Build a temple

“I want to make a temple”

Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry talks to the RSA’s head of Arts & Ecology Michaela Crimmin about the Fourth Plinth and why he dislikes so much public art. He also reveals plans for his latest project and a love of beauty
 
Grayson Perry is rarely short of an opinion, particularly if he’s discussing art. I know this at first hand because we both sit on the Fourth Plinth commissioning committee, the group that selects and guides the programme of contemporary art commissions from leading national and international artists for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. It is fitting that a representative of the RSA is present, as the Society can be credited with starting the debate about art and the Fourth Plinth in 1998.
 
That was when the RSA commissioned a series of three works (by Mark Wallinger, Bill Woodrow and Rachel Whiteread) to be temporarily displayed on the plinth that had been empty since 1841 (an equestrian statue was originally planned, but not enough money was raised). This led to a national debate on the role of public art which continues to this day. I met Grayson to get his view of this discourse and  to explore further thoughts on craftmanship and beauty.
 
Michaela Crimmin: You have been quoted in The Independent as being infuriated by the ‘statue mania of Blair’s decade’ and the fact that there is so much public art now, most of it bad. So what is the point of public art?
 
Grayson Perry: Sometimes I think it’s just to employ people. Money is being given because there’s some government credo that they’re meant to spend so much on public art; therefore it has to be spent. Now there are people who go on public art courses who are good at manoeuvring their way through the maze of bureaucracy and health and safety that’s required to get something commissioned while not offending anybody in the process. You end up with, sometimes literally, a polished pebble because all the corners are knocked off by that method. The result is a load of bland pseudo-abstract logos that get dumped in the middle of roundabouts and then drought-resistant weeds get planted around them. Only a few of these things are made because an artist wants to make them, but that is what makes good art – an artist who wants to create. Obviously all artists want to make a living and so that’s part of the mix, but corporate businesses and local government have their own ideas. These groups want their town or development to be branded and so they put it out to tender and you end up with the least offensive thing. What happens, of course, is it ends up being everybody’s second choice that gets built. I’m much happier working in the commercial marketplace where I make the thing I want to make, somebody sees it and they buy it. That, artistically, works beautifully for me.
 
MC: So you think public art is becoming a brand or a logo?
 
GP: Yes. It’s not an artist saying ‘I’d love to make a sculpture that symbolises Folkestone’, it’s ‘There’s some money floating around in Folkestone, get down there quick and make a sculpture that symbolises the place’. The result is a logo design. Although I think the best artists can work their way around that. A recent example is Mark Wallinger’s proposal for Ebbsfleet [Wallinger has proposed a 164ft-high sculpture of a white horse at Ebbsfleet, Kent]. I admire him as a conceptual artist because he’s very good at putting forward a simple idea that is multifaceted and I think this idea is awesome. It’ll be a wonder of the world. There are a lot of concepts around that don’t have the art. I see them and think ‘That’s a great idea, but shit art’. It just doesn’t have that X factor that art has; a visceral, poetic visual pleasure. It’s just a stage set for a competent idea.
 
MC: You clearly have strong views, would you work in the public realm?
 
GP: I’m actually working on a very large project at the moment that’s hyper-ambitious. I’m trying to build a temple. But I want to do it on my terms because I’ve seen the horrors that public realm art can get tangled up in whether the artist likes it or not. So I’ve decided that I’m not desperate to do it. What I want to do is build a public structure that basically takes the role of a church, where people can get married and can commemorate things. I’ve already designed it.
 
MC: But you’ve not been invited to make the work?
 
GP: No, I’ve wanted to make it myself and then find someone who wants it. So it’s completely opposite to the public art commissioning process which is linked to the current situation in art where we have students who want to be artists rather than make art and curators who want to be curators rather than make great exhibitions. Television is full of people who just want to pay off the mortgage: they don’t want to make great programmes. It’s the same problem with the art world.
 
MC: The Fourth Plinth generates controversy, with many people wanting a traditional sculpture of, say, a general; what’s your view?
 
GP: I think a historic figure is interesting even if nobody knows who they are. They’re part of a very straightforward vocabulary of the public realm and I’ve got no issue whatsoever with a bronze statue of a famous politician or sportsman. The problem is that a lot of modern classical art can slip into cheesiness if it isn’t done with the detail and skill of the original genre.
 
MC: Like the St Pancras sculptures?
 
GP: The statue of John Betjeman is OK. It’s quite touching. But the great big kissing number [The Meeting Place by Paul Day] feels like it belongs in Bluewater rather than St Pancras. I’m really interested in debate about art. For me, the one that has worked best on the Fourth Plinth has been Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant. It is beautifully executed, and when you looked across the square and the light was catching it just right, it felt like ‘Oh my god, what’s that?’ I think it is great that tourists coming to Britain could see a sculpture like that. When you get into public sculpture there is another value system operating. When I saw the maquette for the Angel of the North before it got built I thought, ‘Oh, this doesn’t quite work. It’s a bit lumpen’. It’s iconic now, for all of its shortcomings, and the greatest masterpieces are the ones that gather all the brownie points – critically, popularly, artistically and historically. The Angel of the North has done its job because every town wants their own version, but most of them are failing miserably.
 
MC: The Angel of the North is, of course, by Antony Gormley and his work One and Other will be seen on the Fourth Plinth next year [the work comprises 2,400 members of the public who will occupy the Fourth Plinth for an hour at a time for 100 consecutive days, 24 hours a day] – are you happy with this choice?
 
GP:  Gormley makes religious artefacts for an irreligious age. His work is a kind of Buddhist celebration of humanity. Although that’s me being trite about it – he’s done some great things. I think his work on Crosby beach is brilliant [Another Place at Crosby Beach near Liverpool] and Field for the British Isles is fantastic.
 
MC: Although his Fourth Plinth proposal is not at all like his other work.
 
GP: True, and good on him. It’s certainly the proposal that excited me the most. But it may bomb. I think there will be a lot of media coverage in the first few days and weeks about who gets up onto the plinth and what they do and their experience of it. Then interest could simply peter out. However, it could also become fascinating when people see what other participants have done and think, ‘Well, I could do better than that’, then it could snowball. Someone could carry something up there that’s funny, political or interesting artistically and that may develop a mini-tradition within itself over the course of a year. Plus, just an ordinary person in a beige raincoat standing there doing nothing is interesting as well.
 
MC: There is also a lobby for a statue of the Queen to be placed on the plinth after her death, which would seem to have popular approval.
 
GP: Well, one of my mottos is: ‘Democracy has terrible taste’. The public wants to bring back hanging as well, don’t they? The public is very unreliable. If you put it to a referendum, I think we’d have no immigration and no tax. In some ways you do have to be a bit dictatorial as an artist and say that sometimes the art person does know best.
 
MC: The writer John Berger talks, perhaps in romantic terms, about artists’ capacity to bring truth to their work. Does that have any resonance for you?
 
GP:  I’m slightly wary of those sweeping statements because we’re all individuals and artists are just as flawed and deluded as every other group of society. I think artists are as good politicians as politicians are artists. Most conceptual artists aren’t that philosophical or conceptual. They’re just artists who work within a certain style and if you took their so-called concept into a sixth form debating society, it would be ripped to shreds. When I read a press release that comes through with an invite to a show and it mentions ‘dealing with’ or ‘investigating’ issues, I think ‘Oh, no’ – you’re making art like this because it has nice colours and patterns or you’re interested in the shape of bums. Be specific!
 
MC: Is that because art has become so self-referential?
 
GP: Art is a history of Chinese whispers. I go to museums and I see things I like, or I look through books and I see pieces and I think: ‘I’ll do my version of that’. And that’s what I do, all the time. Originality is very overrated as an artistic measurement of quality.
 
MC: But that’s what people yearn for, isn’t it?
 
GP:  But what do they really mean? It’s new to them maybe, but people in the art world will say, ‘Oh, that reminds me of that 17th-century tapestry I saw last week’. There’s nothing new. I’m very rarely shocked about the format of art any more; the 20th century has worn it out. When I go into an art exhibition and something takes my breath away it is not because it’s original. It’s because it’s been done really well. And it might just be that the colours are put together beautifully, or the style of it is nuanced, or the craftsmanship is breathtaking. That’s what gets me excited about going into an art exhibition. Not any feelings of it being original. I feel there’s a superficial fetishisation of newness in culture. I was at an opening last year and there was Gordon Brown giving a speech and I think he used the words ‘new’ and ‘first’ about twenty times. It was the opening of the Terracotta Army exhibition! I thought: ‘This is old! Traditional’. It was probably an old tradition when they were built two and a half thousand years ago.
 
MC: Is craftmanship important to you?
 
GP:  Yes, but a lot of artists, me included, use other people. I can make ceramics and I can draw – but if I need to have something cast in metal, I make it in clay and then give it to a foundry. There is a fetish about the idea of a single craftsman chipping away and creating something perfect. However, I think there is a danger of the person who just does their art by phone because they are not involving themselves in the creative dialogue with materials and technique. Richard Sennett in his book The Craftsman made an interesting point; he wrote: ‘When you’re hammering in a nail what you feel is the nail going into the wood. You don’t feel your hand on the hammer’. That sympathy with the material is very important. In terms of pure technique, the greatest craftsmen today are probably working for a video games firm producing Grand Theft Auto – that’s the Sistine Chapel of our age.
 
MC: And what about beauty – is it a term the art world is comfortable with?
 
GP: No. Students are taught within an inch of their life how to justify their work intellectually and I think this has been the death of a lot of art. People are not doing it out of pleasure and love. I do sound like a romantic old fool but I think when I am faced with a decision in making a piece of work and I have to choose between whether the idea comes through clearly or whether it looks nice, I always go for it looking nice. Let the idea struggle, and if it doesn’t work then fine. However, I would not say you can have a beautiful thing without any thinking behind it.
 
MC: Finally, have you got high hopes regarding art and the 2012 Olympics?
 
GP: I’m slightly quaking about what culture is going to be done in the name of the Olympics because I think sport and art are uneasy bedfellows. My idea for the opening ceremony would be a Portakabin covered in glitter inside a half-built stadium. Out of it would step a guy in a high-visibility jacket who throws his cigarette away and lights the Olympic flame. Job done.
 
For more details on the Fourth Plinth visit www.fourthplinth.co.uk.