Stephen Buckley: Close Cousins

For more than forty years Stephen Buckley, (b. 1944 Leicester, England) has concerned himself with addressing the major themes of the twentieth century through a personal style oscillating between the matière of Kurt Schwitters, the dandyism of Francis Picabia and the intellectual rigour of Marcel Duchamp.

He takes the two most basic components of a conventional painting (canvas and stretcher), and makes multi-dimensional constructions, joins groups of single canvases together in overlapping structures, makes shaped canvases, cuts a stretcher with a variegated edge, stitches and weaves together strips of canvas, patches pieces of canvas onto another support, and adds cardboard tubing, rope, found objects and cut out shapes. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Buckley saw extended prominence in the art press, starting with the artist being described as ‘the Punk Rock of contemporary painting’ and ending with him gaining the title of ‘the ubiquitous Stephen Buckley’. There is now a large portfolio of themes, references, motifs and symbols which are continually reworked and reinvented. Since then, he has made some of his most compelling paintings, lush pop canvases full of symbols and colour, a far cry from the pared-down, industrial feel of some of his early works.