Reith Lectures 2013 – ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’

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?’

Grayson Perry has created a series of drawing exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.

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 5^th November, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

Reith Lectures 2013 - 'Beating the Bounds'

Reith Lectures 2013

Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery

‘Beating the Bounds’ (Episode 2 of 4)

The 2013 series sees an exploration of the role and place of art in the global landscape today, addressing a wide range of issues and questions concerning the role of art in society, the limits of contemporary art and how judgements are made about quality.



Grayson Perry has created a series of drawings exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.

In this second instalment from this year’s Reith lecturer Grayson Perry, broadcast from St. Georges Hall, Liverpool, Perry examines what the boundaries of art are, or rather what constitutes art. What exactly does and perhaps equally importantly does not qualify as contemporary art? Has this question been answered already? Perhaps the art world would argue that it has. Perry points out that today there is an almost complacency about this fundamental question – Is this art? – with a widely circulated notion that anything can be art now in a ‘post-post modern’ society, the end of art where absolutely anything goes...

The crux of Perry’s second lecture argues that there are boundaries that remain with regards to what can and cannot be art; however the limits are now blurred. Perry suggests that the boundaries that remain lean towards (in his words) the ‘sociological, tribal, philosophical and even financial’. What are the motivations for making art? Obviously there’s the ‘art for art’s sake’ claim, but also the economic incentive of proclaiming something as art is difficult to ignore, with so much money changing hands in the art market.

It is one thing to categorise something as being art, but is it possible to negate an object deemed a work of art and make it non-art once again? Perry suggests that a work of art perhaps is no longer a work of art once it becomes famous and takes on an almost celebrity-like persona (such as the Mona Lisa), or once it is only viewed in terms of is monetary value above all else and becomes as Perry eloquently puts it ‘a great lump of money on the wall’.

The concept of art and what could and couldn’t be considered art was widely taken for granted until the arrival of modernism and artists started to question the nature of art and Duchamp and his ‘readymades’ opened up the possibility for anything to be art if the artist declares it as such. Since the 1960s anything can be art and art has become a very broad concept, where shock-value has become commonplace and increasingly extreme. Yet, the idea of the ‘traditional’ still pervades, with painting and sculpture retaining their status as ‘high art’.

Perry breaks down the boundaries of what is and what isn’t art with a checklist or recipe for an artwork... and here they are:

Grayson Perry’s ‘boundary markers’ for whether or not something is art...

1.      Is it in a gallery or an art context?

2.      Is it a boring version of something else? (idea that art is not pleasurable)

3.      Is it made by an artist?

4.      Photography – Problematic (how do you tell if a photo is art? – size, subject, value)

5.      Limited edition test

6.      The handbag and hipster test (who are the people looking at the ‘art’ – rich and educated?)

7.      Theme Park + Suduko (Are people queuing to look at it?)

8.      Rubbish dump test (Throw it on a rubbish dump and if people walking by notice it’s there and wonder why the ‘art’ is there)...except if the rubbish dump is itself the art!

9.      The ‘Computer art’ test (Is it frustrating and does it make you pause and think rather than simply react)

These novel criteria for working out if something is art demonstrate that boundaries are formed not by what art can be but instead where, who or why it is art.

‘Beating the Bounds’ is now available to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dsk4d

The third lecture in the series ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’, will be broadcast Tuesday 29^th October, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

Reith Lectures 2013 - Democracy Has Bad Taste

Reith Lectures 2013

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.

 

Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

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.

Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

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.