Sir Grayson Perry C.B.E. R.A. (British, b.1960)

Sir Grayson Perry C.B.E. R.A. (British, b.1960)
Quilt
glazed earthenware
58 cm. (22 3/4 in.) high
Executed in 1998

Provenance
With Laurent Delaye Gallery, 19 January 2001, where purchased by the present owners

“I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn’t got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility… For me the shape has to be classical invisible: then you’ve got a base that people can understand.” (Sir Grayson Perry)

Sir Grayson Perry is arguably best known for his ceramic vessels. Perry’s ceramics earned him the Turner Prize in 2003, both solidifying his position as a leading British contemporary artist, but also affirming ceramics as a legitimate medium in which Perry’s art practice could flourish.

Perry is perhaps most identifiable through his choice of medium - both as an artist and ceramicist. Perry is both an artist in his idealism and creativity and a maker by virtue of his medium and craft. Both subject and medium work simultaneously as both are used to explore challenging subject and to push the boundaries of what is traditionally considered fine art.

Perry uses ceramics to subverts conventional forms of artistic practice, such as painting, drawing, and sculpting by incorporating craft-based practices like pottery, printmaking, and weaving, blending high art with forms often seen as domestic or decorative.

However, his subject matter is far from decorative, and this is true in the two present examples.

Isms, the more overtly political in subject matter, executed in 1998 , is a physical vessel in which the artist’s documents his exploration of overarching themes and Isms, from, feminism to socialism, consumerism and fauvism to name just a few. In this work a host of themes are challenged and explored. Identity and gender, class and society, consumerism and irony are all at the forefront of the work’s substance. Such examples are found within the ironic details embedded into the depts of the vase.

Perry writes out his isms and pairs them with contrasting imagery, layering sarcasm and irony into the finer details of his work. This is especially evident with Constructivism - a term he scrawls onto the surface of a vase, juxtaposed with a highly Rococo-inspired image reminiscent of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing (1767), housed in the Wallace Collection. The contrast is striking: Constructivism, the 1920s artistic movement rooted in mechanical forms and functional design, is set against an image that’s playful, ornamental, and unapologetically decorative in the Rococo style.

Isms incorporates the written word into Perry’s ceramics, one of the most distinctive features of his practice, in order to portray both word and image to challenge societal notions and preconceptions.

In contrast to Isms, which subverts notions of identity and gender, class and society, consumerism and irony, Quilt uses entirely different motifs. Both popular culture and Pop Art references in Quilt are more prominent through the use of strong colour and images. Pop Art, plays a vital role in how his work communicates irony, satire, and cultural critique. While his subject matter is often dark or provocative, the colours he chooses are frequently bright, bold, and deliberately playful, a tactic that creates visual tension and emotional contradiction. Rather than championing consumerism, in Quilt, Perry highlights its fragility, bright colours, rainbow palette and images of superficial beauty are placed onto an imperfect and somewhat fragile vase. Quilt also pays homage to Perry’s own craft, Quilt being far from a piece of glazed earthenware but handsewn and crafted cover.

In conclusion, most have a complex surface employing many techniques, including “glazing, incision, embossing, and the use of photographic transfers”, which requires several firings. To some he adds sprigs, little relief sculptures stuck to the surface. The high degree of skill required by his ceramics and their complexity distances them from craft pottery. It has been said that these methods are not used for decorative effect but to give meaning. Perry challenges the idea, implicit in the craft tradition, that pottery is merely decorative or utilitarian and cannot express ideas.