Reith
Lectures 2013
Grayson
Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ (Episode 3 of 4)
This year the BBC Reith Lectures
delve into our increasingly globalised landscape, characteristic of the
twenty-first century, exploring the implications that this has on the role and
place of art in contemporary society. The series delivered by Turner-Prize
winning artist Grayson Perry tasks us with such topics as ‘what is the role of
art today?’, ‘what are the limits of contemporary art?’, ‘how are judgements
made about quality and who makes them?’
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Grayson Perry has
created a series of drawing exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.
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So far this year’s lecture series has sought
to address and define the nature of what art is and question its parameters. ‘Nice
Rebellion, Welcome In!’, instead tackles the nature of the role of art today. The third Reith Lecture in the series,
broadcast from Londonderry’s Guildhall, the UK’s City of Culture 2013 poses the
question ‘Is revolution in art
dead?’ To what extent does the consideration of ‘revolution’ as a defining
concept in art and calling card of avant gardism still hold weight in the world
of contemporary art or are artists simply perpetuating what has already been
done? In an age of mainstream media
where we are forever being bombarded with imagery, Perry asks if art has lost
its ability to shock - have we really seen it all before?
There is a tendency to hold up ‘art’
as a kind of melting pot of innovative newness, yet contemporary art often falls
victim to the fad in a futile search for the next new thing. The once
outrageous and subversive rapidly diffuse into the everyday – revolution commodified.
Its representation in mainstream media tells us that it is avant garde or
cutting edge or revolutionary, that the artists who produce it are radical,
that the galleries that show it are game-changing. A new paradigm is always
being set by these shows that ‘everyone’ is talking about, the hype in turn further
perpetuated by the media.
Perry claims that we have now
reached the ‘end state’ of art, that since the mid-sixties and early seventies
artists have run out of things to try, producing a state where anything can be
art. He goes on to argue that this doesn’t mean the end of art itself, just the
end of this notion that it is still possible to step beyond the boundaries of
what art can be. Can there still be originality in art, or is innovation now only
a form of tweaking? – certainly a dilemma for the post(post)modern artist.
Perry describes this concept of
revolution as being fundamental to the idea of being an artist and by extension
the very DNA of art itself, yet revolution in art has ceased to be the defining
idea. In light of this, where is art situated in our culture today? Has art now
reached a state where we have finally run out of ‘isms’? If the twentieth
century was ‘the age of manifestos’, what will come to define the twenty-first
century or has the art world already stepped into the breach with a whole host
of new ‘isms’? Pluralism...Globalism...Commercialism...
Perry considers the possibly that
now is it technology that has replaced art as a source of innovation and as capable
of inciting revolution. In a role reversal art now follows technology rather
than leads it. He asks if technology changes the way that we look at art and
what this means for the status or role of art (and the artist) in society.
Art will inevitably continue to
evolve, yet perhaps the role of art in contemporary society is shifting and
that which shocks or provokes revolution is the task of culture beyond the art
world...is the age of the avant garde truly over?
‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ is now available
to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f9bg7
The fourth and final lecture in the
series ‘I Found Myself in the Art World’ will be broadcast Tuesday 5th
November, 09:00 BBC Radio4.
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