BOOK 198: PLAYING TO THE GALLERY: HELPING CONTEMPORARY ART IN ITS STRUGGLE TO BE UNDERSTOOD: GRAYSON PERRY

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'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?

(From Amazon)

MY VERDICT: I enjoyed this book, I like the playful tone that Grayson Perry uses, although I didn’t find it as informative as I thought I would. I felt that it didn’t really know what it wanted to tell us. As a fairly regular gallery goer and an art school graduate maybe this wasn’t aimed at me. I think the thing that struck me the most as I was reading was the snobby-ness of Grayson Perry, I thought he was an everyman but there were some art forms that he seemed to look down on, and I didn’t think that that would be in his nature, or indeed the spirit of the book. It was a very short quick read, with some quirky drawings mixed in so I’d be interested if you’d read it, maybe as someone from the target audience and let me know what you think…?

(You can get this here…)