The artist and rock star Billy Childish has compared his ex-girlfriend Tracey Emin to Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Childish, who co-founded the Stuckist art movement in 1999, made the association in response to an article in The Sunday Times by writer Martin Ivens.
In a piece about Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr Ivens wrote: “Margaret Thatcher was honoured with the invention of eponymous political creed in the 1980s: Thatcherism. Gordon Brown, however, stands accused of promoting a less flattering brand: ‘stuckism’.
“Tracey Emin, the artist, once kicked her boyfriend out, adding insult to injury by accusing him of being artistically ‘stuck, stuck, stuck’. He gleefully embraced the insult as the label of his movement. As a proud progressive, Brown is unlikely to follow suit.”
The Chatham-based artist responded in a letter. He wrote: “I did not gleefully adopt the term ‘stuckism’ as Martin Ivens says. I just went along with Charles Thomson and have regretted it ever since.
“Nor did Tracey Emin kick me out – I was living with my girlfriend.
“The term ‘stuckism’ was adopted ironically, not because we were stuck, but because we were not, much in the way that Gordon Brown has appropriated the title Prime Minister.
“I do, however, agree with Ivens’s, possibly unintentional, political alignment of Emin and Margaret Thatcher.”
Mr Childish, whose real name is Steven John Hamper, dated Margate-born Tracey Emin between 1982 and 1986. They remained friends for many years, but fell out in 1999.
Mr Childish’s name was a prominent feature of Ms Emin’s famous artwork ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995’, in which it was stitched into the fabric of a tent. The work, which was owned by Charles Saatchi, was destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire in London.
POSTED: 14/11/2007 15:50:58
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