Remodernism
Encyclopedia
Remodernism revives aspects of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus.

In 2000, Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

 and Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

, founders of the stuckism
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 art movement instigated remodernism, with a manifesto, Remodernism in an attempt to introduce a period of new spirituality into art, culture and society to replace postmodernism, which they said was cynical and spiritually bankrupt. In 2002, a remodernism art show in Albuquerque was accompanied by an essay from University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 art professor, Kevin Radley, who said there was a renewal of artists working without the limitation of irony and cynicism, and that there was a renewal of the sense of beauty.

In 2006, the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

 and the University of Amsterdam held a talk on remodernism with Daniel Birnbaum and Alison Gingeras; the introduction to this talked of the revival of painting as a possible return to traditional modernist values, such as authenticity
Authenticity in art
Authenticity in art has a variety of meanings related to different ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic.Denis Dutton distinguishes between nominal authenticity and expressive authenticity....

, self-expression and autonomy, as opposed to multimedia practice.
In 2008, London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

critic, Ben Lewis, applied the term to three Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

 nominees and saw them amongst a movement which was reviving the formalism of the early 20th century; he advocated values of an aesthetic informed by modesty, generosity and genuine emotion.

History

Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

 and Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

, the founders of the stuckism
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 art movement, inaugurated the period of remodernism. Their Remodernism manifesto was published on March 1, 2000 to promote vision, authenticity and self-expression, with an emphasis on painting, and subtitled "towards a new spirituality in art." Its premise is that the potential of the modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 vision has not been fulfilled, that its development has been in the wrong direction and that this vision needs to be reclaimed, redefined and redeveloped. It advocates the search for truth, knowledge and meaning, and challenges formalism
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...

.
Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

In 1999, Childish and Thomson wrote a remodernism manifesto, calling for a period of new spirituality in art, culture and society to replace postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

.


It has a short introduction, summing up: "Modernism has progressively lost its way, until finally toppling into the bottomless pit of Postmodern balderdash." This is followed by 14 numbered points, stressing bravery, individuality, inclusiveness, communication, humanity and the perennial against nihilism, scientific materialism and the "brainless destruction of convention." Point 7 states:

Point 9 states: "Spiritual art is not religion. Spirituality is humanity's quest to understand itself and finds its symbology through the clarity and integrity of its artists." Point 12 links its use of the word "God" to enthusiasm—from the Greek root en theos (to be possessed by God).

The summary at the end starts, "It is quite clear to anyone of an uncluttered mental disposition that what is now put forward, quite seriously, as art by the ruling elite, is proof that a seemingly rational development of a body of ideas has gone seriously awry," and finds the solution is a spiritual renaissance because "there is nowhere else for art to go. Stuckism's mandate is to initiate that spiritual renaissance now."

Childish and Thomson sent their remodernism manifesto to Sir Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...

, Director of the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

, who replied, "You will not be surprised to learn that I have no comment to make on your letter, or your manifesto Remodernism."

In March 2000 the Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 declared themselves to be the first remodernist art group at a show The Resignation of Sir Nicholas Serota. In April, remodernism was quoted in The Gulf News (UAE). In May The Observer newspaper announced a stuckist show: "As the founding group of a self-named art movement called Remodernism, they stand on an art ticket that's against clever conceptualism and in favour of a more emotional and spiritual integrity in art via figurative painting."

In June, Thomson and Childish gave a talk on stuckism and remodernism at the Salon des Arts, Kensington, promoted by the Institute of Ideas. The same month the "Students for Stuckism" also gave "a Remodernist show and talk." The Institute of Remodernism was founded by Dr Khatereh Ahmadi.

In 2001, Thomson stood in stood the UK general election
United Kingdom general election, 2001
The United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. It was dubbed "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labour Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 6 seats...

, stating, "The Stuckist Party aims to bring the ideas of Stuckism and Remodernism into the political arena."

In January 2002, Magnifico Arts presented a show ReMo: ReModernism of graduate students from the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...

. At an artists' talk, Kevin Radley, an art professor at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 said, "Remodernism isn't about going backwards, but about surging forward." In an essay that accompanied the exhibition, Radley wrote:
The show curator, Yoshimi Hayashi, said:
In 2003, an independent group, the Stuckist Photographers, was founded by Andy Bullock and Larry Dunstan with a statement of endorsement for remodernism.

In 2004, the Defastenists
Defastenism
Defastenism is a Remodernist art movement founded in Dublin in 2004. The Defastenists are also known as The Defastenist Party. Artists who have participated in it include Gary Farrelly, Padraic E...

, a new group of creatives in Ireland, declared themselves remodernist. A Remodernist art gallery, The Deatrick Gallery was founded in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

.
American film makers/photographers Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism.-Early life:...

 and Harris Smith
Harris Smith (filmmaker)
Harris Smith is a filmmaker, media critic and essayist from New York City. He is one of the founding members of the Remodernist film movement and was a participating member of the first comprehensive Remodernist exhibition in the United States, Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild...

 co-founded a new group remodernist film
Remodernist Film
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism...

 and photography with an emphasis on emotional meaning and characterised by elements of new-wave, no-wave, expressionist and transcendental film-making.

Stuckist artist Bill Lewis
Bill Lewis
William "Bill" Lewis is an English artist, story-teller, poet and mythographer. He was a founder-member of The Medway Poets and of the Stuckists art group.-Early life:...

, interviewed by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 at the 2004 Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....

, said that remodernism was "not a movement as such," but a return to the start of modernism in order to move forward with an art for a new paradigm. To "remodernise" is to go "back to the root again, starting with painting ... and see where it goes." He said that this had been called reactionary, but it was radical "in the true sense of the word." New York stuckist artist, Terry Marks
Terry Marks
Terry Marks is a Stuckist artist in New York City. She was one of the US artists in the show The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. She is also a tattooist and actor for film and television...

 said that remodernism posited that modernism had started in a good direction, but veered from that into "pure idea" and that it was necessary to return to the starting point to take an as-yet unexplored alternative direction: "to pursue art-making that’s more concrete and accessible to more people, and find out where that leads us."

In 2004, Luke Heighton wrote in The Future magazine, "Remodernism, it seems, is here to stay whether we like it or not." Alex Kapranos
Alex Kapranos
Alexander Paul Kapranos Huntley , commonly known as Alex Kapranos, is a United Kingdom-based musician who is the lead singer and the guitarist of the Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand.-Early life:...

 of Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand (band)
Franz Ferdinand are a Scottish post-punk revival band formed in Glasgow in 2002. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos , Bob Hardy , Nick McCarthy , and Paul Thomson .The band first experienced chart success when their second single, "Take Me Out", reached #3 in...

 declared 2004 "a good year for remodernism—for having the gall to suggest that artists can have souls."

In August 2005 an art show Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism
Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism
Addressing the Shadow and Making Friends with Wild Dogs: Remodernism, held in 2005 in New York, United States, was the first American exhibition that included work from all of the Remodernist groups, and was one of the last art shows at CB's 313, the gallery connected to CBGB...

(a title taken from a line in the stuckist remodernism manifesto) was held at CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...

s 313 gallery in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. Artist and blogger Mark Vallen
Mark Vallen
Mark Vallen is an American activist with Chicano and other issues, curator, figurative realist painter, and blogger, who runs the Art for a Change web site; he founded The Black Moon web site for Japanese culture.-Life and work:...

 said, "In the mid-1970’s punk rock was born in a dank little New York nightclub called CBGB’s. It all started when rockers like Television, the Ramones and Patti Smith launched a frontal assault on the monolith of corporate rock 'n roll. Now another artistic revolt, Remodernism, is about to widen its offensive from the birthplace of punk."

On May 10, 2006, the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

 and the University of Amsterdam staged a talk on remodernism by Daniel Birnbaum, contributing editor of Artforum, and Alison Gingeras, Assistant Curator, Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

. The summary is:
In August 2006, an online group called "The Remodernists of Deviantart" was founded by Clay Martin. The group is composed of artists who are active on the website deviantart.com.

In 2006, artist Matt Bray said, "I do not wish to be considered a Stuckist, as I find some of there (sic) antics unnecessary. The Stuckists are however the first and most famous Remodernist group, so for that, and for bringing this particular manifesto to my attention; I thank them." In May 2007, with punk singer Adam Bray, he created the Mad Monk Collective in Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...

, England, to promote remodernism.

In January 2008, London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

critic, Ben Lewis, said the year would see "the invention of a new word to describe the modernist revival: 'remodernism,'" which he applied later in the year to Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

 nominees Mark Leckey
Mark Leckey
Mark Leckey is a British artist, working with collage art, music and video. His found art and found footage pieces span several videos, most notably Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore and Industrial Lights and Magic , for which he won the 2008 Turner Prize.-Life:Leckey was born in Birkenhead, near...

, Runa Islam
Runa Islam
Runa Islam is a Bangladesh born artist based in London, and was a nominee for the 2008 Turner Prize. Islam is principally known for her film works.-Background:...

 and Goshka Macuga
Goshka Macuga
Goshka Macuga is an artist based in London. She was one of the four nominees for the 2008 Turner Prize.-Life and work:Goshka Macuga was born in Poland. A graduate of Central St...

, as "part of a whole movement reviving early 20th-century formalism," praising Macuga for her "heartfelt, modest and generous-spirited aesthetic," of which he said there was more needed today. In April 2009, he described Catalina Niculescu, a Romanian artist using "nostalgic" 16mm film, as among a significant trend in art of fetishising the offcuts of modernism: "Let's call it Remodernism."

On August 27, 2008, Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism.-Early life:...

 published a Remodernist Film Manifesto, calling for a "new spirituality in cinema," use of intuition in filmmaking, as well as describing the remodernist film as being a "stripped down, minimal, lyrical, punk kind of filmmaking". The manifesto criticizes Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

, filmmakers who use digital video, and Dogme 95
Dogme 95
Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...

. Point 4 says:
Later, in 2009, in an essay on remodernist film for MungBeing magazine, Richards discussed Remodernism in relation to craft:
In 2009, Nick Christos and other students from Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University, also referred to as FAU or Florida Atlantic, is a public, coeducational, research university located in , United States. The university has six satellite campuses located in the Florida cities of Dania Beach, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter, Port St. Lucie, and in Fort...

 founded the Miami Stuckists group. Christos said,
"Stuckism is a renaissance of modernism—it's re-modernism."

See also

  • Remodernist film
    Remodernist Film
    Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism...

  • Neomodern
    Neomodern
    Neomodern is a term used to describe a "new simplicity" in art and in reaction to the complexity of postmodern architecture and eclecticism. Neomodern is used on occasion to denote the contemporary period.-Neomodern architecture:...

  • Post-postmodernism
    Post-Postmodernism
    Post-postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.-Periodization:...

  • Neo-minimalism
    Neo-minimalism
    Neo-minimalism is an amorphous art movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It has alternatively been called "neo-geometric" or "neo-geo" art...

  • New Sincerity
    New Sincerity
    New sincerity is a term that has been used in music, aesthetics, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy, generally to describe art or concepts that run against prevailing modes of postmodernist irony or cynicism.-New sincerity in music:...

  • New Puritans
    New Puritans
    The New Puritans was a literary movement ascribed to the contributors to a 2000 anthology of short stories entitled All Hail the New Puritans, edited by Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne. The project is said to have been inspired by the Dogme 95 manifesto for cinematic minimalism and authenticity...

  • Art manifesto
    Art manifesto
    The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system...


Further reading

  • Ed. Katherine Evans (2000), The Stuckists: The First Remodernist Art Group, Victoria Press, ISBN 0-907165-27-3
  • Ed. Frank Milner (2004), The Stuckists Punk Victorian, National Museums Liverpool
    National Museums Liverpool
    National Museums Liverpool, previously known as National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool, England. All museums and galleries in this group have free admission...

    , ISBN 1-902700-27-9

External links

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