Manifestos

In August 1999, Childish and Thomson wrote The Stuckists manifesto which places great importance on the value of painting techniques as a medium, as well as the use of it for communication and the expression of emotion and experience – as opposed to what they see as the superficial novelty, nihilism and irony of conceptual art and postmodernism. The most contentious statement in this manifesto is: “Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists”.

The second manifesto was An Open Letter to Sir Nicholas Serota which received a brief reply from him: “Thank you for your open letter dated 6 March. You will not be surprised to learn that I have no comment to make on your letter, or your manifesto ‘Remodernism’.”

In Remodernism, their third manifesto, the Stuckists declared that they aimed to replace postmodernism with Remodernism, a period of renewed spiritual (as opposed to religious) values in art painting techniques, culture and society. Other manifestos include Handy Hints, Anti-anti-art, the Cappuccino writer and the Idiocy of Contemporary Writing, The Turner Prize, The Decreptitude of the Critic and Stuckist critique of Damien Hirst.

Manifestos have been written by other Stuckists, including the Students for Stuckism group. An “Underage Stuckists” group was founded in 2006 with their own manifesto for teenagers by two 16 year olds, Liv Soul and Rebekah Maybury, on MySpace. In 2006, Allen Herndon published The Manifesto of the American Stuckists, whose content was challenged by the Los Angeles Stuckists group.