The Stuckists, a group of artists devoted to painting, rallied outside the Tate Britain today, handing out leaflets and buttons that denounced the Turner Prize. They argue that the prize is controlled by a small group of art world insiders, who celebrate work that should not be considered art.

Protesters handed out buttons that declared, “The Turner Prize is dead.” Leaflets quoted former winners criticizing the prize. “I think it's disgusting,” Malcolm Morley, the first winner of the prize, is quoted as saying in one of the documents. An exhibition devoted to the prize’s four finalists opens tomorrow.

Artists Charles Thomson and Billy Childish created the Stuckist movement in 1999. According to the founders, the name came from artist Tracey Emin, who told her onetime boyfriend Childish, “Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” Childish left the group in 2001, though Thomson has continued the crusade.

The first Stuckist manifesto states that Stuckism is “against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist” and lists 20 principles for their art. Among them are two pronouncements: “Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists” and “Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.”

The Turner Prize was created in 1984 and is awarded annually to an artist under the age of 50. Winners receive £25,000 ($40,000), while the runners-up receive £5,000 ($8,000) each. The Stuckists have promised to protest again on Dec. 7, when the Turner winner is announced.