MSB brainstorming

13 April 2007

Belcher: Letter to Matthew Collings

Dear Mr. C.

Never read your books or saw the TV series but remember how good the original (pre-glossy covers especially) artscribes were.

I took an extended sabbatical from painting from 1992 onwards appalled at what happening...I even had a bizarre interview for the Goldsmith's M.A. where Nick De Ville basically called Pater Fuller a fascist....c'est la vie...so I decamped to Oxfordshire and drew the most reactionary landscapes I could in a fit of pique:-)

I am now re-emerging from the art bunker in Nottingham ( about as far from the metropolitan centre as you can get these days) and firing broadsides as and when I can..( see below) ..I am not overally popular with the New Polyocracy as they rehash third rate ideas from back pages of Artforum and Frieze but at least I enjoying the skirmishes...at least with those that coherant ...my views a little harsher than yours Mathew but I agree with one thing it has certainly got worse not better since 2002

What troubles me is work like yours (painting) has been removed from the artistic landscape like an airbrushed Lenin...my recent reviews are a riposte to this...when did this complete takeover happen..I remember a broad church of artistic styles and genres..now there barely two ...assemblage and digital ....conceptualism was a variety of fruit in the garden now it has choked off all else like rampant bindweed....

sad and it is as a nation we lose....narrow paths mean narrow minds....

Fuller was good before he switched God for Marx....

I will seek out your books and read more....apologies I always thought you part of problem ( Blimey Guv'nor its them luvly YBA's etc) when all along you part of some kind of solution. I disagree about Guston he is pure painter and I think Emin is simply Janet Street Porter with a 'Works' copy of Schiele. As for Damien The First....I said it on my blog..pure Barnum.

Congrats on the paintings...Nuevo Centro Delauneys.....thanks for bucking the tide...however if you go digital I may have to sentence you to ten years in a Stuckist exhibition....

shaun belcher

http://belcheresque.wordpress.com/

Moogee the art dog....

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