Authenticity, Craftsmanship, and Character in the Artworks of Grayson Perry

In this review, we use the experience of visiting leading artist Grayson Perry’s retrospective Smash Hits exhibition, at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, UK, as a moment for reflection and as a challenge to the disenchantment of the world, narrowed by a definition of rationality that we can 'master all things by calculation', and that: 'there are no incalculable mysterious forces' (Weber 1981, 141). Smash Hits enacts a coming together to marvel at a rare blend of craftsmanship, design, imagination, the unconscious, and echoes of spirituality through the ages. It challenges us to think about how we let these elements into our own ways of thinking, doing and being, if indeed we do. And if not, what might be the price of excluding them?