SnakesAnLadders: February 2006

Friday, February 10, 2006

The stuckest manifesto

this is cool, written in in 1999 but still pretty much as relavent now as it was then....

(section of) A stuckist Manifesto.

THE TURNER PRIZE The Stuckists (est. 1999)
(anti-anti-art The first Remodernist art group )

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 curiousities.

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 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.

Billy Childish
Charles Thomson
1.9.2000