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The
work of Stella Vine has received an enormous amount of media coverage
over the past couple of months. Articles appeared in most of the
British national papers, and also in the press worldwide, from Los
Angeles to China. This interest was generated by Charles Saatchi,
who had bought two of her paintings in February and included them
in the exhibition, 'New Blood, New Artists, New Acquisitions', at
his gallery in what used to be London's County Hall. As a result,
Vine has been catapulted from total obscurity to being the art world's
latest sensation.
The
painting which attracted most attention, and has been widely reproduced,
is a crude portrait of Princess Diana, bearing the graffitied words,
"Hi Paul can you come over, I'm really frightened". It
was it was inspired by a letter to the former royal butler Paul
Burrell, and is reputed to have been painted in 15 minutes.
Stella
Vine is a young painter based in London, who had sold few paintings
before Saatchi's purchase. She had attended part-time painting classes
at Hampstead School of Art and is described as having been a stripper.
She was married to Charles Thomson, one of the leaders of the Stuckists,
a group of artists led by Tracey Emin's ex-partner, Billy Childish.
Her style and technique of painting has apparently been greatly
influenced by Thomson and Childish. She describes her painting as
deliberately bad, "I can paint in a much more realistic, photographic
style, but I find it more interesting to make it less perfect,"
she said. "I like what I call 'bad painting' " (quoted
in the Daily Telegraph).
The
name of the Stuckists apparently derives from Emin's comment, made
during a row with Childish, that his painting was "stuck, stuck,
stuck". The Stuckists believe that only strongly emotional
paintings can be real art. They despise what they consider to be
both Saatchi's and Tate Gallery director Nicholas Serota's "stranglehold"
on the modern art market, and think that most of the art promoted
by these two is "lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy".
The
Storey Gallery has been loaned two of Stella Vine's paintings by
a local collector who prefers to remain anonymous. The paintings
are: Snow White in the Forest and The Boys (William and Harry).
The collector bought them at about the same time as Saatchi, who
apparently is also interested in buying the Snow White painting.
This
is the third time in the past nine months that the Storey Gallery
has paralleled Saatchi's interests. Last summer he was considering
buying a piece in the Storey's exhibition by Manchester painter
David Hancock. In September the Storey held an exhibition by Simon
Callery, a London-based artist who had the distinction of having
a whole exhibition of his work bought by Saatchi before it opened,
and whose painting was included in the infamous Sensation show.
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