Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Democracy Has Bad Taste’ (Episode 1 of 4)
What are the Reith lectures? Launched in 1948 by the BBC to honour the contribution of Lord John Reith to public service broadcasting, the Reith lectures are an annual radio lectures series delivered by leading figures which address important contemporary issues. Since the first lecture delivered back in 1948 by the philosopher Bertrand Russell ‘Authority and the Individual’, series have been delivered by figures such as Aung San Suu Kyi (2011), Nickolaus Pevsner (1955), Robert Oppenheimer (1953), Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks (1990), and Dr Steve Jones (1991).
This year the honour of delivering the Reith lectures has been bestowed upon Grayson Perry, Turner Prize winning artist & self-proclaimed satirical social commentator, who models himself as a modern day Hogarth. Perry’s topic for this year’s Reith lectures is by no means the artist’s first foray into reflecting on the relationship between social class and aesthetic taste as evident in his series for Channel 4 ‘All in the best possible taste’ and the series of six tapestries produced in the process. The tapestries took centre-stage at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition entitled ‘the Vanity of Small Differences’, a modern take on Hogarth’s A Rake’s progress.
The title of this year’s series ‘Playing to the
Gallery’ can itself perhaps be interpreted in several ways - Playing to the
gallery, literally meaning to aim to please or satisfy the general public, yet
at the same time referencing the art world in which Perry is himself a part, where
such importance is placed on the ‘gallery’ and elite judgements made about the
objects housed within it. At a more basic level, Perry as a visual artist
delivering the lectures to a live audience - his very own physical public gallery
- at Tate Modern could be perceived as being a performance which ‘plays to the
crowd’.
The aim of these lectures is according to the
artist, to provide anyone the basic tools necessary to ‘judge’ art. Although in
his address, Perry acknowledges that this is perhaps a difficult task and that
not everyone can ‘appreciate’ art straight away on first viewing and that often
it takes time to get used to long winded arty words and conventions and also
understanding its history.
Perry attempts to address the relationship
between quality and popularity. Is good art popular? – Perry makes reference to
Hockney’s recent retrospective at the Royal Academy, which although very ‘popular’
perhaps didn’t appeal to the taste-makers or those Perry calls ‘the chorus of
validation’ - the dealers, collectors and curators - who tend to set the
criteria for the judgement of taste. This panel make judgements about quality
and determine what we, the public will see on the walls of a museum or gallery.
In a time where public art is becoming
increasingly visible, artists like Damian Hirst are their own PR machines, and if
this summer is anything to go by, visiting exhibitions has reached new heights of
popularity. Is art becoming more or less democratic and how can we tell? The
lecture’s assertion that democracy has bad taste, where popular art doesn’t
necessarily follow the ‘good’ taste of Perry’s chorus of validation is a result
of the closed nature of the art world, which continues to substantiate its authority
to make judgements about taste.
Perry’s first lecture explores the channels through
which art must pass through before it ultimately finds itself in museums and
galleries and Biennales and what this tells us about taste – if a work of art
is in a national collection or exhibited at an internationally renowned venue is
it good art? - and do we the public have to like it just because we are told
that we should?
The first
instalment from Grayson Perry (for anyone interested) is now available to
download from BBC Radio4 via http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt (the entire back
catalogue of Reith Lectures are also available online with the exception of
1992, when the BBC for some unknown reason couldn’t find anyone to speak!)
The next lecture ‘Beating
the Bounds’ will be available to download from today.