“Grayson, do you strive to make people like you or are you a serious artist?”
A British artist, the winner of the Turner Award, opened his exhibition “The Vanity of Small Differences” a year ago in Kyiv, supported by the British Council in Ukraine in partnership with the Platform for Cultural Initiatives IZOLYATSIA (Kyiv). He put on display tapestries along with a series of his anthropological studies on the tastes of British social classes.
Less than a year later, the Ukrainian-language version of his book “Playing to the Gallery” was published thanks to the ArtHuss publication. In fact, the book is not much about galleries, but useful for art-market enthusiasts and direct participants. For sure, Ukrainian reality differs from the British one, but the attitude to the contemporary art and the creative path of the artist (that’s what Grayson Perry describes in the book in detail and quite sincerely, as it seems) are yet not so much different.
So, we offer author’s few sayings for inspiration:
- About the contemporary art
“Few come to the world of art to earn money. They are mostly people who want to create, communicate with artists or just contemplate works of art. They are often passionate, inquisitive and sensitive.”
“The intellectual and emotional ideas of the boundaries between art and non-art can vary drastically. One can quickly understand something new, but accepting significant changes at the emotional level requires years or even generations.”
“Today, works of art come out of fashion faster than tattoos of celebrities.”
“Art is all about relaxation, spontaneity and freedom.”
“The most critical role of art is to create meanings.”
- About artists
“Many of the prominent artists have converted art into a brand: it is luxuriously decorated, visually accessible and overwhelmingly expensive.”
“You can do anything in the world of art; and if you do it correctly and noteworthy, a place under the sun will be yours.”
“Modern artists have only one way to shock: to be sincere.”
- About audiences and tastes
“Usually, tastes of the mass audience hurt those, who struggle to widen the views of masses on a first-rate art. What an irony!”
- About the art education
“When I graduated from college, I felt like a Japanese soldier who had been hiding in jungles, and then got out and found out that the war had ended long ago.”
“The Art College is a place to experiment, an area of the unprecedented freedom. And often this liberty is to make mistakes.”
- About the author (Grayson Perry)
“I defend my ball of creative energy. I protect it with a shield of strangled irony, a helmet of bestiality and armours of fun. I squeeze my sword of sophisticated cynicism. The part of my personality that makes me continue working is too vulnerable to disclose it to everyone in the world.”
“Playing to the Gallery” – Grayson Perry.
