Although I’d vaguely heard of Grayson Perry before, I was very interested by his work on identity. In fact, I found him to a very interesting man and intrigued by his view of the world.
In this video, Perry describes ‘Identity’ as complex. He identifies as a man that likes to wear dresses, rather than a man who is dressing like a woman because that’s what he’d like to be.
I was also interested by the fact that he said that pots and crafts were largely ignored by the ‘art’ world and that he found their thinking interesting and wanted to challenge that.
In this video Grayson Perry talks about the documentary he made on masculinity. I haven’t seen the documentary, but am absolutely fascinated by the thought process going on to make it. His comments at the end about creative people having an idea and then coming upon what he calls ‘the most difficult bit’, the journey to creating your vision which takes time and compromise and reworking, I related to in my work to date. It’s good hear that other artists, even ones who are world renowned, still have go through this journey to make their art.
This echos the course text (p23) which describes the ‘research and development’ stage of the artistic process. This the time when the artist collects as much information about their subject as they can and uses it alongside their vision and inspiration to create a final piece that the subject will recognise themselves within.
As a result the finished work is not merely a physical portrait of the subject, but should seem more “realistic and honest that the polished veneers we are used to seeing on social media”. This is reminiscent of the work I did for Assignment 3, of Context and Narrative, in which I used shoes as a surrogate for myself to create a set of Instagram pictures, to show that a picture of my face tells you very little, but images of my shoes. there uses and locations worn, said much much more about me.
He also speaks about how he has embraced the media to support his art. This is very enlightening, as an introvert, I’d say, sometimes I hide behind my art rather than using it to explore those unconscious issues that I could bring to the fore.
In another video, I watched, Perry referenced Julian Baggini and British Philosopher who said
“I is a verb, masquearding as a noun”
Julian Baggini
