Overvaluation

As I seem to have kicked off September with a theme of "overvalued art", I suppose I'd better deal with my earlier tease about the thing I saw for sale in a Bristol gallery that truly expanded my ideas of how overvalued something could be. It was this:

Ignore the reflections and the frame, and consider that scrap of paper float-mounted inside the frame. Look closely. I mean ... Yikes. I wonder how far you agree with me that this is both the ugliest and the most incompetent piece of work you have seen for some time, compounded by the fact it is offered for sale at £7,750? That's SEVEN THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS [1]. I noted that this lino print is from a tiny edition of five, and discovered on the Web that No. 2 in the edition (this is No. 3) was sold at Sotheby's for £4,000, with an estimate of £2,000-3,000, so the Bristol price tag is optimistic, to say the least. Given that a gallery's commission is normally situated around 45%, I suspect someone is suffering buyer's remorse – who wouldn't? – and is trying to recoup their original outlay.

The actual block of lino the image is cut into is postcard sized, no larger, and the rumpled, inky-fingered sheet of paper it has been printed onto looks like it has been torn out of a sketchbook (if you can read the label, "wove paper" is the regular stuff you write shopping lists on, nothing fancy [2]). Setting aside the – presumably intentional – crudity of the draughtsmanship (not to mention the, um, subject matter), I think that to anyone who enjoys printmaking the most unattractive aspect of this item is that outlines have simply been cut into the surface, rendering them white on a black background; no attempt whatsoever has been made to use the inherent capacity of relief printing to produce contrasting blocks of solid colour and white paper, or bold graphical linework. It's a clumsy sketch cut with a minimal level of skill or imagination, like something scratched with a key into a public lavatory door, although it's true the word "love" has come out the right way round, which is something, I suppose. It reminds me of the beginners' efforts I saw when I worked as an art technician in a secondary school in 1972/3, although those generally involved football and glam-rock rather than transgressive sex. Of course, this may all be part of the artist's intention; a poke at the artsy-craftsy, tasteful preciosities of conventional printmakers. It might also be said that there's a subversive tradition being invoked here: art brut, punk, and even "zen mind, beginner's mind", stuff like that.

But this would be odd coming from Grayson Perry – for it is he – surely one of the most self-consciously artsy-craftsy artists working in Britain today. The man makes pots and tapestries, FFS! Isn't his artsy-craftiness in itself his sly poke at Art World snobbery? Although, admittedly, tastefulness does not figure large in his output. I'm not sure how well-known Grayson Perry is beyond these shores, but here he has achieved recognition as a National Treasure in waiting. His two Big Things are that he is a painter of pots, a cross-dresser, and has an obsession with his childhood teddy bear Alan Measles... Correction, his three Big Things are that he is painter of pots, a cross-dresser, has an obsession with his childhood teddy bear, and loves to talk about art ... OK, his four Big Things ... [3] And it has to be admitted, annoying as the transvestite-potter-with-a-teddy-bear performance is, that Grayson does have interesting things to say about art. His book, Playing to the Gallery : Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to be Understood is well worth reading. He may be a posturing provocateur, but he's no idiot.

The thing is, no matter what you think of him or his art, a great many people will have heard of Grayson Perry, whereas they probably won't have heard of many other artists, and certainly not accomplished but distinctly un-provocative printmakers like, say, Neil Bousfield or Sarah Gillespie, just to pick two artists whose work I have admired in recent years. He has made himself into a brand, and the whole point of a brand is to save people who want to buy art – or anything, come to that – from having to make their own judgements about it. A really successful art brand is one that can be instantly identified without any label. For example, in the Royal West of England Academy's annual "secret postcard" fundraising auctions the anonymous but unmistakable contributions from the likes of Antony Gormley and Grayson Perry immediately become the subject of bidding wars that soar away into the thousands, while the majority of contributors' efforts remain stalled below £100. Which is about what a hastily hand-painted 6" x 4" postcard is worth, whoever's signature is on the back.

In support of a cash-strapped institution like the RWA, of course, the absurd overvaluation of a small token artwork is fine and indeed admirable; the truism that something is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it is not so much contradicted as exemplified when something intrinsically valueless has become an opportunity for charitable generosity. But that framed scrap of paper above is not inviting bids, it is asserting its own market value, hanging on a commercial gallery wall somewhat hubristically alongside beautiful (and cheaper!) original prints by Matisse, Picasso, and other notables. Had it been made by anyone less well-known, it would surely have gone straight into a drawer or even the bin; unframed, unwanted, at most a cack-handed curiosity, best forgotten. But it's "a Grayson Perry" and therefore must be worth a lot of money, mustn't it? It may look like shit, but it's an investment. Well, we'll see about that; only time will tell.

Frankly, I think Grayson Perry should be ashamed of himself (an unlikely scenario) for letting such a lazy, phoned-in effort out into the wild, but nowhere near as ashamed as any fool willing to pay that sort of money simply for the bragging rights of hanging the dismal thing on their wall. And, just think, when they grow tired of it and suffer buyer's remorse in their turn, the next gallery will have to offer it at £15,000 if the owner hopes to recover their outlay plus commission! Provided, of course, Grayson's stock doesn't takes a tumble in the meantime.

1. That's roughly 10,500 US dollars, or 9,000 euros.
2. I love the way giving something a technical or euphemistic name seems to elevate its status. I'm sure you have noticed the frequency of a substance called "aqua" in household products and cosmetics. And then there's giclée printing, so much more sophisticated than plain old inkjet printing...
3. Sorry, I recently saw the Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition ("Nobody expects..."), still quite funny after all these years.