Background and Description
In 1999, Thomson was the co-founder, with Billy Childish of the Stuckism art group, which set out to promote figurative painting, in opposition to conceptual art, which they identified with the Turner Prize (whose jury chairman was Sir Nicholas Serota) and the Young British Artists, of which Tracey Emin (who had once been in a relationship with Childish) was a leading representative.
Thomson's painting shows Serota, the director of the Tate gallery. He is smiling behind a large pair of red knickers on a washing line, saying "is it a genuine Emin (£10,000)" and thinking, "or a worthless fake?". This is a reference to Tracey Emin's My Bed, literally a display of her (dishevelled) bed with detritus which included a pair of her knickers, shown in the 1999 Turner Prize at Tate Britain. The image was painted over a few days and in a final 24 hour non stop stint.
"My painting of Serota has become an icon of the Stuckist movement because it states our position in art," said Thomson. "We are for new figurative painting and anti stale, old conceptual art."
Read more about this topic: Sir Nicholas Serota Makes An Acquisitions Decision
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or description:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)