Moments of experience

At its annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in May, the Royal Society of British Artists held a debate on the motion ‘This house believes that a found object cannot be a work of art’. The motion’s obvious subtext was that since Duchamp’s snow shovel the ‘found object’ has been digging away at the foundations of traditional hand-made art, with potentially catastrophic consequences. A team of speakers, including Julian Spalding (author of The Eclipse of Art), made impassioned speeches in the motion’s favour, and even those against seemed so half-hearted that Peregrine Worsthorne was moved to inquire from the floor: ‘Is there an argument here?’

If there is, it’s not one the found object seems to be winning to judge from the recent resurgence of interest in the fount and origin of all hand-made art: drawing. Admittedly not all drawing these days is on paper: Grayson Perry won last year’s Turner Prize by drawing on pots.