Book: Playing to the Gallery

DESCRIBED, not inaccurately, as a ‘fully paid-up member of the art establishment’, Grayson Perry has written an easy-to-read guide that reveals many of the strategies used by him, and no doubt other creative talents, to gain admission to that same select coterie. An alternative title to the book, as suggested in its own dust jacket, is ‘Sucking up to an Academic Elite’, but this is very much tongue-in-cheek, and typical of an artist who delights in being mischevious.

In truth, the reason Perry is lauded is not so much because of his eyebrow-raising antics, such as attending events dressed as Little Bo-Peep, but rather because his ceramics are startlingly good. Combining elements of everyday life with high art and classicism, his decorated pots are brilliant, witty and full of insight and feeling. His level of creativity cuts a swathe through entrenched notions of what is considered ‘craft’ and what is ‘art’. While also an accomplished printmaker and painter, it is Perry’s genuinely complicated personality that gains him endless media attention.