Stuckist demonstrations - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist

Stuckism

Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high profile both in Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

and abroad. Their primary agenda is the promotion of painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

and opposition to conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

.

Their demonstrations are particularly associated with the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...

(sometimes dressed as clowns to mock the museum), but have also been carried out at other venues, including Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...

and the Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...

. There have also been other protests in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

by US Stuckists

Stuckism in America

The Stuckism art movement was started in London in 1999 to promote figurative painting and oppose conceptual art. This was mentioned in the United States media, but the first Stuckist presence in US was not until the following year, when former installation artist, Susan Constanse, founded a...

, and there have been Stuckist events against the Iraq war in 2003.

They have received extensive media coverage for these events both in the UK and internationally, and become possible suspects for any London art protests, as in Matthew Collings

Matthew Collings

-Life and career:In one of his books on art, Collings states that, in his early teenage years, he ran away to Canada. This act was preceded by a period of hanging around in a house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, whose residents included members of various rock bands including Mighty Baby and Family...

' description of the opening of Tate Modern

Tate Modern

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...

in 2000: "Guilt-free art lovers crossed picket lines put up by envious artist-outsiders. They didn't know who was protesting out there. Maybe it was the Stuckists."
There is, however, no mention of any such demonstration on the Stuckism website. Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...

, director of the Tate gallery, has recognised the demonstrations as a contribution to artistic debate, and the Tate archive contains material from the demonstrations, which are now a staple feature of the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

process.

The Stuckists

The Stuckists were founded in 1999 by Charles Thomson

Charles Thomson (artist)

Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

and Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

to promote figurative painting and oppose conceptual art. Thomson derived the name of the group from an insult by Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

to her ex-boyfriend Childish that he was "stuck". The original group of 13 artists has now grown to an international movement of 183 groups in 44 countries, as of November 2008. (Childish left the group in 2001.)

Clowns at the Tate

The Stuckists have demonstrated annually at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

on the occasion of the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

since 2000, and have been featured extensively in the media for their appearances. The demonstrations have adopted a variety of themes to make their point, which is simply that the prize is named after a famous painter, but painting is neglected by it in favour of other media. Their Turner Prize manifesto comments:

This is a leaflet they have handed out to the public and prize ceremony guests. Although they have always been outside the building during the actual prize ceremony, they have, on two occasions, been mentioned by the guest of honour on live TV, just before the announcement of the winner—by Sir Peter Blake

Peter Blake (artist)

Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...

in 2003 and by Culture Minister, David Lammy

David Lammy

David Lindon Lammy is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000.Lammy has commented on Britain's history of slavery.-Early life and Education:...

in 2005.

2000

The first Stuckist demonstration took place outside Tate Britain on Turner Prize day, November 28, 2000. The group took care to work within the regulations in order to subvert them and ridicule the institution. They were dressed as clowns, and had obtained advance permission to enter the museum in this costume. They announced on their web site (and in the London Evening Standard

Evening Standard

The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

Please note this is not a demonstration in the normal meaning. This is simply the exercise of ones right to visit the gallery which one has paid for, in the attire of ones choice. We have a written statement from the Tate Gallery that the following is permissible dress for admission: suit and tie, trainers, jeans, T-shirt, sports clothing, barrister's wig and gown, Napoleonic military uniform, gorilla suit, clown costume. It should be noted that the following is NOT permissible wear: naked, swimming costume, underwear.

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

's godmother, the late Margaret Walsh, announced the "Art Clown of the Year" for "outstanding idiocy in the visual arts" was Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...

, the prize being a custard pie, which the winner was expected to purchase and administer on themselves. This award continued to be made in subsequent years.

They then paraded outside Tate Britain

Tate Britain

in clown costumes, walked into the museum and around the exhibition itself. To coincide with the Tate's show, they also staged their own concurrent show The Real Turner Prize Show with simultaneous shows of the same name in Germany and Australia. The Guardian announced the winner of the real Turner Prize with the headline "Turner Winner Riles the Stuckists".

2001

There was a demonstration in ordinary clothes at the Prize press launch on 6 November. The Independent on Sunday said, "In certain respects the Turner Prize never changes: art fleetingly makes the front pages; the dreary Stuckists protest outside the Tate and the winner gets a cheque for 20 grand."

Another demonstration took place on the Prize ceremony day, 9 December: this reached a worldwide TV audience, when it was syndicated by Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

. The work of one nominee, Martin Creed

Martin Creed

Martin Creed is an artist and musician. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, which was an empty room in which the lights went on and off.-Life and work :...

, was an empty room, where the lights went on and off every five seconds. The demonstrators dressed in clown costume and shone torches in protest. Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun is a British writer, journalist, and broadcaster. Until November 2010 he was the artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, leaving before the end of his six month notice period. He is a contributor to BBC2's Friday night arts programme Newsnight Review and a...

wrote, "if scandal equated directly to success then this year's winners should probably be the Stuckists, the ragged band of artist malcontents who've turned their annual placard-waving anti-Turner protest outside the Tate into a kind of art event of their own that now generates press attention from around the world."

The Stuckists gave their "Art Clown of the Year Award" to Sir Nicholas Serota. Other nominees were Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi

(the winner in 2000), Norman Rosenthal

Norman Rosenthal

Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British curator. He was Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy from 1977 until 2008. His encyclopedic programme of exhibitions which stretched from Egyptian antiquities to recent art production, included the exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection of contemporary...

and Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent is a British art critic, formerly the art editor of the weekly London 'what's on' guide Time Out. She was an early supporter of the Young British Artists in general, and Tracey Emin in particular, helping her to get early exposure. This has led to polarised reactions of praise and...

2002

There was a demonstration at the Turner Prize press launch on 29 October, and one in clown costume on the prize day, 8 December. The "Art Clown of the Year Award" was given to Serota again, with the commendation, "The judges were extremely impressed by Sir Nicholas's ability to create a Turner Prize show which was even worse than last year's", and announced in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

with the headline: "A custard pie for Serota as Turner Prize winner named." Meanwhile the Stuckism International Gallery

Stuckism International Gallery

The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism...

staged The Real Turner Prize Show 2002.

2003

In 2003 the Stuckists displayed two blow-up sex dolls to parody Jake and Dinos Chapman

Jake and Dinos Chapman

Iakovos "Jake" Chapman and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman are English visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together as a collaborative sibling duo...

's bronze (painted) sculpture modelled on one. As guests, including Jay Jopling

Jay Jopling

Jeremy "Jay" Jopling is an English art dealer and gallery owner. He is closely associated with the YBA artists and his gallery White Cube represents the commercial interests of YBAs Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn, and Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he...

, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

, Victoria Miro

Victoria Miro Gallery

The Victoria Miro Gallery is a leading British contemporary art gallery in London, with an international reputation, run by Victoria Miro, one of the "grandes dames of the Britart scene", who first exhibited Chris Ofili and the Chapman Brothers...

and Jake Chapman, arrived, they were greeted with the announcement, "Turner Prize preview—see the original here and the copy inside." Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent

, art editor of Time Out, commented, "Fucking Stuckists... yes, you can quote me." Inside Tate Britain, on live television, Serota introduced Sir Peter Blake, who before he announced the winner, started his speech:

Thank you very much Nick. I'm quite surprised to be here tonight, because two days ago I had a phone call asking if I would be a judge for the Not the Turner Prize. And two years ago I was asked by the Stuckists to dress as a clown and come and be on the steps outside, so I am thrilled and slightly surprised to be here.

There were cheers from the guests.

2004

There were two Stuckist demonstrations, one at the press launch on October 19, and one at the prize-giving day on December 6. On October 10, Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi

had been quoted in the press as saying there were not enough painters in the Prize—"For the last 10 years, only five of the 40 Turner Prize artists have been pure painters."
The Stuckists turned this to their advantage with placards such as:

Charles Saatchi & Stuckists v the Tate

No painters in the Turner Prize for the last 4 years!

The Turner show itself was characterised by video and computer imagery, including a virtual tour of one of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

's former residences. Thomson was quoted by the BBC website:

"A lot of the stuff this year would be suitable for a Channel 4 documentary. There is no need for this to be in the Tate gallery when television does exactly the same thing."

To bring their point home, the Stuckists handed out a leaflet (text reproduced right), with the mock tone tone of officialdom.

They also announced:

Charles Saatchi is winner of the Art Clown of the Year Award 2004 for posing as a leader in the arts and merely parroting ideas promoted by the Stuckists for the last five years.

The nominees for 2004 were:

Momart (for not having the Shark and the Bed in their warehouse)

Damien Hirst (for wasting his money buying work by Damien Hirst)

Charles Saatchi (for copying the Stuckists' ideas five years afterwards)

Stella Vine
Stella Vine
Stella Vine is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting with subject matter drawn from either her personal life of family, friends and school, or rock stars, royalty and celebrities.After a difficult relationship with her stepfather, she left home and in...

(for numerous reasons)

The Prize is a custard pie which the winner is entitled to purchase and push into their own face.

2005

The Stuckists demonstrated outside the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

on December 6, 2005 against the Tate's purchase of its trustee, Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...

's work, The Upper Room. They displayed placards with slogans such as "£25,000 Turner Prize, £705,000 Trustee Prize", and wore monkey and elephant masks, referring to the monkeys Ofili had painted in his work, as well as the trademark balls of elephant dung it was propped on..
The demonstrators were approached by Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

, and the atmosphere was tense, according to Thomson: "I thought he was going to explode ... I looked at his face and I thought, this guy's going to lose it and hit me, or he's going to burst into tears."

Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr

Andrew William Stevenson Marr is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005....

, a guest at the evening Prize reception, commented, "When they picketed us, the Stuckists seemed to me affable and intelligent people", although he strongly disagreed with them over Ofili's work.

That evening in front of guests at the award ceremony in what Marr described as a "moment of rare passion" and an "unusual, possibly unprecedented" move, Serota spoke out with "an angry defence" of the purchase, saying, "I defy anybody who has actually taken the time and trouble to see the work not to agree with the trustees' decision to acquire this most extraordinary and important piece of work."

Following this, David Lammy, the Culture Minister, made a brief speech before presenting the award, commenting, "Every year, the Turner Prize makes contemporary art the talk of the airwaves ... Stuckists threaten never to paint again", (although there is no evidence they had ever made such a statement).

The Stuckists were included in reports on the Prize by the four UK broadsheets and in a Reuters syndication internationally, where Thomson commented, "The Tate is run by a self-serving clique who hide behind secretiveness" and "The real prize at the Tate is becoming a trustee. It's worth far more money." The winner, Simon Starling

Simon Starling

Simon Starling is an English conceptual artist and was the winner of the 2005 Turner Prize. He lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin, and is a professor of art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.-Biography:...

had converted a shed into a boat and back again; The Times quoted Thomson that "The Turner should be renamed the B&Q diy prize."

2006

The Stuckists handed Sir Nicholas Serota a demonstration leaflet with a "Turner Prize health warning" on one side and Thomson's painting of him on the other. He held it up and said, "Can't you make another image?" Tate chairman Paul Myners

Paul Myners

Paul Myners, Baron Myners, CBE was the Financial Services Secretary in HM Treasury, the UK's finance ministry, during the Labour Government of Gordon Brown. He held the position from October 2008 until May 2010, and was made a life peer in consequence of his appointment, as he was not an elected...

informed demonstrating artist, John Bourne, "We are grateful for the extra publicity the Stuckists have given the Tate".

The Stuckists picketed the 2006 ceremony with placards bearing the slogan 'Is It All A Fix?', a quote from Turner judge Lynn Barber

Lynn Barber

Lynn Barber is a British journalist, who writes for The Sunday Times.-Early life:Barber attended Lady Eleanor Holles School...

, who had broken with convention by writing about the judging process in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

. She encountered the demonstrators, whilst going outside from the judging to have a cigarette, afterwards saying she was horrified to see her words displayed: "The words were taken completely out of context (I dread to think how often celebs have said that to me in interviews, and how often I have disbelieved them) but now I am stuck with being a hero of the Stuckist tendency. I scuttled back into the Tate and survived three hours without nicotine rather than risk encountering them again. Thomson's quote that winner Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts is a German-born abstract painter who won the Turner Prize in 2006.-Early life:Abts was born in Kiel in Germany and currently lives and works in London, England.-Work:...

' work resembled "doodles done by a lobotomised computer" appeared in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

and in media abroad.

2007

The Stuckists announced that they were not demonstrating for the first time since 2000, because of "the lameness of this year’s show, which does not merit the accolade of the traditional demo". They criticised the "recycling" of nominees as being laziness by the jury (two of the four had been nominated in previous years) and stated that Tate Chairman, Paul Myners

Paul Myners

had previously thanked them for giving the Tate extra publicity. They also claimed that Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger is a British artist, best known for his sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, Ecce Homo , and State Britain , a recreation at Tate Britain of Brian Haw's protest display outside parliament. He won the Turner Prize in 2007...

had copied their idea of walking round a museum dressed in a costume, that he was indistinguishable from a Stuckist demonstrator, and that his work was "utter bilge", which had "all the excitement of watching a pensioner do the shopping at Asda".

2008

There was a demonstration by the artists, wearing black top hats, on 29 September, the day before the show opened, when they gave out a leaflet with a "Not wanted" poster for Serota and button badges with the text "The Turner Prize is crap", although they had not yet seen the exhibition. Condemning the Tate's promotion of conceptual art and the lack of figurative painting in the show (citing Stella Vine

Stella Vine

Stella Vine is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting with subject matter drawn from either her personal life of family, friends and school, or rock stars, royalty and celebrities.After a difficult relationship with her stepfather, she left home and in...

as one painter who has been passed over), Thomson said, "The work is not of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant exhibition in a national museum." Demonstration material is stored in the Tate archive and Tate officials have thanked the demonstrators for generating publicity; Tate Britain director, Stephen Deuchar, said, "In a sense, that is the whole point of the prize: to encourage public debate." Richard Brooks, writing in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

said of the Turner Prize show, "the mediocre standard has almost turned me into a supporter of the Stuckists."

Turner Prize manifesto

Childish and Thomson issued a Turner Prize manifesto, dated September 1, 2000. The text is:

1. Everyone talks about The Turner Prize but very few people believe in its worth. It has become an ongoing national joke, because of its pathetic and pretentious exhibits.

2. The Turner Prize is not, despite what Sir Nicholas Serota believes, the popularising of art but its dumbing down into a circus of curiosities.

3. The Turner Prize effectively turns The Tate Gallery into a state-funded advertising agency for Charles Saatchi, the Lisson Gallery and the White Cube Gallery.

4. Turner did not rebuild launderettes. He did not take photographs. He did not make videos, nor, to our knowledge, did he pickle sheep or construct concrete casts of negative space.

5. It should be pointed out that what Turner actually did was to paint pictures.

6. To call The Turner Prize The Turner Prize is like calling bubble-gum caviar.

7. The only artist who wouldn't be in danger of winning The Turner Prize is Turner.

8. To award The Turner Prize to an inferior re-hash of a Buster Keaton film is like awarding an Oscar to the workman who paint the Forth Bridge.

9. If the Trustees of The Tate Gallery have any respect for the values to which Turner devoted his life, The Turner Prize must be awarded to an artist who continues the tradition of communicating the power of life through painting.

10. Alternatively, we propose that The Turner Prize should be re-named The Duchamp Award for the destruction of artistic integrity.

Tate response

Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

wrote to the Stuckists in 2005, rejecting a donation of Stuckist paintings, but saying he wanted to ensure "the Tate archive, as the national record of art in Britain, properly represents the contribution of the Stuckist movement to debates about contemporary art in recent years." In 2006, Tate chairman, Paul Myners

Paul Myners

, thanked the Stuckists for providing the Tate with extra publicity.

New Blood feud with Saatchi

The Stuckists had declared their opposition to Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi

from the outset, criticising what they saw as the vacuity of Britart

Young British Artists

Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...

: "You can't help feeling that Saatchi's insipid sensationalism would make Duchamp wish that he'd never ever exhibited his piss-pot in the first place and had become a water-colourist instead."

A dead shark isn't art 2003

In 2003, the Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi Gallery

re-opened at County Hall

County Hall

A county hall or shire hall is usual name given to a building housing a county's administration. The location of the county hall has usually denoted the county town, and as county halls have moved it has also been considered that the county town has moved, for example when Derbyshire County Council...

with a Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

retrospective, which included the exhibition of his refurbished piece, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. On the same day as the Saatchi opening, the Stuckism International Gallery

Stuckism International Gallery

The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism...

in Shoreditch

Shoreditch

Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...

—under the title A Dead Shark Isn't Art— exhibited another dead shark, which had first been put on public display in 1989 (two years before Hirst's was first shown) by Eddie Saunders in his Shoreditch shop, JD Electrical Supplies. The Stuckists suggested Hirst may have seen this at the time and copied it, and pointed out that whether Hirst plagiarised Saunders work or not, Saunders was the real pioneering artist.

Stella Vine and OFT 2004

In February 2004, Saatchi bought Hi Paul Can You Come Over, a painting by ex-stripper Stella Vine

Stella Vine

of Princess Diana with blood coming from the mouth (it was then exhibited in his next show, New Blood). There was international media reporting of this. Vine was talked of as "the new star of the Brit art scene", commenting, "I didn't think anyone really liked what I was doing", and that she had only been painting for four years "after accompanying her son Jamie, 18, to Hampstead School of Art" (a private college).

This caused a strong reaction from the Stuckists. Vine had for a short time been a member of their group, and they had first exhibited her in 2001, when she was also (briefly) married to Charles Thomson. She had even been a nominee for their Real Turner Prize Show. The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

newspaper validated these claims and reported Thomson's complaint that Saatchi had been "stealing their identity as he tires of the Britart scene".

Thomson and eleven other people (including non-Stuckists, such as David Lee

David Lee (art critic)

David Lee is an outspoken, English, contemporary, art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular...

and Christopher Fiddes of the Movement for Classical Renewal) then reported Saatchi to the Office of Fair Trading

Office of Fair Trading

The Office of Fair Trading is a not-for-profit and non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforces both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the UK's economic regulator...

. The grievance was:

Mr Saatchi's dominant market and PR position allowed him to achieve blanket coverage for a version of events which completely ignored her [Vine's] background with the Stuckists. Had this been known, it would have led to increased interest in the Stuckists as a group where new talent was fostered, and the likelihood of increased sales as collectors hoped to find another future star.

However, the complaint was not upheld and the OFT pronounced, "We do not have reasonable grounds to suspect that Charles Saatchi is in a dominant position in any relevant market", which Thomson turned to advantage by spotting the unintended slight and remarking that it was "just another cruel smack in the face" for Saatchi.

The Triumph of Painting 2005

The Stuckists' concerns were not alleviated, when, at the end of 2004, Saatchi announced that he was putting his Britart holding into storage and devoting the next year to exhibitions featuring only painting. A few months prior to this announcement, Saatchi had stood outside the Stuckism International gallery, reading not only a placard that declared "STUCKIST ART IN 2001 IS SAATCHI ART IN 2004" (referring to Stella Vine), but also the anti-conceptual art, pro-painting Stuckist manifesto, which was on display.

Thomson responded immediately in the press to the announcement of Saatchi's change of direction, with the accusation: "almost verbatim, he's stolen the introduction to our manifesto."

When the show, The Triumph of Painting, opened at the Saatchi Gallery on October 25, 2005, the Stuckists mounted a picket outside, handing leaflets to the incoming guests (who included Saatchi's wife Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lucy Lawson is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Lawson is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. empire...

), and displaying placards stating, "Stuckism leads, Saatchi follows" and "Stuckism in 1999 is Saatchi in 2005".
They also wore tall hats with Saatchi's face on, and Thomson was photographed inside the gallery opening, wearing a t-shirt with the words "Saatchi the Stuckist".

Trafalgar Square

The Stuckists demonstrated in 2001 in Trafalgar Square, when Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....

's statue, Monument, was unveiled. This was a resin cast of the fourth (vacant) plinth in the square, and was inverted on the existing plinth. It represents the type of conceptual art

Conceptual art

that the Stuckists strongly oppose. The statue was unveiled by the then-Culture Secretary

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport is a United Kingdom cabinet position with responsibility for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The role was created in 1992 by John Major as Secretary of State for National Heritage...

, Chris Smith

Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury

Christopher "Chris" Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury PC is a British Labour Party politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister...

, against whom Thomson was standing in the United Kingdom general election, 2001

United Kingdom general election, 2001

The United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. It was dubbed "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labour Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 6 seats...

as a Stuckist candidate. At this point Stuckist protesters (one of whom was Stella Vine

Stella Vine

) in the watching crowd held up protest placards. Thomson jumped over the metal crowd barrier onto the now-vacant podium and used the PA system to make an address about the complete absence of paintings in that year's Turner Prize (referring to a comment by Smith the previous year that there should be more paintings in the Prize). At the same time he held up a placard, which read, "Mr Smith, do you really think this stupid plinth is a work of art?"

When the PA system was switched off by an official, Thomson made his way back through the crowd and was surprised to find that an angry Serota had followed him.

Serota: "That was a cheap shot, using another artist's work to promote your ideas."

Thomson: "It's Dada."

Serota: "So that gives you the right to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it?"

Thomson: "You and a few people like you control the art world and what goes on in it, and as artists this is the only way we can put our point of view across."

(At this point Serota walked off.)

Thomson: "That was Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate Gallery. Three cheers for Sir Nicholas."

The Stuckism website headed its report on the incident with a quote from Serota's book Experience or Interpretation: "a willingness ... to risk offence by unexpected confrontation can yield rewards"

The Death of Conceptual Art

In 1999 the Stuckists

Stuckism

Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

art group had declared themselves "opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system", and, three years later, they opened their own Stuckism International gallery (with coloured walls) in Shoreditch

Shoreditch

in an adjoining street to the White Cube

White Cube

White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...

gallery, which represents Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

and Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

. To celebrate the opening on July 25, 2002, they dressed as clowns, processed the short distance from Charlotte Road over Old Street

Old Street

Old Street is a street in east London that runs west to east from Goswell Road in Clerkenwell, in the London Borough of Islington, to the crossroads where it intersects with Shoreditch High Street , Kingsland Road and Hackney Road in Shoreditch in the London Borough of Hackney.The nearest...

and deposited a coffin, marked "The Death of Conceptual Art", outside the White Cube's door with the comment, "This is the official date for the demise of conceptual art."

General election

In 2001 Stuckist Co-founder, Charles Thomson

Charles Thomson (artist)

stood as a Stuckist candidate for the 2001 British General Election

United Kingdom general election, 2001

, on an anti-Britart ticket, in the constituency of Islington South and Finsbury, against Chris Smith

Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury

Christopher "Chris" Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury PC is a British Labour Party politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister...

, the Culture Secretary

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

. Thomson picked up 108 votes (0.4%).

Cutting the string

In spring 2003, artist Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Ann Parker OBE, RA is an English sculptor and installation artist. -Life and career:Parker studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic...

was allowed by the authorities to wrap Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

’s sculpture The Kiss
The Kiss (Rodin sculpture)
The Kiss is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Like many of Rodin's best-known individual sculptures, including The Thinker, the embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The...

(1886) in Tate Britain

Tate Britain

in a mile of string.. Many people felt it offensive to the original artwork and an act of vandalism rather than art. As a reaction, Stuckist artist Piers Butler cut the string, while couples stood around engaging in live kissing. However, this was described as an individual action outside the main Stuckist group by Thomson, who nevertheless took the opportunity to remark:

I was puzzled that Parker had been allowed to do her string-wrapping—thereby using another artist's work to promote her ideas—as this was precisely the allegation that an enraged Serota had thrown at me in Trafalgar Square and dubbed a 'cheap shot'.

Seattle Pigs on Parade

In May 2001, the Seattle Stuckist group (J. Puma, Z.F. Lively, Amanda Perrin and Brett Hamil) protested with placards, such as "Art-vertising is bad for the soul" and "Tacky and lame", against "Pigs on Parade", large fibreglass pigs which had been installed in the city and decorated by artists to make money for charity. Their objection was to commercial devaluation of art through "an insidious trend in corporate art-vertising. It appeals to the lowest public tastes by providing a kitschy, totally predigested and inoffensive McArt for the masses." (Social or ethical comment was banned from the designs.) King 5 News mentioned the group (with a "glib chuckle"), but otherwise the event went unreported. There was a certain amount of public support, and Hamil concluded:

For some reason, Stuckists are saddled with the task of vocalizing what everyone already knows, and yet that doesn't make it any less valid. It just makes it that much more regrettable that no one's said it yet.

Clown Trial of President Bush

In order to "highlight the fact that the Iraq war does not have the support of the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

, thus violating a binding contract with the UN", The Clown Trial of President Bush took place at 7 p.m. on March 21, 2003 on the steps of the New Haven Federal Courthouse, staged by local Stuckist artists dressed in clown costume, led by Jesse Richards

Jesse Richards

Jesse Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism.-Early life:...

, Nicholas Watson

Nicholas Watson

Nicholas Watson is a writer and filmmaker. He co-founded the New Haven Stuckist art group.- Life and Art :Nicholas Watson has worked on films with Jesse Richards since 1997. In 2001, Watson co-founded the New Haven, Connecticut chapter of the Stuckism art movement with Richards. Stuckism was...

and Tony Juliano

Tony Juliano

Tony Juliano is a satirist painter in Orange, Connecticut and is affiliated with the international art movement Stuckism.-Life and work:Tony Juliano was born in 1975...

. One of the participants was "a public defender for the state of CT. He thought it would be cool to dress up with us as clowns and do the thing. He ended up playing the clown judge. The courthouse that he works at is a block away from the federal courthouse where we did this."

Simultaneously the New Haven Stuckism International gallery run by them opened a War on Bush show, including work from Brazil, Germany and the UK, while the London Stuckism International Gallery staged a "War on Blair" show. The Yale Herald reported with the headline, "Stuckists scoff at 'crap,' war". Richards took the opportunity to comment, "Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

would go over to the Yale University Art Gallery

Yale University Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the Gallery possesses especially renowned collections of early Italian painting,...

and he would say, 'This is crap,' and he would go paint a picture."

Protest shows and art

The Stuckists have made use of their art shows in order also to promote a message. The name of the group itself is an ironic pre-emptive riposte to their anticipated enemies—as represented in the first instance by former colleague-turned-YBA

Young British Artists

Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...

, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

, who had called the group's co-founder, Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

, "stuck". The group's first show in 1999 was titled, Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!. In 2000, they made an overt challenge with a show titled, The Resignation of Sir Nicholas Serota. A painting in the show, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision is one of the best known paintings to come out of the Stuckism art movement, and a likely "signature piece" for the movement, standing for its opposition to conceptual art...

by Charles Thomson, has since been reproduced in the media many times and become an iconic image for the Stuckists.

In 2005, another show was called: "Painting Is the Medium of Yesterday"—Paul Myners CBE, Chairman of Tate Gallery, Chairman of Marks and Spencer, Chairman of Aspen Insurance, Chairman of Guardian Media, Director of Bank of England, Director of Bank of New York. A Show of Paintings by the Stuckists, as Refused by the Tate Gallery. Guaranteed 100% Free of Elephant Dung.

The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005, and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial....

exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery

Walker Art Gallery

The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...

during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....

including a free-standing screen with paintings attacking the Turner Prize and the Tate gallery.

Michael Dickinson has exhibited political and satirical collage

Collage

A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

s, addressing the Iraq War and world leaders, particularly US President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. In 2006 he was told he faced prosecution in Turkey, where he lives, for his collage Best in Show, showing the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan as a dog. He was subsequently prosecuted for a similar collage, Good Boy, and acquitted in a case that had implications for Turkey's application for membership of the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

Anti-Stuckist demonstration

There has only been one known anti-Stuckist demonstration, which was in 1999, when two Chinese performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

ists jumped on Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

's installation My Bed, in the Turner Prize at Tate Britain

Tate Britain

. The pair had various words written on their bodies, including "Anti-Stuckism". Their explanation is that they were opposed to the Stuckists, who are anti-performance art

Performance art

. According to Fiachra Gibbons of The Guardian, the event "will go down in art history as the defining moment of the new and previously unheard of Anti-Stuckist Movement."

External links

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