Got my book published, Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections on Stuckism for its 25th Anniversary. The definitive opinion on Stuckism:) Signed copies available through me, domestic shipping, unless you want to pay a small fortune for international. Otherwise, evil Amazon awaits your pennies. I’ll post the Epilogue:
I don’t dislike domesticated dogs as much as I want to throttle the people holding the treats. For the past two days I’ve been walking around campus thinking of a closing for the book, and twice I’ve been accosted by unleashed dogs. Dirty snouts pressed into my butt, and their people act like I’m intruding on their space.
The carbon footprint of the average medium-sized American dog is 5 metric tons per year. The average for a human being in Bangladesh is .62 metric tons.
People like their dogs more than people. People will happily pillage the planet for their dogs, and that is one reason why I am a misanthropic humanist. As a Stuckist, I want to make friends with the wild dogs that roam after 99% of the house puppies are legislated into mandatory sterilization. I despise humanity in its present condition, but retain hope that through art and love, our true needs can be met, and cherished, while not ending life on earth. At its current state, however, human life is in violent decline, which all other species welcome and congratulate, besides our spoiled rotten dogs who need us.
Now how do I make art to express my feelings of misanthropic humanism? Stuckism claims to be concerned with the human condition, yet I don’t believe it really cares about that. It’s all a hodge-podge of any kind of painting under the sun. Paint a picture of a truck, tree toad, or a walk down the rainy lane, and it isn’t going to prevent the beheading of another Palestinian baby, or the poles from melting, or billionaires existing. No art can do that, though I believe it must make the effort. Art needs to affirm, without expectations of justice administered, return on investment, or satori. Unfortunately Stuckism doesn’t stand for anything much really, and that’s a big problem for me. It lets artists get away with painting boring flowers while listening to deadly state radio. What good is a static, popular art? It’s been done like that for thousands of years, since cave walls were decorated. We don’t need anymore pretty pictures that can’t ignite passion in the glorious assassins of tomorrow. Modern expressionists can use their hot energy now to help eradicate future carpet-bombings and capitalism. Who or what else is going to do it? God? Science? The President? Stuckism must invite the human family over for an intervention. We’re all guilty! Now here is how we’re going to fix things… All it does in its present form, however, is offer more degrading atomization of human beings, more separation, more dog eat dog, which has left each one of us super special, totally lonely and forgiving of the power psychopaths who deny us a future.
Now if some people like to make art at the nursery school table while our cities burn, that’s all fine and good, but it doesn’t satisfy my craving to shine light out of the darkness, to leave some figurative meat for my grandchildren to chew on. Stuckism is nice for both play time and mediocrity, however it does not guarantee birds singing and trees growing a hundred years from now.
Yet I think it should.
Henry Miller had the following to say about poets in Time of the Assassins. Poets are word painters:
“Has any poem (painting) shocked the world as did the atomic bomb recently? What weapons has the poet (painter) compared to these? Or what dreams? Where now is his vaunted imagination? Reality is here before our very eyes, stark naked, but where is the song to announce it? Is there a poet(painter) of even the fifth magnitude visible? I see none. I do not call poets those who make verses, rhymed or unrhymed. I call that man poet who is capable of profoundly altering the world. If there is such a poet (painter) living in our midst, let him declare himself. Let him raise his voice! But it will have to be a voice which can drown the roar of the bomb. He will have to use language which melts men’s hearts, which makes the blood bubble.”
I will make friends with wild dogs so I can sick them on what’s left of the house puppies and their indulgent owners. I have perhaps three decades left to live, so I’ll abide by Stuckism as a force for good, even if it’s doomed to be just another depressing means to a self loathing/satisfying end. For my own sanity, I intend to guide Stuckism down pathways where I need it to tread.
I believe that art should have concepts, and “good” art will have revolutionary ones. I don’t mean revolution like “Industrial” or “Castro” necessarily — it could mean the overthrow of color, form, composition, paint brushes, what have you. It might call for all art to be free of sale or laced with cyanide. I believe some painters can experience revolution several times in a lifetime. That is an earned joy and precious freedom for the artist to experience. Buddhists say satori. I would call them breakthroughs, and lasting longer. Stuckism can accommodate revolution. If Stuckism is “painting with ideas”, then I need those ideas to catalyst eradication of nuclear weapons and global warming, enormous floating plastic islands, billionaire greed, consumerism, and the persistence of obnoxious domesticated dogs. I need an art that will behead Elon Musk as a warning to anyone else who gets the urge to trash his own species for profit.
At present, Stuckism is not that kind of movement. But I will continue to be a hanger-on with hope that its popularity soars so I can gain the influence necessary to wheel in the guillotine unaccosted.
Even if that pleasant and just day never arrives, I will continue to celebrate Stuckism for it’s purity of heart and soul, and the manifesto’s literal dedication to painting practice. Recently, Edgeworth Johnstone has been making videos of himself going about London giving away his Jompiy paintings. He posts them on the Stuckist Facebook page. The following is what Charles Thomson had to say after he mentioned that Edgeworth better watch out or get ticketed for “fly-tipping” (British littering):
“I mean, you don’t want to take that manifesto too much to heart. We were young and carefree at the time. What the hell is point 8 anyway?”
To which Edgeworth replied:
“I think it’s ‘Sharing is caring,’ or words to that effect.”
I added my two cents:
“Hey wait, I’m young and carefree!”
And I would also say that, “Listen Charles, you weren’t that young!” (He was 46 when the manifesto was published).
Of course one takes Stuckism to heart! Dude, that’s all it is! Heart and youth, that mixed in proper proportion, is the only fuel by which we may live a sane and happy life. It also provides protection from the naysayers of art, which make themselves known out loud much too often in any true artist’s experience.
Anyway, here is point #8 that Thomson was referring to:
“It is the Stuckist’s duty to explore his/her neurosis and innocence through the making of paintings and displaying them in public, thereby enriching society by giving shared form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.”
Yup. I’d rather give it all away that get old in miserly fashion, closing doors, boiling water, mocking youthful dreams and their right path to life’s many contentments. Edgeworth is taking Stuckism along for his ride. And to hell with the naysayers!
So am I. In fact, I intend to press on with Stuckism until my wit’s end. 30 more years of innocent humiliation should do the trick.
My wife Rose says that in marketing, just about the time a new campaign becomes stale (to the marketers), that’s when the team should double down and promote more aggressively. The long lag time is normal for a good idea to take hold. Large populations need repetition of a message for it to be received, welcomed, digested and spread effectively.
So, although Stuckism has had 25 years to paint, I’d like to give it 25 more to make something of itself. I think now is our
“doubling down” time.
Any takers?
