Traditional art now despised in the British art world

But elephant dung is great!

The Tate was accused yesterday of snubbing one of Britain’s foremost collections after it rejected a gift of 160 paintings that had been given pride of place at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Its director, Sir Nicholas Serota, said that the works did not deserve to be in a national collection, even though their five-month exhibition last autumn drew thousands of people to the Walker, one of the outstanding collections of fine art in Europe and part of National Museums Liverpool.

The works were painted by the Stuckists, an international group of artists founded in 1999 to promote traditional artistry, looking to the Old Masters for inspiration. Experts said that the artists had “inaugurated the rebirth of spirituality and meaning in art, culture and society”, with their works worth œ500,000, but the Tate was less than impressed.

Sir Nicholas wrote to the Stuckists, who offered the gift: “We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection.”

Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists, called the decision “a massive snub”. Noting the exhibition’s success, he added: “It shows the Tate is completely out of line with the rest of the country and the public, whose money it spends on things the public don’t want.” He recalled how the Contemporary Art Society, the art charity, had difficulty persuading the Tate to take a Picasso in the 1920s and a Henry Moore in the 1930s. “The Tate . . . rejected Modernism and artists such as Matisse and Picasso . . . Now it has lost the nation the prime works of an international movement founded in Britain.” Mocking the decision to award the Turner Prize to Martin Creed - “someone who switches a light on and off in an empty room” -

he also poked fun at recently acquired canvases studded with elephant dung by Chris Ofili. “Excreta seems particularly welcome,” he said.

The Stuckists were confused by a passage in Sir Nicholas’s letter which said that 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.” Mr Thomson said: “He wants to record our thoughts, to hear what we are saying, but will not allow the public to see our work.”

Source

Posted by jonjayray on Saturday, July 30, 2005 at 09:13 AM in The Arts & Design
Comments (8) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Svigor on July 30, 2005, 12:53 PM | #

Lol, Nicky wants to scribble down what the dinosaur-hacks say about “real” art so he can use it as grist for his post-modernist mill.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 30, 2005, 11:48 PM | #

Looks as if the works of “art

“ created by the Stuckists aren’t any better than the postmodernist crap they claim to want to replace. I don’t blame anyone for turning down such a collection worthless art created by such a group of artistic non-entities. This curator in Liverpool, however, this Sir Nicholas, who turned down the Stuckist trash, apparently has been enthusiastically embracing the po-mo garbage and showing it at his museum, so the best that can be said of him is he closely resembles the proverbial stopped clock: tells the right time once or twice each day, and that’s about it. What you’ve got here is the artistically tasteless, hopeless, talentless, and blind squabbling among themselves concerning ... art.

Posted by Mark Richardson on July 31, 2005, 02:41 AM | #

Yikes! It’s not exactly Vermeer or Constable is it.

In Australia we have an annual prize for portrait painting called the Archibald.

It’s a bit modernist, but still produces some decent art. I don’t know why it’s never descended to the level of most modern art.

Posted by jonjayray on July 31, 2005, 09:06 AM | #

At least it represents SOMETHING, I guess

Posted by Fred Scrooby on July 31, 2005, 11:59 AM | #

“At least it represents SOMETHING, I guess” (—John Ray)

But is that enough to make it palatable? Let’s look at what it represents: In the link I posted above notice, around the border of the Stuckist work of art at the upper-right-hand corner of the page that comes up, the four phalluses (two yellow and two green, the green rendered a bit more abstractly but clearly recognizable including testicles), the safety pins, and the razor blades, and on the girl herself the vacuous facial expression with inability to hold her eyes open and disheveled state of grooming presumably meant to suggest a drug-induced or alcohol-induced stupor, with the placement of an Italian-renaissance-style golden halo around her head likely intended, in light of the overall context of the painting, as a slap in the face to Christianity or “convential morality” or something. So no, I see nothing to recommend this Stuckist art movement if this painting and some of the other works on this linked page are representative of what it’s trying to communicate.

Posted by Svigor on July 31, 2005, 01:14 PM | #

Ah, so the Stuckists produce crap too? I should’ve followed the link I suppose…

I just assumed they were like the Renaissance-revivalists I’ve read about.

Posted by Anti-Modernist on July 31, 2005, 01:19 PM | #

Yuck… this is by no means “traditional” art… it’s modernist crap! At least the postmodernists can claim to have some unique architectural styles, but this is crap.

Posted by Guessedworker on July 31, 2005, 04:41 PM | #

I agree. Stuckism is an absurdity.

The greatness of European art - and architecture and also music - flowed from a conjunction of pure origins, respect for knowledge and aristocratic patronage. Once modernity and the culture of critique got to work it was all as good as dead.

Art cannot now be raised from the dead because the system of teaching is gone. Architecture and music could be in part, I think, given that no technical losses have occurred and it would only require the rediscovery of beauty as the guiding principle.

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