Stuckists Rule, Tate Drools

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The Stuckists Badge

The Stuckists Badge

Artinfo reports that the Stuckists showed up at the Tate denouncing the Turner Prize. I don't know much about the Stuckists except that their L.A. contingent's Website sends a lot of traffic to my post on John Currin. Looking them up again I find the original Stuckist manifesto and I find, much to my surprise, that I agree with them. "Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists"? Hell yeah! "Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art"? Testify!

And anyone who gets yelled at by Tracey Emin is my favorite person in the whole world. Because, really, she's terrible. So Billy Childish, I love you.

We should all join with the Stuckists in denouncing the Turner Prize. What junk. This makes me long for my old days of cranking out propaganda on the photocopier. Maybe I should stage something outside the New Museum.

20 Comments

The Turner Prize, apart from being utterly unworthy of its namesake, is not dead. It is merely a manifestation of disease, and as long as being ill remains sufficiently fashionable, not to mention profitable, the TP will carry on very nicely.

It seems that this prize just enforces what I call the academic elitism of contemporary art world

well I can imagine that when it was created some twenty five years ago? it was set up to promote the then poorly recognized British contemporary art scene- which in the subsequent years has help to establish many of the leading or at least most recognized artist in the world while at the same time securing the British are Wrold at the head of the table.

Chris, you will never understand something like the Turner Prize if you presume it is about rewarding actual artistic merit. That's beside the point, regardless of the inevitable lip service, which nobody genuinely believes anyway (except the terminally deluded). It's sort of like the Mae West movie character's response to an elderly lady's compliment at a party:

Old Lady: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!"

Mae West: "Thanks, honey, but goodness had nothing to do with it."

Chris, it doesn't matter. It's not about logic in the first place, and the people involved obviously don't give a shit what outsiders think of it. This is essentially a game for inside players, and they actually think it's cool that people like you think they're full of it, even though they are.

I highly recommend

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (2008)
by Don Thompson

"I think the stupidity of other people does matter."

Only to you, Chris, not to them, and there's the rub.

Oh, and Chris, when your daughter asks you to kill some lousy bug, just off the damn thing and be done with it. I mean, don't give the poor girl a hard time. She's liable to think all men are, well, weird.

Perceptive girl.

As long as people "dont get it" the Turner Prize will be worth something - of course if you "get it" then it is worth something. So it's not a dead prize, it is an undead prize - that's what we are dealing with. Not merit, but the cachet of those that get it vs everyone else.

Same with the Becks Future's prize, which makes light of prizes. Or maybe the turner prize makes fun of prizes and the becks futures doesn't get it. DOnt even get me started on the McArthur "genius" grant as applicable to artists. You'd have to look pretty hard for a more clueless, racist (In a good way!) sexist, jury. Oh but they have so much credibility compared to....what?

The fact is awards are often given to promote something (a school, a country, donation from rich benefactors, minorities, WASPS, my people, our kind of people, your people, the chosen few, the chosen ones) and less on objective merit. It's a difference of philosophy.

I don't like the art made by any of the Stuckists (past or present) but I admire their moxie.

Clearly you are not like me, quick to rush to judgement. Kudos to you my dear fellow.

crywalt. you are a moron.

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