Playing To the Gallery - Hardcover

Perry, Grayson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 184614857X ISBN 13: 9781846148576

Publisher: Particular Books, 2014

Synopsis

'It's easy to feel insecure around art and its appreciation, as though we cannot enjoy certain artworks if we don't have a lot of academic and historical knowledge. But if there's one message that I want you to take away it's that anybody can enjoy art and anybody can have a life in the arts - even me! For even I, an Essex transvestite potter, have been let in by the artworld mafia.' Now Grayson Perry is a fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he's called this book 'Playing to the Gallery' and not 'Sucking up to an Academic Elite'.) Based on his hugely popular Reith Lectures and full of words and pictures, this funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask. Questions such as: What is 'good' or 'bad' art - and does it even matter? Is there any way to test if something is art, other than a large group of people standing around looking at it? Is art still capable of shocking us or have we seen it all before? Can you be a 'lovable character' and a serious artist - what is a serious artist anyway? And what happens if you place a piece of art in a rubbish dump?

About this title

About the Author

Grayson Perry is a man. He is also an award-winning artist, a Bafta-winning TV presenter, a Reith Lecturer and a bestselling author with traditional masculine traits like a desire to always be right and to overtake all other cyclists when going up big hills.

Review

A visual and intellectual delight * Time Out * Punchy, mischievous ... Hugely entertaining. You could, genuinely, take an aphorism or a quote from every second page ... This is splendid, transgressive stuff and a delight for the many Radio 4 listeners who responded enthusiastically [to Perry's Reith Lectures] ... In writing, he seeks to protect the personal in a deeply caustic art world, but in doing so also writes a love letter to art ... a thing of pleasure: petite, luxuriously printed, a mischievous little hymn to 21st-century inclusivity -- Melanie Reid * The Times * This book is full of good jokes, full of cartoons, full of memorable epigrams, but above all full of thought-provoking ideas that make you want to pause on every page and say: "Discuss." I have never read such a stimulating short guide to art. It should be issued as a set text in every school -- Lynn Barber * Sunday Times * The book has [a] conversational tone and lively intelligence. Beautifully illustrated, it reveals Perry to be not just an artist but a wordsmith, too... This is writing with the eye of someone who says: 'My job is to notice things that other people don't notice.' It is full of insight, and of telling points... It is acute and funny at the same time. This, I think, is why people love Perry so much. He is really smart. He says the things we wish we had thought of, and asks the questions that we want to ask. What is art? How can we tell if what we are looking at is any good? Is it OK to like certain artists? * Daily Telegraph * A joy to read * New Statesman * A polemic for inclusivity... The great thing about Perry's statement of it here is that you are always convinced that he believes it and lives by it * Observer * With great good humour he debunks distinctions between highbrow and low * Sunday Times, Books of the Year * It's unputdownable! It's really relevant to anyone who does anything ... A great book ... Grayson is brilliant -- Stewart Lee An unpretentious aesthetic treatise * Observer, Books of the Year * Perry's fun and wonderful book is a necessary addition to a world that must continue to ask difficult questions of art * Publishers Weekly *

About this edition

• Publisher: Particular Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 184614857X
• ISBN 13: 9781846148576
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256