Your latest work is a series of tapestries that explore class and taste in modern Britain. Why tapestries?
Do you want the real reason, or the reason that sounds really good?
Both, please.
One reason is that I could put on a large exhibition relatively quickly. It would take me two years to fill this room with pots, whereas the drawings for the tapestries took me three months. But I also chose tapestries because they were the status symbols of the super-rich, and they tell the stories of big national dramas and battles. I thought it would be interesting to show more everyday drama on them.
You have a reputation for being one of the least pretentious contemporary artists.
Sometimes people are scared of the truth. They are scared that it’s like The Wizard of Oz: that if they told the truth it would pull the curtain back and you’d find out they were just this little person who was making it behind. Trying to justify yourself with false intellectualism is one of the most annoying habits artists have.
Have you ever thought that a piece of contemporary art is just rubbish?
Oh, yes, all the time. Once I was listening to Bill Viola on the radio, years ago, and he was talking about a piece and he said, “It’s about the human condition.” It might have been about the human condition, but that’s almost like calling something profound – you don’t do it. You let people come to that conclusion themselves. Show not tell, as they say.
Is there an element of “emperor’s new clothes” about some art?
Artists are remarkably good at being the weavers of the emperor’s new clothes as well as being the emperor. Sometimes they clothe themselves in this stuff but they don’t need to. Often the best artists are totally honest about why they make stuff.
What is the most important aspect of what you make?
Being amusing is one part of it. I want people to be seduced by the material and to enjoy the colour and the texture, almost like the possessibility of the object and the richness of it.
Is there such a thing as good taste?
Everybody has an idea of good taste and it’s shaped by the group they are in.
So it’s just conformism?
It depends, doesn’t it? Some people’s good taste is more conformist than others’, because in the art world good taste wouldn’t be conformist. Good taste in the art world is to be quite revolutionary and innovative.
So you’re conforming by not conforming?
Yes. And that’s something I slightly trade on, because I slightly mock artists for their desire for novelty the whole time.
Is that why you use traditional media such as tapestry and pottery?
I don’t innovate. I never break the boundary of a tradition. My tapestries are not unusual tapestries; they’re the right shape, the right size, they haven’t got things growing out of them. I’m interested in the content, not the form.
By cross-dressing from an early age were you rejecting convention?
There’s an element of that. I think that’s why gay people often find it easier to be alternative in their tastes, because they’ve already been forced out of the convention by their sexuality.
Do you ever suffer from impostor syndrome?
I used to have it terribly when I first had exhibitions. I remember waiting in the foyer of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for the curator to come and pick me up to start organising a show. I had this strong sense that someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, “There’s been a mistake.” Particularly if you come from a working-class background, you have low expectations of yourself.
Your wife is a psychotherapist. Has that informed your art?
Hugely. I did therapy for six years.
How did that change how you work?
I describe it as somebody clearing up your tool shed – suddenly I had access to my whole personality.
Did you once say that you could have been a serial killer if you hadn’t become an artist?
Yes. I was quite an angry young man. I joined the cadets; I loved it. I loved all that running around with guns. I can understand how people end up like that. But of course I went to art school, so it was fine.
Is there anything you’d like to forget?
I can’t remember.
Are we all doomed?
Yes, we are, because human beings aren’t capable of acting in a cohesive way to solve something that they can’t see in front of their faces. Global warming and all that sort of stuff – it’s too abstract, isn’t it?
Defining Moments
1960 Born in Chelmsford, Essex. Starts cross-dressing at an early age
1982 BA, fine art, Portsmouth Polytechnic
1983 Moves to London and takes pottery lessons at Central Institute
2003 Wins Turner Prize – first time it has gone to a ceramicist
2005 Presents Channel 4 documentary on men who wear women’s clothes
2009 Thames & Hudson publishes Jacky Klein’s anthology of his work
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