Hi, yes, this is a genuine post. You can confirm by emailing
[email protected] . There's some "hidden pages" of my new work here:
http://www.stuckism.com/thomson/IndexSale1.html There's a Stuckist show in Wimbledon at the moment. See
http://www.stuckism.com/AGalleryJuly07/IndexShow.html
It's good to get some positive response to my work, but I have to warn you that, according to Rachel Campbell-Johnson, art critic of The Times, you are conversing with the "slightly sinister leader" of "a clamorous cult of resentful artistic also-rans who, convinced that their talents have been by-passed by a Tate-led fad for conceptualism, protest publicly each year at the Turner Prize award dinner."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2091659.ece
Despite this accolade, I have failed to convince friends I am even remotely sinister, though one of them suggested it might help if I started wearing all black.
Back on topic, the real problem with the Diana crash painting is that it's not a particularly good one amongst Stella's oeuvre, of which I am generally a fan. Nevertheless, I don't doubt her sincerity. She is far too self-obsessed, emotionally-driven, desperate, and, in her own subjectively warped way, honest, to undermine herself with intentional exploitation or irony. Don't forget she thinks everything she does is significant and important because she's done it and it comes from "deep within her", which I'm sure it does. This overwhelming need unfortunately leaves little room for the finer feelings of others. When you're drowning, all you care about is the lifebuoy you're holding onto, and hers is an inner reality which, like a child, she has populated with the fantasy figures of tabloid celebrities to compensate for an empty life.
As far as the negative reaction to the quality of the painting goes, I keep on thinking of how punk was first received, compared to the sophistication of prog rock. Mind you, most art containing any degree of innovation and directness has been met with similar rejection, including the Impressionists, Van Gogh and Picasso, to name just a few. I've spent many years looking at thousands of paintings, and the best of hers are very technically accomplished, in the way that they fulfil the aesthetic parameters they have defined, which is the basis of modern art, from Impressionism onwards, unless of course one rejects artists such as Matisse for also failing to conform to the rules of the Renaissance.
She is basically a one trick pony, namely a society portrait painter, who simultaneously flatters the subject, while dissecting its suffering. That earns her place in art. What concerns me is that artists of equal or greater merit, who choose less media-titillating subjects, are sidelined in the process. This is even more invidious, when she has used their creativity to inform her own work, and now chooses to ignore them, when she is in a position to help them in return. It was ever thus, maybe.
