The History of Stuckism

The Stuckist art movement began not in a gallery, but with an insult. In 1999, artists Charles Thomson and Billy Childish co-founded the group in London to champion figurative painting over the conceptual art dominating the scene. The name came from a bitter argument in the early 1990s between Childish and his former partner, the artist Tracey Emin. She had told him, 'Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!' Childish later captured the line in a poem. Thomson heard it and proposed they reclaim the insult as a badge of honour. They officially founded the movement with a small group of artists, with Thomson agreeing to handle the administration. Their first act was to write a manifesto to define exactly what being 'stuck' meant.