Miss a trick?

She said "Are you working today?", to which I replied that yes, I was working on some stuff at home, as it was a bit embarrassing to go out of doors looking at total mess. It's embarrassing when others stare but it's not worthwhile changing out of workwear. "No", she says, "you're stared at because you have two heads. It has nothing to do with your trousers."


She has quite a dry sense of humor and we know each other quite well. I nip out to the shop regularly. For some, this kind of contact is what oils the wheels of a day. Small talk, banter; that's what makes up Facebook, a different kind of contact. Alan Yentob commented on 'digital making the private public' in his lament for the paper codex: "Books - The Last Chapter?"

Yentob holding a small industrially-produced espresso cup

I wanted to have a look at Grayson Perry online. Would I get a better experience of his work, looking at a range of digital sources, rather than the publication I was looking forward to seeing this weekend. The crux of his matter - the personal, wrapped around the body of large pots, made public, a direct reference to the stories told on Greek pottery, eloquent and sophisticated in its form. It always baffled me as to why the Greeks would want to wrap a story around a pot that is quite beautiful in it's own right, without decoration. Are their pots stories, or functional objects? They could hardly be both: the taboo of 'don't touch' with artworks, versus the inherent tactility of pottery - art and function don't sit too well together. It can work with a few forms: the vase, never to hold a flower; a teabowl, in it's vitrine, and to a certain extent, the bowl, an object of philosophical contemplation.

Either functional or narrational - they are stories of a culture. Are Perry's stories that of a culture, or are they of personal experience, or of cultural experience as defined by the individual? Is the 'private made public' an acceleration  - a viral mushrooming of the cult of the individual?

Grayson Perry

We've Found the Body of Your Child, 2000, Earthenware

lifted from saatchi-gallery.co.uk

It really really bothers me that some of Perrys pots are wonky. What is the place for craft values?  Bob Stein (Institute for the Future of the Book) remarks that books as a physical object will become an art object for the rich. Right back where we started with Gutenberg. I think Yentob missed a trick.  The book as art object is on the rise, explored as a historical and contemporary object, as an art object, a commodity. And it's not just for the rich. A lot of these works are very accessible. The desire for the real experience, for narrative, for the tangible object, the trancendent object, objects that embody craftsmanship without entering into the self-indulgence that craft can have: to be about itself. Truly, an art object.