a paintbrush.

The Answer

The answer to you question was answered by Thompson, himself. THEY ARE; sculptors, composers,
poets, photographers, sketchers, film directors, writers, dancers, ......and WE ARE ARTISTS.
When someone asked Charles, what about architects, they are artists? Thompson replied,
"Architects don't call themselves artists, they call themselves architects"

And I might add, some architects don't even like artists.

Consider this: Differentiationn creates clarity. Clarity leads to truth.

and one more thing, All bad artists, until they become good artists, are either ARTISANS, or APPRENTICES. that's the way it was in a saner world, and that's the way it is in this insane world.

Re: The Answer

COuldn't the same be said then, that painters arn't artists, they're painters?

It's a subjective, aribitrary decision.

Re: The Answer

Yes, and i describe myself as a painter all the time. I could also be called a draughtsman, and wouldn't mind. i prefer distinctions.

And yes, that's where it seems to get sticky.

"Artist" has recently had to be qualified, "I'm a video artist.", "I'm and artist. I work in pillow feathers".

I'm 59 years old, so I remember the last years when everyone was not called an artist. The term was reserved for DeKooning, and Picasso, Matisse, and Dali. Society was such that an artist was a distinct type of person. You had to be able "to draw a straight line". Then came The Sixties, the most exciting time and creative period since the Renaissance. And with it came many writers in the media , magazines and newspapers mostly, who coined the phrase, the art of this and the art of that, and the Art of planting geraniums! The art of giving your dog a bath.
Because of the creative energy everywhere in The Sixties, everyone could be "an artist", instantly, and no one could deny that. From my perspective, people who consider themselves artists today, with the latent talents they have, wouldn't dream themselves an artist in 1957, let alone be considered one by others. This was not so long ago. And the true significance of the wider-spread use of the word is not yet understood. To some of us, the term has lost its meaning and is a general catch-all.

So from my point of view and I think the original Stuckists might agree, there should be some new distinctions made. And I think they emotionally, and perhaps. too hastily, resorted to that suspicious phrase. They also let the movement go democratic. These could be mistakes. The surrealist group and others, were small and tight. They didn't last of course, but they were concentrated, specific, and heavily influential.

Given the visual pollution and attitudes around the world, i am not sure so many people should be artists. One the other hand, it's a good concept from The Sixties, that people should consider themselves creative.

This is also an age of contradiction and contrariness. And the manifesto statement has given them a hard time. Probably had something to do with why Childers got out of the movement. Thompson made a remark hinting this in a journal.

That't about it for me, My suggestion is, that we focus on the other much better points in the manifesto, because it's always easier to pick on the weakest point that deal with the tougher questions. And look how much time we waste.