Contemporary art often plays to the part of us that is very uncomfortable with not being sure, that cannot maintain a state of 'don't know'. The over-prioritising of meaning gets in the way of just experiencing the art in a more sensual way. Judging quality purely from an intuitive emotional response needs more confidence and experience than just working it out like a crossword clue.

Grayson Perry

Categorized in : Art Judging Emotional

Until we can insert a USB into our ear and download our thoughts, drawing remains the best way of getting visual information on to the page. I draw as a collagist, juxtaposing images and styles of mark-making from many sources. The world I draw is the interior landscape of my own personal obsessions and of cultures I have absorbed and adapted, from Latvian folk art to Japanese screens. I lasso thoughts with a pen. I draw a stave church or someone from Hello! magazine not because I want to replicate how they look, but because of the meaning they bring to the work.

Grayson Perry

style drawing art

I just love dressing up in everything a man is supposed not to be, in all that vulnerability, sweetness, preciousness and impracticality.

Grayson Perry

dressing-up sweetness men

To appreciate art you’ve got to work at it a bit.

Grayson Perry

bits appreciate art

Creativity is mistakes.

Grayson Perry

creativity mistake

Beauty and seriousness are perhaps the most shocking tactics left to artists these days.

Grayson Perry

tactics these-days artist

I think when we talk of craft we talk of a certain set of processes, whether that be clay of glass if jewelry or textiles, and we look back through history instantly.

Grayson Perry

motivational inspirational thinking

The basic premise of taste, as Stephen Bayley, the cultural critic, said, is that taste is that which does not alienate your peers. Most people want to fit in with their tribe in some way or another, so they give off signals, whether it's with their clothes, their behavior, their car, their whatever, and gain status. Every tribe has a hierarchy, and that's what taste is: it's an unconscious display of who you are, and where you want to be.

Grayson Perry

car giving people

Art is not some fun add-on to life.

Grayson Perry

add fun art

Taste is a phenomenon. Most of taste is unconscious - it comes from your upbringing, from your family, from your society, your gender, your race; it's a melange of all those things.

Grayson Perry

our-family gender phenomenon

If you want to be successful in the art world you've got to look to the art world; you don't make it for the bloke next door and then hope the art world is going to look at it. That's one of the big mistakes people make.

Grayson Perry

successful mistake art

Originality is for people with short memories

Grayson Perry

originality memories people

Artists should imprint their handwriting on the work, because if they give a piece to a fabrication studio, the craftsmen there may actually be too perfect; you don't see the quirks that the artist would have developed.

Grayson Perry

artist perfect giving

The middle class male thinks he has a monopoly on objectivity.

Grayson Perry

objectivity class thinking

I like the idea of my art being a covetable object; I like preciousness. A lot of art seems to flaunt its throw-away character... But you have to sail out into the dangerous sea of fine art with these crafted works.

Grayson Perry

sea character art

It is true that there are not many smiling faces in modern art galleries. Happy art is much harder to make. Art and humour are uneasy bedfellows. Artists need strong feelings to motivate them to make things. I am often fuelled by anger.

Grayson Perry

strong feelings art

A lot of people who work in computers think that the world is like them.

Grayson Perry

people world thinking

I'm concerned with not ever being fashionable.

Grayson Perry

fashionable concerned

Desmond Morris says that men make better artists because they are greater risk-takers; on the other hand, he thinks that women are better organisers and diplomats and more suited to become politicians.

Grayson Perry

artist men thinking

I always say to people if you want to see what Britain looks like, watch Gogglebox. It's brilliant and funny and warm and clever.

Grayson Perry

brilliant clever people

I think if people really want music they'll search it out.

Grayson Perry

people thinking