More Political Stuckism

Rafah Doo-wop 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20"

Another sneak peak into Political Stuckism from my August 2024 publication, Making Friends With Wild Dogs: Reflections on Stuckism for its 25th Anniversary:

I recall a story about George Grosz leaving the Great War emancipated from humanity, and later dressing up as a rich dandy, strolling about the streets of Paris openly hostile to governments of all shapes and sizes. Old fat cat leaders, aided by the cowardice, fear, and the knee-jerk reaction of military men, committed genocide to a generation of hopeful, innocent youth. Grosz would never forgive them their psychotic trespass…
Likewise I, as nobody painter, wake up over a hundred years later on a Saturday morning eager to see the story of my American art odyssey to Russia’s northern capital, only to read that the governments of both countries haven’t studied their lesson on Grosz, paying more attention to the ravings of a racist Woodrow Wilson and the coddled misanthrope Nicholas II. They are small-eyed, unloved men and women, incapable of art appreciation beyond the “state of the art” gallery at a munitions factory.
I will not speak for the painters a half a world away, except that I can see from a photo of their operation that they are much more conscientious than I would be wrapping up art to travel on a train. Such attention to detail!
This is how I feel… The leaders of our two nations are dangerously behind the times, and corrupt. They are over-fed, fearful rich dandys, playing terrorist to millions of people. Their words fill me with dread. “Cold War”. Really? Says who? Oligarchs getting their cheap weasel thrills in board rooms of New York and Moscow? I am the spirit of George Grosz. I am the one who despises these little men in big
positions.
“No annihilation without representation” wrote Toynbee. I will decide if there is a cold war. Not Joe Biden. Not Vladimir Putin. People of earth, (excepting those of Syria, Sudan, and Palestine, and other places where innocent people sleep above the crude, oily wet dreams of nasty human beings), you can rest and relax easy. George Grosz and Ron Throop say that there is no cold war, so carry on with your dreams! We wake most mornings with a vision of the Russian city and countryside, and international brother and sisterhood. We feel born again, naturally, without the toxic tonic of a Jesus Christ or Muhammad Ali to drug us like helpless rats in a sterile lab.
In spirit I am with the glorious Russian painters on that speeding train heading north to the Winter City. I have had it with the Great War, the World War, the Cold War, the Neo Cold War, the new new war of fabulously rich people’s games. I annihilate them. They are gone.
I know that my Stuckist friends in Russia carry with them the keys to universal freedom and pursuit of contentment. Tonight I turn off the news feed once again with a sleepy time rage that turns my anger into a work of art in the morning.
I am the spirit of George Grosz. Not so good a dresser, but a very avid and capable hunter.