Stuckism Silver Anniversary

It Has the Kind of Beauty That Moves 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 55 x 38"

No novelty. No shock. No gimmick. I’m a Stuckist and you’ll have to deal. Edgeworth Johnstone wrote recently that Stuckism needs to grow up. Perhaps it was a gibe to art-makers who join a club and begin to one-up other art-makers with words and thoughts like, “in order to be a this, you must be that…”, which is anti-Stuckism because I say so. The painting above is not abstract, yet if it was (as if any painting ever could be), then I’d say, “You’re blind! Because just look! It’s a winged sufferer circling a corpse”. You don’t see it? Then go Stuckist some place else. I’m doing it here, and you’re not my guru. You can’t ever one up me. I start at your stopping point. You go ahead and fit into the mold. I will break from mine on good days, but sit stock-still to practice those drab ones. You can be great, and I’ll always be greater. And one thing for certain…

I will never be greater than myself.

So 25 years gone by. Stuckism is the only international art movement on earth worth talking about because there are millions of us. About a couple thousand identify their art as “Stuckist”, and the other 3,497,325 painters are lying to themselves to maintain the hope of established gallery or Artnews representation. After reading the manifesto, any serious painter not working for the Pope, or stuffing a corpse sheep’s head with microplastics, will make immediate connection to its truisms. A huge relief from the cognitive dissonance that bangs in the brains of determined artists. Before and after the advent of Stuckism in 1999, the gatekeepers dangled avarice keys to the kingdom (acceptance, recognition and money among mankind), and all the unStuckists of the world pined for the big break—club admission, millionaire notice, a father saying “job well done son”.

And it never came because art moving in that direction is dread. The business of art is dread. Success by means of what others think is the way, is dread. Pride is the other side of dread. There are 167 roads leading to hell on earth, and one of them is a painting made to fit into the worldview of another person’s dread.

Make sense?

Of course not. I’m an enigma, a hack writer, and a Stuckist.

One day in 2013, my friend Dan turned me on to a video of a Stuckist exhibition in London. Then Google got me to the manifesto and I experienced instant karma-raderie with humans being artists. If you’re a serious painter, musician, sculptor or cheesemaker, then you cannot not be a Stuckist. In the world of art making, one might think that because Stuckism casts such a wide net, that it has got the last word. Not true. The future will introduce an uninterested public to many new styles of painting. And new movements too. Like the Lithiumists who paint pink and turquoise lanscapes with pigments stolen from the birthright of Bolivian babies. Or the New Futurists who start at the dark side of chirascuro and end there. Still, at the base of any stylistic movement, past, present or future, there has and will always be Stuckism, whether defined or not.

Stuckism’s 25th anniversary. So much to look forward to and write about. In March, Rose and I will be attending Edgeworth Johnstone’s opening at the Highgate Gallery in London. I hope to meet with other British Stuckists, talk painting over a pint or two, and be almost sober during the soundcheck (see video below).

Now watch Edgeworth and Emma go all out Stuckism on Friday night at the Beehive in London. Please look at his shirt!

My cup runneth over of Stuckist juice.