Artist Grayson Perry's new TV series on taste is getting rave reviews. Columnist Suzanne Moore has the same working-class roots. But are our shoes, kitchens and wallpaper simply a reflection of where we came from?
Interview by Susanna Rustin.
Susanna Rustin: How would you describe your own taste?
Grayson Perry: Taste is a weird one for me. I put all my aesthetic judgment into my work. So it's on the level of a professional artist, always, right down to all my women's clothes [Perry is a transvestite]. When it comes to my men's clothes, my wife buys them. Maybe if I've got any taste at all, I bow to the consensus of the Islington chattering classes – I bought my wife an Issey Miyake dress last Christmas – but whether that is my personal taste, I don't know. Part of being an artist is that you are achingly self-conscious about every aesthetic decision you make, and taste is at its most powerful when it's a default, unconscious decision because that's when all the influence of your childhood and background and society comes into play. When I do buy something, it's often against my own judgment. If I'm buying a motorbike, I'll buy a Harley Davidson – I know it's a cheesy Essex cliche and I look like Peter Stringfellow on it, but my sensual, working-class side says: "I want a big bike that goes brm brm brm brm!"
Suzanne Moore: I'm a mish-mash. I think taste is formed young, in reaction to your parents. For me, a working-class house is one where no matter what your circumstances, you cram in as many things as possible. When I was little we kept moving to smaller places but we had to have a three-piece suite and a table and chairs, however big the room was, and 20 million ornaments.
GP: I've been shocked when I've been to visit people in council flats and they've got a huge leather three-piece suite and a big blingy coffee table and a huge TV, and you have to kind of edge around the room, banging your knees on things.
SM: But I am like that, just slightly more exotic – I've got all the little ornaments, but it's things I bought in India. I think my taste is working-class because it's quite blingy. I don't really like middle-class understatement – I can respect it as an idea, but I can't really do it.
GP: It's almost in the genes of the middle classes, in their behaviour. Everything is about restraint, perhaps as a reproach to people who are more indulgent.
SM: Did you feel sorry for the woman in your programme who had bought a show home because she couldn't really cope with choice? I had sympathy for that. I do the same, I think we all do when we wear black. I've deliberately not worn black today, and that's quite difficult.
GP: Yes, it's crazy, it's chromophobic. I'm only dressed like this because I've been at Saint Martin's College of Art all day having dresses pinned on me and I knew my clothes would be in a heap on the floor. I think of colour sense as the visual equivalent of perfect pitch. Some people can just reach into a pile of swatches and say that looks nice with that. The main dynamic of taste is between people who want the security of almost empirical measures of what's good, like brands, and people who are confident enough to say, "I'll be the one to decide".
SM: I go to my friends' houses and they've got completely different taste to me, they come from different places, and I like how they have their houses because that's them.
GP: I'm suspicious when I go to someone's house and everything is beautiful and perfect. Authenticity often means mistakes.
SR: When you talk about colour, it sounds as though taste is a real thing that some people might have and others might not. But in the programmes it seems to be about social prejudices.
GP: There are people in any group who can do it better than others. If you take guys with tattoos, some have tattoos that are more interesting and artistic. Some people will have working-class, front-room grandma taste that is better than other people's. I went to stately homes that are a bit duff, and stately homes that were absolutely eye-popping.
SR: So the people with good taste are the ones with the best eye in each bracket?
SM: I remember being at a party some years ago, and talking to some woman about kitchen tiles and thinking, what has happened? When was I ever interested in kitchens? I used to despise people who cared about this stuff.
GP: The kitchen is the arena now where a middle-class person shows off their credentials: they have the cooker, the tiles, the pots, the food, everything.
SR: Beyond being more aware of how our tastes are shaped, should we try to change them?
GP: The drama of taste is when people want to change, and of course education is hugely powerful. At university traditionally you would move away from home and be exposed to people from all walks of life. Sadly, that's not happening so much now, because people can't afford it, but often that was a transformative period.
SM: My mother's dead now, but I felt terribly embarrassed by her taste for a long time. She worked and saved very hard to have a fur coat, a white chinchilla or something. Although she had lots of things I liked, when I went home I would be embarrassed by all these little baby seals and little dogs, glass animals from when she went to Venice.
GP: Those things are sold by vintage dealers now.
SM: I don't know what words like vintage and shabby chic mean, really. You had that man in the programme who bought a leather couch and had it distressed. To me, that's mad. Why would you have a new thing and make it look old?
GP: What's happened is that the upper classes have these amazing houses they can't afford to keep up. So everything's rotting gently, and that's now become their badge of honour, almost – it's the aesthetic of authentic upper-classness. So that's what the guy with the sofa is trying to mimic.
SR: Can we say we're living in an era of good or bad taste?
GP: Taste has become professionalised, more corporate, so there are more bland rules being enforced. Everybody is anxious they've got the right things. But there comes a moment when people are experienced enough that they think it doesn't really matter, and that's often when they start to make interesting choices. It tends to be as you get older.
SM: I think that's when you can admit what you really like, when you can say I don't want to be cold, I want my couch to be really soft and I want to lay down when I'm watching telly!
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