Introduction to Making Friends With Wild Dogs

What Are You Focused Upon? 2016. Acrylic on panel, 36 x 48"

I am in the process of proofreading copy of Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections on Stuckism for its 25th Anniversary. After a couple desktop read throughs, I’ll print the pages and read them over again and again. Then typesetting, more proofreading, and off to the printers. The following is what I have for the introduction. 5 more reads (at least) to go!

Introduction

There aren’t many artists left in the world. Lots of art-making. Too much actually. Enough to make one sick of art. The overwhelming majority of artistic output is lovely corpse. Dead stuff. If it moves at all, then it’s force is inertia, and keeps returning like a dead moon. No more paintings please that haven’t been influenced by some level of madness, strife or ecstasy. I don’t want to design a room, match a color, make a mood. I think I hate art like I despise death, and that is why I am an artist. A Stuckist painter for work, but for life, an artist. Painting is a tool that I use to brush away the absurdities of mankind. Maybe sculpture works for some expressionists. I wouldn’t know. Definitely writing does, and music too. For every billion watercolor paintings, though, there is just one artist, William Blake. The rest is art made mostly by children and bored old people. The former for joy, and the latter for dope—pretty florals to anesthetize the death pangs.
I am the artist any acquaintance of mine will never get to know. Too bad. People live out their lives not needing me. And I’m poor! Writing down my accounts in a little journal. “March 22, $2. Walked to the health food store for extra dinner needs. Ice cream for Rose.” That’s the performance art I am doing of late. Keeping below the poverty line painting pictures, so the U.S. war machine can’t extort any more death money from me.
Only some poets would understand. All artists are poets, but not vice-versa. Don’t worry. The rest of this book won’t be so cryptic. It should teach a little about Stuckism. There are 20 statements in the manifesto, and a million avenues of interpretation for each one. A few do not resonate with me. That’s fine. It only takes one sentence of meat to make a movement I’d want to be a part of.
For example, “Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.”
See what I mean? Many books could be written that identify with “the quest for authenticity”. Libraries could be filled. An Internet could break. The truth is, however, that very few painters are living their lives in a quest for authenticity. So few, in fact, that I could count them all on my wittle digits, ignoring the left foot. I know this because a quest for authenticity must begin with humility, which is a rare gem for any human being over 6 years old. This is one of several breaking points I make with Stuckism, and other people’s interpretations of the movement. I don’t want to see art that isn’t a gushing of oblivious failure. If it’s gonna be any good for my soul, that pathetic mountain scene better help or haunt me like it has you, dear painter. The thing is… no more pretty pictures that aren’t real. And I reserve the right to say if your painting fits within my parameters of art. First, you’ll have to provide two things: subjective visual appeal, and your public shame. Second, I have to feel that you don’t care. The only reason I appreciate stupid van Gogh flowers on a tabletop is because his life story got leaked before I could get to know him. Turns out, he was a Stuckist, so hooray for the flowers and the trees and the peasants sowing seeds.

The point I hope to make is that there are thousands of paintings of flowers being made every day, ad nauseum. I love the colors, and many of the skilled ones are close to perfection. Paint the pictures, please, everyone. It’s better time spent than Internet surfing. Good meditation practice too. It will help you sleep at night and make you proud to stand out among peers. Of course art-making is for everyone, but that doesn’t make everyone who paints a Stuckist artist. For that honor, you must be ashamed of yourself and paint until you’re not.

Says who?
Says me.

But there are other, less gnostic, interpretations of the movement. I am just one of 8 billion art-makers on the planet. The officiators of its website say, “Stuckism is an “international art movement for contemporary figurative painting with ideas”. That fills up a big tent like Christianity or the Republican Party. Fine, but then why have Stuckism? My granddaughter is a figurative painter who paints ideas. Is she a Stuckist? No. Likewise, any academic painter, especially the tenured professor, will only paint an idea—even if it’s just flowers on a table, one can bet there will come a balderdash artist statement attached with some lie about “deeper meaning”. Is the professor a Stuckist? No. Could she be? Yes. But first she’ll have to quit her day job and chew off her tongue.

Stuckism is a painting reform movement. It is not stylistic like pop, surrealism, or impressionism. Stuckists aren’t futurists, cubists, fauvists… They can be one or all of these as long as there is communion with the manifesto. Would serious, even playful, living art-makers in any field—music, painting, dance, cinematography—disagree with statement #15?

“The ego-artist’s constant striving for public recognition results in a constant fear of failure. The Stuckist risks failure willfully and mindfully by daring to transmute his/her ideas through the realms of painting (dance, music, etc). Whereas the ego-artist’s fear of failure inevitably brings about an underlying self-loathing, the failures that the Stuckist encounters engage him/her in a deepening process which leads to the understanding of the futility of all striving. The Stuckist doesn’t strive—which is to avoid who and where you are—the Stuckist engages with the moment.”*
(*Italics mine)

Which brings me to another point that fixes me to Stuckism. It has an Eastern philosophy flare about it. Slash the Buddha. Kill the ego. Some say it has spirituality. Be careful. Sounds like mysticism, which is just a hop, skip and a jump to conceptual art. And Stuckists won’t have any of that. I say it has more of a Zen flavor. Paint the picture, go for a walk, and shut up. Oh, and then go paint another picture, you tool.

As a painter’s reform movement, Stuckism is practically universal. The big tent. The Republican Party. Who does not want to be an ego-artist? All those with noses raise your hands. However, once the popular allure of Stuckism is gone, when the tent is taken down and carted away, only a few will keep on the path, practicing monumental acts of change amounting to nothing much really. Most art-makers want results, cause and effect, reward for labor. Who gets up in the morning to paint pictures for no reward? Who is the new art moron? Who is the deprived, despised and often depraved exhibitionist? There’s your Stuckist! He and she ain’t pretty. And they probably don’t care.

No self-loving/annihilating Stuckist can become a success like the millionaire gallerist wants him to be. A Stuckist will never be a slave. Hence, Stuckism is non-existent in universities. It just can’t be there. Likewise, the work of living Stuckists is rarely observed in for-profit galleries and museums. Which makes sense. Artists don’t go on committees. Not ever. Figuratively speaking, Stuckism pikes the curator’s head at the gates of the city. Literally, the Stuckist despises conformity.
Show me a painter “who risks failure willfully and mindfully”, and I’ll say “there’s a Stuckist for you”. She might not know Stuckism, or if she does, decided to stay away from all “isms” to keep her freedom lustful, her innocence pure, and her loneliness in tact.
Good for her, but it’s a pity. I think she could find some friends here.

I aspire to be a Stuckist painter. However it was planned initially, I intend to reinvigorate and make it more real, for me. Hopefully you too. A painter/poet in the grass, ticks and all. But I also want to be a master of my practice. At present, the Stuckist movement is on my path. Perhaps by the end of this book, I will have taken it apart so much as to make it another thing. And a new movement will be born.

Let’s wait and see.

I’ll get started right after these words from Henry Miller, the writer who painted, or the painter who wrote. I am dead certain he would be a Stuckist if the movement was born in his time.

Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man! What is called their “overelaboration” is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted… I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.

I know these people. I adore them. Some are Stuckists. Most are not. You might want to be one after you read Stuckism the way I do.

Oswego

March, 2024