Seen and Done

Delusions of Grandeur at the Wallace Collection is an exhibition in which Grayson Perry reacts to the items in the museum. It got lukewarm reviews when it opened, perhaps because of a lack of coherence. Certainly Perry makes things complicated. We know that context changes the significance and even the value of art, and he likes to control that context by inventing new artists to be the ‘creators’ of some of his work – arguably even ‘Grayson Perry’ is one. Here apart from personas we have seen before he introduces the artist Shirley Smith, also the deluded Honourable Millicent Wallace who believes herself to be the true heir to the Wallace Collection. This opens the way to many reflections on the palatial and the ladylike. He complicates things further by bringing in the work of two real outsider artists, Madge Gill (whose stuff was exhibited here in its own right when the galleries had been emptied in WWII) and Alois Corbaz. So there is no simple story to the exhibition: but how could there be? The collection is complex and so is Perry, and this is the shadow thrown by the former on the latter (or vice versa, or both). This unmanageable complexity is acknowledged right at the beginning by a figure of a Man of Stories who has narrative threads literally bursting out of him.

Coherent or not, Perry is never uninteresting, and there are some nice things here, notably a helmet and figure in armour that are a tribute to the Wallace’s formidable collection of arms and armour, but also great objects in themselves. The ‘tapestries’ Perry goes in for these days are less successful in my eyes. Whisper it quietly, but perhaps the best stuff is the pots.

Not for everyone – you probably know already whether you like Perry’s stuff or not – but I enjoyed it.