![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Perry-Reith-copy1.jpg\" "\\"BBC")
<\/a>Grayson Perry was a surprising choice to deliver the Reith Lectures given the list of senior academics, elder statesmen and those at the top of their profession preceding him in the job. One wondered why, when it came to contemporary art it was decided to break with tradition and hand the spotlight to one of its middle ranking practitioners with no track record as an intellectual heavyweight. But many enjoyed the change. Think of the Reith lectures and people tend to think dry, dull and probably pompous to boot. With his pantomime outfit and, in the second talk, brandishing a whip, Perry was anything but boring. The jokes came thick and fast, the lectures were even called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Playing to the Gallery\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Perry may be no John Berger but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot smarter and more articulate than all those YBAs he is keen to distance himself from. What we lost was any sustained argument about the nature of contemporary art, what justifies it as art and why. More than anything Perry reminded me of a court jester, clever enough to make his audience laugh and to tease the powers that be with the odd dig, yet never forgetting that he is part of this modern day art circus which has been very good to him. He acknowledged this at several points, in a humorous self\u00e2\u20ac\u201c deprecating way, encouraging others to join this world that even allowed him, a transvestite potter, into its ranks. A classic court jester moment came in the second lecture (he was even wearing what Sue Lawley described as a jester\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat). He teased Nicholas Serota (who was in the audience) about the often expressed criticism that Serota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal tastes are determining to an excessive degree the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purchases of contemporary art. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Impossible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the Fool leaping to his King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defence, he had been to Serota\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home and admired his extensive collection of Cliff Richard memorabilia. It was a swipe but a pretty gentle one.<\/p>\nLecture 2 was supposed to be the one where Perry really addressed what art is and what it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t and especially the boundary lines between the two. Introducing it Sue Lawley said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lecture will explore what the boundaries of art are. Can it really be anything we like from a pile of sweets to a soundscape?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is difficult territory for any contemporary artist wanting to be seen as contemporary. Ever since Duchamp and his urinal the idea of trying to define art by putting boundaries round it has seemed increasingly old fashioned. Perry began by admitting that if you asked people in the art world to define art \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a lot of eye rolling and sort of like \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Oh God! \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you know \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Not that question again. Like it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been answered \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 You know there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a kind of complacent idea in the art world that anything can be art now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in a state now where anything goes\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 But the thing is I think there are boundaries still about what can and cannot be art\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 I was beginning to warm to his theme. If the art world complacently thinks anything can be art, but Grayson doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t agree, perhaps he was going to tell us what those essential qualities are that distinguish art from the merely banal and common place. He informed us that he wanted to establish the boundaries of art a bit like in mediaeval times people marked the territory of their parishes by a primitive process called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153beating the bounds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (the title of this 2nd Reith Lecture). Hence the whip.<\/p>\n
Just prior to listing what he saw as the boundaries beyond which things ceased to be art, he paused to imagine how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his friends in the art world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would laugh at him for wanting to establish the limits of art. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d parried Grayson rather pathetically, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to know when to put my art goggles on. I want to know when \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you know \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to look at something as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. This was quite a confession. Only by knowing when to put his art goggles on would he be able to start looking at something \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The idea that real art might just possibly have the power to announce itself as art because it moved you, took your breath away, was amazingly beautiful or wonderfully thought provoking was not considered. No, Grayson needs to know when to put on his art goggles or he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be unaware of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in front of him, rather like all those museum sheep who have no idea how to judge a painting unless someone is distracting them via headphones with a lot of facts to reassure them that what they are looking at is indeed important art. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe for a moment that Grayson Perry is so insecure about his responses to art, so perhaps it was just a cleverly timed piece of humility to allow the audience to identify with him, for in all probability many of them would have been part of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 the headphones brigade\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Now, brandishing that whip, he would tell them how to recognize this thing called art, which even he has difficulty spotting without some special goggles. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Afterwards,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he assured them to much laughter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you might know when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking at a work of art and not just at some old rubbish\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. There would be nine boundary markers or tests to help them in this task.<\/p>\n
Test number one: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it in a gallery or an art context?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d LAUGHTER. Well, you had to laugh. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the equivalent of saying, a few decades ago perhaps, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not sure if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art, has it got a big gilt frame round it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or try this one: How do you know if someone is a criminal? Helpful test: are they in a prison? It might just have been an initial bit of farce before the more serious stuff, if so many of his other tests hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turned out to be in a similar vein. Yes, statistically, pieces of visual art are quite likely to be found in art galleries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c surprise, surprise \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but this tells you nothing about what makes them art, or how to distinguish them from the things in art galleries that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t art.<\/p>\n
Test number two: started off as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it a boring version of something else?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This might have led into whether art has to be original which would have been a serious line of inquiry, but he left off before he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d started on this one and it morphed into…<\/p>\n
… Test number three: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it entertaining? If so it may not be art because art is a serious business.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Perry immediately mocks this test, telling us that it reminds him how the worst thing you can call an artwork is decorative \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a bit of a leap that, but no doubt this is a jibe he must at some time have had to contend with himself, unfairly in my view. Then he says: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very noble thing to be decorative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. So we got a glimpse of Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s differences of opinion from the dominant art world views on what is proper art. Prejudices he has encountered as a mere potter being another one he touched upon. But these differences featured very little in this light-hearted tour of the contemporary art world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s boundaries. He pursued the idea that a sense of dullness and lack of pleasure, (he cites all those video installations with uncomfortable benches to sit on), might be a sign that we are looking at art. This clearly struck a humorous chord with his audience, but it was beginning to feel like a very unenlightening way of teaching us how to know if a piece of contemporary art merits that appellation. Was it all going to be jokes?<\/p>\n
Test number four: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it made by an artist?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is clearly of no use either since it begs the question of what an artist is. If an artist is defined as someone who makes art but we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet establish what art is, looking for artists means we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just going round in circles. Perry offers no new definition of an artist to help us out. Reading between his lines it looks like artists are people that this cosy art world he delights in belonging to, recognizes as artists. These boundaries, far from revealing anything, were beginning to sound like the already established parish boundaries of the self same art world whose judgements about art we wanted Grayson to explain. But there were no explanations, just a series of markers (e.g. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the Serpentine Gallery, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rather dull and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s by Cornelia Parker, a known artist, ergo it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably art).<\/p>\n
Test number five: this boundary marker concerns the question: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is\u00c2\u00a0 photography art?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If Perry had made a stab at a definition of art in the first place he might have been able to say whether a photograph could fit within it. But without ever nailing his colours to any mast he could only make more jokes; e.g. a photo might be art if the people in the photo aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t smiling. Or: it might be art if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bigger than two metres and priced higher than five figures. Plenty of laughs but zero insight.<\/p>\n
Test number six: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The limited edition test.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Another crack of Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whip to indicate another boundary to this thing called art. He points out, as if we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, that if something is part of an endless edition, it loses some of its monetary value by virtue of the laws of supply and demand, and then goes on to declare that therefore \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s giving away part of its qualification as art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. He draws this conclusion as if it were obvious and says no more on the subject. Actually it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not at all clear why, because there is more than one of it, an object should be deemed any less a work of art. Less expensive probably, but why less a work of art? This could have been an interesting discussion and one which would have touched upon many things: the importance of uniqueness for the art world, the problem of multiples, the conflation of artistic and financial worth and the ways by which the latter is protected. The criteria lying behind Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tests were turning out to be uncannily in tune with the vested interests of the contemporary art world. Since Duchamp the notion that anything can be art may well have won the day in theory, but limits and boundaries there must be in order to protect art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s monetary value. Duchamp himself, authorised a limited edition of his urinal (which was originally a standard mass produced one \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and an important point about it, being that it was just that). Nearly five decades after the first urinal had been destroyed and when it had become a legendary (but, alas, unmarketable) landmark in the history of the avant-garde, Duchamp, agreed, in total contradiction to the spirit of the original, that ceramicists (i.e. potters Perry reminded us) should hand make an edition of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his\u00e2\u20ac\u009d urinal, each of which he personally \u00e2\u20ac\u0153validated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as art, whilst excluding all similar extant urinals. There are eleven \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genuine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Duchamp urinals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, each worth somewhere around a million quid, essentially because Duchamp waved his wand at them. (Think about the magical powers invoked here. How gullible the world to fall for such brazen sophistry!). The artificial limit placed on an edition of an art work is a classic case of how the art world establishes its \u00e2\u20ac\u0153parish\u00e2\u20ac\u009d boundaries for good old financial reasons. Perry probed this not one bit.<\/p>\n
Test number seven: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s looking at it and is there a queue?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d More jokes about the kind of people who go to galleries and look at art. If there are a lot of people with beards and glasses and single speed bikes\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6etc. If so, and if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a queue (contemporary art being so popular) there might be some art involved. I laughed along with the audience for I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d long since given up gaining any insight into what the intrinsic qualities are that make something art.<\/p>\n
Test number eight: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The rubbish dump test\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Perry explains: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Throw it on a rubbish dump and if people walking by notice that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there and say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that artwork doing on that rubbish dump?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s passed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For a moment I thought he was on to something. May be, just may be, one defining quality of an artwork is its capacity to arrest you, make you stop in your tracks and gaze in wonder or surprise or even just puzzlement. But no, once again Perry undercut this possible signifier by another joke which got a big laugh: many good artworks would fail this test because the rubbish dump itself might be the art work.<\/p>\n
This time I realised I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t laughing too. It was too near the truth. Yes, it was now official, from no less an authority than the giver of the Reith Lectures: there is no way of distinguishing between art and rubbish, the very thing he had promised to enable us to do. So Perry in effect told us to forget the rubbish dump test, the only one so far I thought of any use. The really sad thing about all this was that so many people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in relation to any other field of enquiry, perfectly intelligent people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c thought Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lectures not just funny (they were that), but thought provoking and insightful too. Also sad was the fact that Perry can express views at odds with State Art orthodoxy, but apart from his words in praise of the decorative in art, he kept them to himself.<\/p>\n
Test number nine: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Computer Art Test\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Grayson cracked his whip for the last time. As if knowing he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d really dodged the question with his suggestion that we drew a venn diagram of all his tests and where they met in the middle is pretty well guaranteed to be art, Grayson finally threw in a just about plausible definition of art from a friend of his called Charlie Gere. Gere says that you might be able to distinguish between a piece of web art and just an interesting website as follows: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know it might be art when it has the grip of porn without the possibility of consummation or a happy ending\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Perry then expanded on this: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In other words it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about frustrating our urgent need to double click our way to satisfaction whether in the form of a joke, an opinion, a fact, a sale, or indeed an onanistic experience, and to detain and suspend us in a state of frustration and ambivalence and to make us pause and think rather than simply react.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Well, well! Here at last, in the final gasps of his lecture, was an attempt at a definition. It begs as many questions as it answers, but at least it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a start. Had he begun any one of his four lectures with this provocative definition he might have moved on into an inquiry about the true nature of art and why, although quite a lot of things may be art (when manipulated creatively) most things, like urinals, are probably not. At least I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met one that had the grip of pornography but which suspended me in a state of frustration and ambivalence. On the contrary they tend to facilitate double clicking one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way to instant relief in the form of a much needed bladder evacuation. Perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not art. And perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why all those people who claim not to know much about art but who know what they like, would at least recognise when a guy like Duchamp was taking the piss.<\/p>\n
Patrick Cullen<\/strong><\/p>\n The Jackdaw, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patrick Cullen explains why Grayson Perry missed an opportunity by avoiding the important issues he claimed to be addressing. Grayson Perry was a surprising choice to deliver the Reith Lectures given the list of senior academics, elder statesmen and those at the top of their profession preceding him in the job. One wondered why, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[227,43,258],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-grayson-perry","tag-patrick-cullen","tag-reith-lectures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}