Many readers know that my eye is a gimlet one. I might very well enjoy slipping a stiletto between bloated plutocrat ribs a wee too much. Afflicting not the comfortable but the smug, the superficial, and the conformist is a critic’s job. I can’t say that I love the English artist Grayson Perry’s work but find in it an original vision and in him a charming though odd presence. “It’s about time a transvestite potter won the Turner Prize.”
So began Perry’s acceptance speech after winning the 2003 prize, since 1984 Britain’s most prestigious award for a living artist. Perry (b. 1960) was a shock winner. He’d had modest exhibitions and a dealer, but he’d never been a featured story in an art magazine.
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