Reaction
There was a very diverse reaction to the show. Adrian Searle, art critic of The Guardian called it "dreadful" and Tate Chairman, Paul Myners denounced it as "a travesty". "Young British Artist" Gavin Turk advised in a BBC interview that people should try to see the show.
The sexual and violent content of some of the paintings was commented on. Mark Lawson on BBC Radio 4 warned, with particular reference to a painting by Joe Machine of two sailors having anal sex, that the paintings might cause controversy, as they were "certainly not ... conventional" but contained "very bold and explicit images".
Susan Mansfield in The Scotsman said they were "far from traditional or conservative" and "as shocking as anything Jake and Dinos Chapman could produce", adding "the Stuckists have a strong philosophical base". Simon Pia, another writer in the same paper, predicted the group would be "the next big thing in art".
A review in the inflight magazine Velocity evaluated the work as "a worthy argument for painting as the fundamental medium of artistic expression ... a refreshing willingness to be understood in today's world of oblique messages." The Sunday Times saw the presence of the work in an established national museum as "another step on the road to critical acceptance", as did the museum review site 24hourmuseum: ""They’ve spent years fighting the establishment. Now ... the Stuckists have been invited to join it."
Read more about this topic: The Stuckists Punk Victorian
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