I am proud of my time with the Stuckist movement. Here I learnt about expression within the subconscious, Buddhism and more of a spiritual feel for things.

The Manifestoes of the Stuckist Movement I saw as inspirational. Always keen on politics and social criticism I saw the Stuckists as a reaction to the post-modern work, which in the words of Morrisey “This say’s nothing to me about my life”.
I wanted art to talk about what it meant to be alive in civilisation today. I did not see this in the galleries I visited in the newly expanding cultural East End.

I left the Stuckists for many reasons, but mostly because of theories of Critical Realism that I had been researching for the last four years. I do owe them a lot though, as all this work helped me to develop an artistic counterpart to Critical Realism.

15-5-2008


Between God and the Penultimate

In the Book After Post-Modernism: an introduction to Critical Realism, Jose Lopez and Gary Potter suggest that Post-Modernism is in decline, that most of its radical ideas that once shocked us no longer do. In terms of art and the mass media the Post-Modern ideals of creating something new was to splice together already existing concepts and forms, this would in turn give birth to newness. My argument is that these ways of producing art are on their way to running out of steam. A recycling of ideas has created a pile up along the conveyer belt of creativity.

Looking to the present state of the art world, we are beginning to see a lot of stylistic convention beginning to appear overused and clichéd. Lots of works at the moment have only slight twists on already existing concepts. If we look to the shock factor that dominated the 1990s. We can clearly state that this is old hat. We are no longer shocked at what art can be. Conceptual art has always surprised many people. For instance we had a pile of bricks on the floor in the 1970s, then a dead shark in a glass tank in the 1990s. The tabloids and national press have brought these to our attention in an unflattering way. We now have a culture in which most of the population see contemporary art as random things thrown together, and this for some part now is quite true. Art, it seems, has become a type of gimmick, an experiment to see who can create something that has not yet been deemed art. The Turner Prize showcases the best example of this type of thinking. This is where contemporary art has its highest media platform. One winner, Martin Creed won with the lights in the gallery ceiling flickering on and off again. The most recent winner Simon Starling turned a shed into a boat, sailed it, and then turned it back into a shed again. Other nominations include Tomoko Takahashi who finds discarded rubbish and installs it at random sites.

What disturbs me is a real pointlessness in these works, they exist to push ideas on what art can be, but there’s no real depth to these ideas. There’s no real food for thought, at best they are shallow and mildly interesting. This is the problem with contemporary art; enormous pressure resides on the artist’s shoulders to create the next big thing. What appears to be taught in art schools at the moment is that to be an artist, you have to break barriers in what is considered art. There is great trouble in this type of thinking, which is starting to become apparent.

Once these barriers are broken, where is the next step? As an artist if you produce work to these standards you will have to start again when your initial idea runs out of momentum. But this is the way of conceptual art. Mainstream art has become a moribund conceptual bandwagon. One concept followed by another, until they run out. So where is the next step? The idea of oblique strategies, to mix ideas at random, maybe by pulling ideas out of a hat, has worked for a while. But this will only hold for so long. Post-Modernism is clearly in it’s winter of discontent, it’s ideas no longer shock us because we have seen them, pretty much at their most effective; most of it’s interesting ideas have already been used up. What is presented to us now are mostly the left over, overlapping ideas. I’m sure there is still more icing left to be found on the post-modern cake, but artists are squabbling over the crumbs.
If we look to the present state of the mass media we can see the problem is all encompassing. Television, film and music are all losing the battle to produce something truly new and interesting. There are so many TV channels now all showing mass repeats, never-ending docu-soaps and far too many reality shows. Too much choice not enough quality. Hollywood has never seen so many sequels and re-makes; even the music industry is pelting us with cover versions by their homemade boy/girl bands. A real lack of newness is extremely apparent.

Philosophy Now, a magazine of ideas states “Critical realism principally opposes itself to positions we typically see as postmodernist. It recognises that knowledge is socially constructed, and liable to be contaminated by ideology, but none the less holds that objective scientific knowledge is possible. This is only possible if we carefully scrutinize the socio-historic context of its origin; hence the critical thrust”… “Critical realism aims at conceptual clarity, but is also concerned to humanise science for practical, political and ecological aims”.

An artistic sense of these ideas comes from looking to the Stuckist manifestoes. Creating art about what it is to be a human is being honest about what is truly important in life. I think creating art through Stuckist ideologies would challenge many notions society has about itself, and bring a fresh perspective to artistic ideals and to be critical about the world we live in.

The main focus of Stuckist painting is to get in touch with the subconscious. As in art therapy, this connection with the subconscious can help to create a deeper understanding of “who” we actually are as a person and what we perceive as important to our lives. People who use this way of developing them selves can have a far more greater awareness of there emotions and feelings and can have less stress in there lives as they listen to the needs of there body and mind. The Stuckists are seen as anarchic artists. They have protested outside the Tuner Prize since 2000 and call for an end to the conceptual drudgery of Post-Modernism. A spiritual movement, they say “The making of true art is mans desire to communicate with himself and his god”. Only here we are talking about god as a term for spirituality. “It’s possible not to believe in god and be more spiritual than someone who does believe in god”… “Spiritual art does not look very spiritual; it looks like every thing else because spirituality includes everything”. I feel that a Stuckist module would fit in well with GCSE, A-Level and Foundation level art studies. I think that this would help lead to a more rounded education, as the student would learn more about themselves. The Stuckists have a wide net of artists who support there ideas, there are Stuckist groups all over the globe now and are continually getting more and more support.

Critical Realism, a term which is being used more and more frequently, originally it focused on creating clarity and simplicity in the scientific philosophies. But here we art talking about art. With Realism, Critical realism will be critical of the societies and policies of the world around us created in a realist style.

If we look to the historic elements of fine art we can see that the post-modern ideals of making art are drying up, and that means when all conceptual ideas have been exhausted our only direction left is to go is back into ourselves. To keep art fresh and alive we need to start questioning ourselves. Since all other directions that art could go have virtually been explored, except for the possibilities of new technologies. this could be our one and only remaining rout left. Modernism and Post-Modernism have put us where we are now, its time to go back to the beginning, like cave painting only not like cave painting. For it will be new, free and educated. Stuckism is the initial movement to follow the spiritual path. And as they oppose post-modern theorem then they could be seen as critical realist entrepreneurs. For if critical realism is to supersede post-modernism as Garry Potter and Jose Lopez suggest then the Stuckists possibly are at the forefront of a truly modern art, and if critical realism proves it’s worth then post-modernism truly could be our penultimate encompassing philosophy.

1/7/2006
David John Beesley