Sunday, December 9, 2012

Grayson Perry

The thing I loved most about this interview, was really, how media friendly Grayson truly is. This aspect of his personality really comes out in his work. He's just “a guy in a dress” being funny and happily taking on the role of clown. His works are big normal classic pots with pretty colors and pictures, until you look closer at the images and then see the more disturbing darker subject matter. 

When someone in the audience asks him, “if someone can learn to be an artist” his response is “No. Someone can learn a craft but an artists job is to bring their life experience to the craft. Therapy can help with this.”

Grayson Perry is an Artist, and not just a ceramicist or potter, because he brings his own life experiences to his ceramic pots, (his main medium is the collage, drawings ,and paintings he puts on the pots). One of my favorite quotes from this interview was, “You wouldn't call Damien Hirst a Taxidermist.”

I also loved the quote of Freud's “vanity of small differences.” as Grayson puts it, "You don't hate anyone as much as your nearest neighbor."  Unfortunately, it feels like I've been having to deal with this vanity from people lately. It is a real phenomenon associated with ceramics. Other artists working in other mediums have a real hatred for ceramics and other crafts and it's much deeper than just snobbery.   

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