Stella Vine

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Stella Vine's Hi Paul Can You Come Over, portrait of Princess Diana, bought by Charles Saatchi
Stella Vine's Hi Paul Can You Come Over, portrait of Princess Diana, bought by Charles Saatchi

Stella Vine (born 1969 in Alnwick, Northumberland, England) is an artist and former stripper in London. She rose to prominence in 2004 when Charles Saatchi bought a painting by her of Princess Diana, which provoked media controversy. Since then she has continued to receive media attention and has become established through gallery exhibitions in the UK and abroad. Her work is figurative painting with subject matter drawn from either her personal life of family, friends and school, or rock stars, royalty and celebrities. Paintings by her of the model Kate Moss have become well known through press reproduction.

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[edit] Early life

She was born Melissa Jane Robson in Alnwick, Northumberland in 1969. Her name was then changed to Melissa Jordan after her stepfather's name; she subsequently changed it to Stella Vine in 1995, inspired by Andy Warhol names, as "I didn't feel like I belonged to either of my fathers' families."[1] She lived with her mother who was a seamstress and her grandmother who was a secretary. Her mother remarried when she was seven, and they relocated to Norwich. In 1981, she won a silver cup for "most original act" for a mime in a "Junior Startime" talent competition at the Norwich Theatre Royal.[2] After a difficult relationship with her stepfather, she was briefly fostered aged 13, and then moved into a bedsit, where she started a relationship with a 24-year-old caretaker. Two years later she became pregnant. She moved with her baby into a home for single parents and then to London, where she joined the NYT (National Youth Theatre of Britain) in 1983, and the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, London, 1987-1990 where she formed a close relationship with the musician and film maker Ross Newell. She worked as a cleaner, waitress, stripper and in hostess clubs. For five years she also performed as an actress in provincial theatres around the UK, as well as running her own improvised theatre company Minx Productions and playing with her band Victoria Falls.


Stella Vine exhibits her work for the first time, in the Vote Stuckist show at the Fridge Gallery, Brixton, June 2001.
Stella Vine exhibits her work for the first time, in the Vote Stuckist show at the Fridge Gallery, Brixton, June 2001.

She attended part-time classes at the private Hampstead School of Art in 1999- 2001 and began to paint members of her family, as well as celebrities who fascinated her, such as Mike Leigh, PJ Harvey and Sylvia Plath. In June 2001 she was exhibited for the first time in a public show, in the Vote Stuckist show by the Stuckists art group, with paintings of Sylvia Plath, her step father, a stripper and a life painting from Hampstead School of Art.[3] She participated in the group's activities and took part in a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. She founded the Westminster Stuckists group, which she soon renamed 'The Unstuckists'. In August 2001 she married Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists, in New York. They did not live together, and separated after eight weeks. She had severed links with the Stuckists by the end of the year. She studied Philosophical Aesthetics with Johnathan Lahey Dronsfield at Birbeck College in 2002 - 2003, and attended courses on Warhol with Professor Gavin Butt in 2002, and Womens Work with Kathy Battista at Tate Modern.

[edit] Recognition

In 2003 she opened the Rosy Wilde gallery in East London in a former butchers shop to show emerging artists. It was on the verge of bankruptcy, when Charles Saatchi purchased her painting of Princess Diana Hi Paul Can You Come Over, showing the Princess with heavy eyes and blood on from her lips. Thick red text painted on the canvas said, "Hi Paul can you come over I'm really frightened", a reference to Diana's butler Paul Burrell.

The purchase resulted in considerable media coverage, which focused on the controversial nature of the painting, as well as the fact that the painting had been bought for only £600 from an unknown artist, who was a single mother and an ex-stripper. Saatchi had discovered the painting in a show called Girl on Girl in Cathy Lomax's Transition Gallery, which is housed in a converted garage in Hackney. Vine had originally wanted to price the painting at £100.

Lomax described this painting:

Stella Vine's work deals with her fascination with the trashy and the dark. Underlying this is a sometimes contradictory love for her subjects. Hi Paul Can You Come Over... examines that pivotal moment in the standing of the British Monarchy, the death of Princess Diana and the horror of her crash. All the conspiracy theories are summed up in this painting as a wild eyed and tiara clad Diana cries for help whilst painterly blood drips from her luscious lips.[4]

A subsequent purchase by Saatchi of Vine's painting of Rachel Whitear (also with blood running from the mouth) also created a media reaction, as Whitear was a former drug user, whose body was due for exhumation. Vine refused to acquiesce to the parents' request, backed by the police, not to exhibit the painting, then on view in the Saatchi Gallery in the New Blood show. Saatchi had delegated to her the decision to keep the work on display or withdraw it.

Vine's promotion by Saatchi brought a reaction from the Stuckists who claimed that her work had been influenced by theirs, and that both she and Saatchi were benefiting from their ideas without due acknowledgement. Vine disputed that there had been any influence. She and former husband Thomson engaged in artistic and personal recriminations in the media. Thomson then reported Saatchi to the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) but the complaint was dismissed.

Holy Water Cannot Help You Now by Stella Vine
Holy Water Cannot Help You Now by Stella Vine

The media attention left Vine depressed and even suicidal. She sold her gallery, and travelled abroad, teaching art to children in Spain. She moved back to her home town of Alnwick (where she presented work to the local Bailiffgate museum), and then to a flat near the British Museum in London. There followed a series of solo shows in Israel, Los Angeles, London & New York, and group shows including the Prague Biennale II 2005. In 2005, her show Stellawood was staged at Tim Jefferies' Hamilton Gallery in Mayfair, London.

Her painting Hi Paul Can You Come Over was nominated as one of the ten worst paintings in Britain in The Guardian.[5] Shortly after, a new painting of Princess Diana, Murdered, Pregnant and Embalmed, by Vine was bought by George Michael for £25,000, according to The Sun newspaper which condemned it as "sick". An image of Kate Moss, Holy Water Cannot Help You Now, was widely reproduced in the media. Moss has also appeared in other Vine paintings showing images of the model's alleged cocaine use. Vine herself admitted to a four-month cocaine addiction.

Vine was a curator for the Noise Festival, a festival of art for under 25 year olds, launched at Tate Liverpool in April 2006. In June 2006, she gave a talk at Tate Modern on a painting by Balthus. In August 2006, she was again featured in the tabloids, when her painting of Celebrity Big Brother stars, Samuel "Ordinary Boy" Preston and Chantelle Houghton, was used as the invitation to their wedding.

In 2006, she re-opened her Rosy Wilde gallery, this time on the first floor above the first Ann Summers sex shop in Soho. She commented on her experiences in the commercial gallery world: "The art world is really exactly the same as the sex industry: you have to be completely on guard, you will get shafted, fucked over left, right and centre."[6] A solo show of new work has been announced for September 2007 at Modern Art Oxford.

She has said:

“ I have always been ambitious, no doubt about that. I always felt like I had to reach the dizzy heights of fame and success or whatever the heights are of a number of given professions I have dabbled in, to prove myself, "Stripper of the year" a bafta or whatever, for me it was by creating something interesting and entertaining or moving, but not by compromising the thing I was creating, that thing had to reach those heights, I guess it's about being accepted and loved a bit or a lot.[2] ”

She lives in a flat in Bloomsbury, opposite the British Museum, feeling at home with the historic character of the area. She continues with an erratic, bohemian life, using a local cafe as her office.[7]

In 2007, The Stuckists had an exhibition Called " I wont have sex with you as long as we're married." [1] (Stella Vine quote on her wedding night!)

In July 2007, Vine collaborated with Topshop clothing chain, creating a fashion range inspired by her artworks. These included T-shirts, hot pants and jean shorts.[8]

[edit] Criticism

Vine's work has not been well received by many critics. David Lee, the editor of The Jackdaw, called her a "brainless rotten painter" and Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph critic, wrote her off: "It's trash. It is another stab at creating the visual equivalent of tabloid journalism."[9] However, Waldemar Januszczak, The Sunday Times critic, who singled her out for praise in his otherwise hostile review of the Saatchi Gallery's New Blood show, has continued to champion her: "although I didn’t much want to like Vine’s contribution, I found I did. It had something." He saw "a combination of empathy and cynicism that can be startling."[10] Andrew Nairne the director at Modern Art Oxford said 'I think she will be discovered to be one of the most remarkable painters of our time' as stated in the Summer brochure for Modern Art Oxford 2007.

In a book published to accompany the show 'Stella Vine - Paintings' at Modern Art Oxford there is an essay by Germaine Greer which works to outline important ideas about Vine's work. Greer states ‘Stella Vine remains viscerally connected to the facts of her life, she is not her own hero. Her art is not performance’. When discussing the idea of femininity Greer suggests that Vine ‘ seizes on her celebrity subject and throttles her into paint, smearing her lipstick and melting her eye-makeup, she is as implacable as any rapist’. (from the book 'Stella Vine- Paintings' - www.modernartoxford.org.uk)

Ana Finel-Honigman reflects supportively on the criticism Vine receives in a recent interview with the artist for Saatchi online. Honigman suggests 'the quality that critics use to undermine the credibility of Vine's art - that it is adolescent- is actually the source of its indisputable emotional impact. Without question, her art is adolescent - in the same way that Holden Caulfield's observations about a world filled with phonies, and Kurt Cobain's acid outrage over adult lies and injustice, and Sylvia Plath's over-heated anger and bitterness at the world's betrayals were adolescent. At first Vine's art appears clumsy, but look longer and it is less careless than bitterly honest. Plath would surely appreciate Vine's portrait of Ted Hughes, with the epithet, "Daddy, I have had to kill you" emblazoned on the canvas.' http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/07/stella_vine_in_conversation_wi.php

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Girlcrush", Stella Vine blog, 8 March 2006 Retrieved April 2, 2006
  2. ^ a b "Harry Pye", Stella Vine blog, 11 March 2006 Retrieved April 2, 2006
  3. ^ "The transformation of Stella Vine's art" stuckism.com. Accessed April 24, 2006
  4. ^ Cathy Lomax blog February 19, 2004 Retrieved April 1, 2006
  5. ^ "Ten of the worst" The Guardian 2005
  6. ^ Smith, David (2006)"Art? It's like the sex trade" The Observer April 23, 2006. Accessed online April 24, 2006
  7. ^ http://money.independent.co.uk/property/homes/article330133.ece Interview in the Independent
  8. ^ Topshop Style Blog - STELLA VINE FOR TOPSHOP
  9. ^ Richard Dorment, Daily Telegraph
  10. ^ "The Picture of Health?", The Sunday Times, November 27, 2005 Retrieved March 29, 2006
  • The Stuckists (2004) Punk Victorian. National Museums Liverpool. ISBN 1-902700-27-9. Stella Vine, page 23.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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