Baggage to be carried lightly

The must-have accessory for the holiday period – with apologies for the presumption to my colleagues on the fashion pages – was a bright orange tote bag on sale in the British Museum shop. It was not especially well-crafted, nor was it innovative in design. But it did bear an eye-catching slogan: “Hold Your Beliefs Lightly”. It was devised by the British contemporary artist Grayson Perry to accompany his thrilling exhibition at the museum, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman .

Last week I spoke of the difficulty that the arts face in competing with a world that has become over-complicated. They need to return to simpler values. And they also need to promote those human qualities that have been trampled in the hyper-commodification and hectoring self-importance of contemporary culture. Humility is one of them. To hold beliefs lightly is to admit to doubt, and open yourself to visions other than your own. There is no nobler mission for art.

Perry’s show is full of curiosity, intelligence and openness. He sifted through some of the British Museum’s eight million artefacts to choose 190 items that he considered to be a “response” to a series of his own works. He reversed the cliché of the contemporary artist seeking inspiration from history; he summoned the ghosts of past creation to converse with demons dragged from his own imagination.

The objects he has chosen cover a wide variety of subjects and methods. None of them is on permanent display at the museum, which is over-subscribed with miraculous forms. They are fresh to us, and speak freshly of their own purpose. A 12th-century stone carving from Ireland has a woman – a pagan goddess? – prising open the lips of her genitalia, shocking in its primeval directness. On a similar theme, a ceramic gargoyle makes grotesque phallic overtures. The directness, this time, comes from the curator: it is Perry’s own work, from a 21st century that is equally in thrall to explicit eroticism.

The sense of playfulness in the show is palpable. Perry deliberately disorientates us, scrambles our notions of good taste, historical progression, aesthetic hierarchy. In many ways the exhibition is precisely the opposite in tone from the museum’s nearby Enlightenment gallery, dedicated to its founders’ solemn ambitions and quest for certitude. There is no sureness in Perry’s games, just conjecture and happy confusion.

We should be careful, however, not to exaggerate the artist’s subversiveness. His intervention occurs in a temple of culture that is, under its charismatic director Neil MacGregor, already rethinking many of its reasons for being. In his series A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor stressed the point that the museum’s collection, far from providing a definitive account of human progress, is instead a forum for contrasting, and occasionally competing, accounts of our needs, desires and accomplishments.

This view of the museum as marketplace for ideas is itself subversive. It denies many of our core beliefs, such as the supremacy of western art forms and the linearity of culture’s narrative. A careful reading of the museum’s collection, and of Perry’s ludic engagement with it, asserts the cyclical nature of cultural history. That is why we must hold our beliefs lightly. You never know when better ones may come knocking at our door.

Light beliefs show a way forward for a world that has become intellectually sclerotic. They are close relatives of soft power, and what Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo calls pensiero debole, or “weak thinking”. All these approaches call for a more supple and imaginative response to our various predicaments. They are enemies of the simplistic homily that assuages our deepest insecurities. That is why art must inevitably find itself, in some shape or form, in opposition to politics and religion, but must also ally itself more closely with the ever-speculative flights of science.

Critics of this approach label it as “relativism”, a flaccid surrender of right-thinking people to the craze for multi-cultural embrace. But those bellows belong to the debating chamber. The museum, and the art gallery, and the theatre, are designed for more nuanced minds. They are worlds that move beyond the realm of the rational, and all the more resilient for that.

The centrepiece for Perry’s exhibition is a wooden boat, the eponymous tomb for history’s anonymous craftsmen, carrying a cargo of “blood, sweat and tears” in small, dusty bottles, and a flint hand axe from a quarter of a million years ago, turning itself from tool to talisman. It is both a witty and moving celebration of human achievement. “The unknown craftsman I most love is age,” declares Perry in his commentary, in joyful allegiance to the labours of his predecessors.

The good news is that the show has struck a nerve. It has already entertained twice the expected number of visitors and has just announced a week’s extension. Just before Christmas, I popped into the shop to buy some more of the tote bags, but noted delightedly that they had sold out. Light beliefs are the new black. All this, and the days getting longer too. Happy New Year to you all.

peter.aspden@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/aspden

‘Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’, British Museum, sponsored by AlixPartners, until February 26, www.britishmuseum.org