Grayson Perry. Has Ceramic Art Achieved its Renaissance?

In 2003, the prestigious Turner Prize for Contemporary Art of the Tate Britain Museum was awarded to the artist Grayson Perry for his painted ceramic vases. This award has been described by many institutions across Europe as a positive reappreciation of the ceramic material in the contemporary art world, and Grayson Perry has been seen as a precursor of the long-awaited ‘renaissance’ of ceramics. When compared to contemporary artworks executed in other materials, contemporary works using or entirely executed in ceramics show no thematic or expressive limitations conditioned by the specific qualities of the ceramic material. However, ceramics still has a very limited presence on the contemporary art stage. Historically layered cultural classification prejudices in society and the difficult specificity of the ceramic metalanguage are cited as the main reasons for the undervaluation of this material.