To Exhibit or Not to Exhibit

This past autumn and winter I opened my house on Friday evenings for a Stuckist mini-exhibition of the week’s painting output. I encouraged others to bring their art along to show and tell. Few did. And by the second week, no one paid much attention to the paintings anyway. Why should they? People need people more than art. Friends crossed my threshold, stepping inside from the cold after a long, lonely week. Who could blame them for ignoring the artist-elephant in the room? They wanted to meet and greet with other people to talk excitedly about small talk. At this latitude, the cooling down time is very difficult to take in stride. What I had hoped would be time for nurturing my ego, soon became a social “happy hour” of eating and drinking for guests, and to hell with one person’s problem, which is art. No different from any art opening anywhere. People talking to people and looking at the paintings on the wall as an “in between” to fill the gap of social discomfiture.

After eight weeks, I shut down the Friday exhibitions. They required I spend Fridays cooking, cleaning and making a run to the liquor store, instead of painting or writing. Which made me think that perhaps exhibiting is the wrong idea, or at least in the way we ordinarily go about it. What if Stuckism isn’t meant to be around people? We make the paintings alone. Perhaps the living personality shouldn’t be available to contradict the dead aloneness that went into making them. Seems confusing, where it might actually have the opposite effect that was intended by the artist. How does wearing the mask of gregarious clown to disguise nervous anxiety advocate for the paintings that I’m trying to sell? I don’t think it does. Sure, hang some paintings and call the people over. Just don’t be there when they come see.

#18 The Stuckist is opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system and calls for exhibitions to be held in homes and musty museums, with access to sofas, tables, chairs and cups of tea. The surroundings in which art is experienced (rather than viewed) should not be artificial and vacuous.

Send out invitations to your painting exhibition. Be prepared to switch on the advocate personality and forget about the art. Be a good host. Self-deprecate. Have them leave thinking you’re a fool but a kind one. Wave at the door. Turn and begin the clean up of the “artificial and vacuous” good time that was shared by all. I’ve had these home exhibitions for years. One thing for certain: They’ve honed my entertaining skills to the point of expert party planner. I am a consummate host. I might be the best in town. That’s not saying much about my painting though, is it?
From now on, at all my exhibitions, I will add live video and post to the social media apps and Youtube®. “It’s the Stuckists duty to harness and ride the Internet,” says Stuckist Edgeworth Johnstone. I think he’s right, though probably for different reasons. Maybe I don’t need to attend at all. I want anonymity, so the paintings have a chance to speak for themselves. My self has always been such a loud-mouthed imposter. If I was a painting hanging on a wall, I wouldn’t want Ron Throop around to make a fuss. Geeze, what an an exhibitionist! We both want attention, but his noise always gets most of it in the end.
It would be very difficult to cease exhibiting. I paint paintings and I like the rush of showing them, even if no one takes them seriously. After all, I identify as an artist more than a painter, and an artist needs to “put himself out there” for love, admiration and ridicule. There is plenty of time after I’m dead for my art to make something of itself. It will be acquired by major institutions, printed in coffee table books, and taught in schools. People will attend my exhibitions to actually look and learn about the art. A group of strangers in the room, too anxious to look into each other’s eyes, and with the living artist out of the picture, having no reason to. Ah, what a relief!
Now let’s look at some of these paintings.