Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences

Telling a story of class and taste, aspiration and identity, the tapestry series The Vanity of Small Differences by Turner Prize–winning artist Grayson Perry (born 1960) was conceived up and down the length and breadth of the U.K., as Perry traveled for Channel 4 television “on safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain.” The result is a monumental exploration of the “emotional investment we make in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive.” The six vibrant and highly detailed tapestries presented here bear the influence both of early Renaissance painting and of William Hogarth’s “modern moral subjects,” literally weaving characters, incidents and objects from Perry’s research into a modern-day version of Hogarth’s famous A Rake’s Progress. This book is an essential companion to one of the key contemporary art works of the last decade.