The world of contemporary art can be a baffling, hard-to-navigate place. Whether you’re an aspiring artist, or just conflicted about whether a visit to the Tate is really worth the exorbitant train fares, it’s difficult to judge the value of art if you think you don’t know anything about it. Playing to the Gallery, Grayson Perry’s short 2014 guide to the art establishment, is here to remind us that to enjoy art you don’t need anything except curiosity.
I sometimes find myself in a double-bind when I talk about contemporary art, caught wanting to defend art from ill-intentioned attacks whilst also feeling frustrated by the elitism, pretentiousness, and the lack of opportunities that can proliferate in the industry. Grayson Perry has done some fantastic work, therefore, in writing Playing to Gallery to elucidate some of the harder-to-understand aspects of the art world. There are some brilliant art and artists out there at the moment and it’d be a shame if, for one reason or another, people weren’t interested in going to see them. Perry puts it best in the introduction:
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 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 art-world mafia.
There are plenty of guides out there that offer readers an introduction to thinking about art, but few that I’ve read do so with the same humour and energy as Playing to the Gallery. Most people have a vague idea of what is ‘good’ art and what is ‘bad’. Harder to define is why we think this thing is good and that thing is ugly, an abomination, a total waste of time/money/sense. Not an easy task. Across four short chapters, Perry offers an insider’s perspective on why the art in museums and galleries has come to be called “good”, how the nature and purpose of art has changed in the last hundred-and-fifty years, and where we should start in forming our own ideas of what “good taste” is.
Perry is a funny, unpretentious writer, and Playing to the Gallery touches on some of the knottiest problems in contemporary art without simplification or condescension. Speaking broadly, one of the most important themes in art from the Moderns to now is self-consciousness. Artists like to make artworks that interrogate themselves, that force us to think about what we’re doing when we go to a gallery and put our hands on our chins, or post pictures of paintings on Instagram. A hundred years ago the Impressionists were asking: what does it mean to paint a portrait when a photograph is an infinitely more realistic way to capture someone’s image? Painting something non-realistically – capturing its essence, not just what it looks like – was the solution, and since then artists have been trying to push the boundaries in every direction. This is why so much contemporary arty is so different to what we’ve been taught is “good” art; that’s also why some if it is naff. Although Playing to the Gallery dives deep into some complex debates but Perry has the advantage (over, say, a purely academic writer) of speaking from experience, which lends the book a chatty, conversational tone. Much better to discuss art with an intelligent friend than to sit through a tedious lecture. And there are drawings – funny ones.
It is important that people should enjoy art and be challenged by it, because as well as bringing us a lot of joy art can also get us to think more carefully about ourselves and the world. As Perry explains, this need to give audiences a shake-down was why so many artists in the 1990s tried to shock or outrage their audiences, and why so many of those artists missed the point. Playing to the Gallery is peppered with examples from artists that you’ll be half-familiar with, which is an extremely helpful way of nudging the curious toward learning about more contemporary artists on our own initiative. It matters a lot that books like Playing to the Gallery should be accessible like this, because I recently saw an argument on social media that accused art theorists of deliberately obscuring contemporary art behind a wall of unnecessary jargon. Perry touches on this issue in chapter one, talking about the coded language of “International Art English”, and criticising the art establishment for almost “being scared of everyday clarity”. While I can accept that, like all professions, art requires a technical lexicon, the way that art is talked about can be so intimidating. Art-people must do better to engage people, especially when you realise that the Tate Modern is now the UK’s number-one visitor attraction, beating the British Museum by a few million for the first time in decades. Contemporary art has gone mainstream.
Above all Perry wants to remind us that art is experiential:
People want an outrageous and exciting experience from art and then they want to slightly puzzle over what it’s about.
There is no proscribed way of enjoying art and, despite what any self-appointed tastemaker or tabloid nay-sayer might opine, there is no such thing as objectively good art. Perry quotes Alan Bennett in saying that there should be a sign at the National Gallery: “You don’t have to like all of it”. I would have liked a more unified theory of art from Playing to the Gallery – I found myself thinking towards the end of a chapter, okay, now what? – but I think if Perry were giving us the answers then that would defeat the point. Don’t let people tell you how to enjoy. Here are some clues, but the point is that when viewing or making art you need to be your own judge, because authenticity is what makes the effort worthwhile. You should, however, always listen if someone wants to show you a way of appreciating something they think is beautiful.
Playing to the Gallery also brilliantly investigates whether the avant-garde really exists anymore. The avant-garde is supposed to be the “advance guard”, the cutting-edge: but are artists working in a publicly-funded institution, with their paintings on mugs and postcards in the gift shop, really at the forefront of culture? I don’t see why not, necessarily. Yet one of the biggest problems that we face today is that radical politics have been commodified – Amazon will sell you a T-shirt that says FEMINIST whilst treating their employees (of any gender) like shit. ‘Outrage has been domesticated’, Perry laments. When we live in a world dominated by global capitalism and where truly anything can be called art, are there any more meaningful boundaries to push? Perhaps we should return to authenticity, then: art that was made with integrity and honesty. Perry talks about how, as a child, art functioned as a means of survival for him – it was a place for him to escape to in difficult times, and that later creativity allowed him to express himself as who he was. If an artist has found themselves through their art then that, surely, makes it authentic and truthful and beautiful. Doesn’t it?
Art should be fun, which is why children are good at it. Picasso is famous for having said that, at age four, he knew how to be an artist, and that the skill came from knowing how to preserve that creativity as you grew up. One of the loveliest lines in Playing to the Gallery describes the sound of LEGO being poured from a box as the “noise of a child’s mind working”. I really like that.
Get the book here.
Quotes:
Grayson Perry, Playing to the Gallery (London: Penguin, 2014)
Image Copyright
- All images of artwork contained in Playing to the Gallery are copyright property of Grayson Perry. The drawings were scanned by me from my book; thumbs edited out.
- Image of the artist copyright Swan Films / Channel 4, from this article.
Please contact me for any copyright concerns and I’ll be glad to comply.
Entertaining Mr Petre 