http://www.stuckism.com/Walker/AStuckistOnStuckism.html#Dysfunctional
"Saatchi switched from promoting Margaret Thatcher to promoting a dead shark, which some might think was not such a big change. He was certainly equally successful with both"
The lovely Stuckist folk...
"David Hockney became a celebrity in the sixties because he was recognised as the leading artist of his generation; he backed it up with a novelty line in glitzy gold jackets and distinctive glasses. Tracey Emin became a celebrity in the nineties because she got drunk and said "fuck" a lot of times on television; she backed it up with a novelty line in embroidered tents and unmade beds. That illustrates the change that had taken place in values..............
"The main requirements are an art gimmick, shameless self-promotion, getting to know as many right people as possible, and, it would seem, finding some way of blotting out the hideousness of it all. Damien Hirst put it with his usual understated eloquence: "I started taking cocaine and drink… I turned into a babbling fucking wreck." (On the Way to Work, Damien Hirst & Gordon Burn, Faber 2001)
There are many worthwhile artists who are constitutionally incapable of this route. They have too much integrity and are not prepared to pander to idiots. Their careers are doomed. I had known artists with doomed careers since the Medway Poets days. I felt particularly outraged that the reward for their integrity and dedication to their art, in lieu of dedication to going to the right parties (they do go to parties, but the wrong ones), was obscurity. I had no doubt their art had considerably more achievement, originality, intelligence and depth than the art that was being mass-marketed as the leading brand, sorry - art, of our times"
