Grayson Perry - If loyalists want to remain loyal to Britain they’ve got to move on too

A banner by Grayson Perry, in the mould of an Orange Lodge standard, following a visit to British loyalists in Belfast 

The cross-dressing potter and artist Grayson Perry said during a 2014 trip to Northern Ireland:

"[Loyalism is] rooted in a vision of Britain that perhaps doesn’t completely gel with the modern 21st century idea of Britain we have nowadays."

And continued:

"If they want to remain loyal to it they’ve got to move on too and it’s all about embracing what Britain stands for today as much as what Britain stood for in the 1950s."

My previous posts on loyalism can be read here. Previous Tumblr notes on loyalism here. 

Quentin Blake on his relaxed style

Quentin Blake is one of our most popular illustrators. Best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl hid work is immediately recognisable and is full of joy and happy chaos. Quentin's father worked as a civil servant, his mother was a homemaker. At 14, he began sending drawings to Punch. At 16, his work was accepted by Punch. Quentin also produced work for The Spectator. 

Appearing on Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young here, he was asked: "If we were to leave through some of those 1949 editions of Punch, would we recognise those drawings as notably Quentin Blake?" Quentin Blake responded:

"You might do. They were quite economical but. You might recognise them. But that way of drawing, that people now recognise, happened really when I was 20-something. Gradually I relaxed and in fact if you draw relaxed you draw much better. You're thinking about what that is, what that gesture is that that person is making. You're not thinking about, am I going to spoil it which is the important thing."

In a 2008 interview with The Telegraph here he said was asked about his idiosyncratic use of line to convey depth and movement. On that style he was asked: "is this because you're relaxed when working?"

"Not really. I remember someone saying I’m deceptively slapdash. Well, thank goodness for the deceptively. I think I’m relaxed in a way that is focused."

During his Reith lecture series here, the cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry spoke of the need for "relaxed fluency" and of the need to break away from "the crippling effects of self-consciousness."

2006 interview with Kirsty Young on Radio 4 here. 2008 Telegraph interview in full here. My blog post on Grayson Perry and "relaxed fluency" here.

Grayson Perry - "How do we become a contemporary artist?"

Grayson Perry's fourth and final lecture in the Reith series was went by the title, I Found Myself in the Art World. This fourth lecture was directed by one question, as Grayson asked himself and the audience rhetorically: "how do we become a contemporary artist?"

Firstly. We need to work with an almost unconscious awareness. A "relaxed fluency". For as Grayson Perry said, "self-consciousness is crippling." As he said:

"Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” And I think what he’s trying to say is that you know a child has this unselfconscious joy of creativity and they’re always playing and painting and making things without a thought in the world, and then as we get older of course we become aware of art history and that what we’re not doing might not be very good and so it makes it harder and harder and harder as we get older."

The irony is that art education is an education in self-awareness. As Grayson Perry said:

"And one of the things that is very troubling, of course, is that art education in many ways is an advanced course in self-consciousness because you have to become very aware of the business you’re going into. A central irony is that the very enemy of expression - that is being very ‘oh my god, am I doing the right thing?’ - is tortuous necessity to enter the art world."

You need the "carefree joy of a child". That require's work. You need to kindle the child's flame of creativity and "keep that sort of burning, precious, childlike glimmer of creativity burning."

Secondly. Artists who've faced hardship and difficulty in their upbringing can find themselves using and transforming this experience, through an amazing process in the mind, into gold and into marvellous masterpieces that everyone can all appreciate. As Grayson said:

"The clinical scientist Raymond Tallis, he said, “Art is expressing one’s universal wound - the wound of living a finite life of incomplete meanings.” And I like that idea - that you know it’s quite a sort of noble journey we’re on."

It's the artist's mythologizing story.

Thirdly. Art is a "very primitive creative urge." As Grayson said:

"Art is not some sort of fun add-on. But if you go back to the Ice Age, the artists then, they still made art and yet they were constantly under threat from cold and starvation and from predators, and yet they still set aside hours and hours and hours to make art. It’s very, very deep - this need to express."

Fourthly. Outside artists can make great mainsteam artists because they can often operate free of the crippling self-consciousness. Grayson said:

"Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

Fifthly. It takes time. He said:

"It does of course exist and that shock of pleasure is one of the you know greatest things that anybody who’s interested in art can experience, but the best artists, they take quite a while to find their voice. It takes a long time. I mean an art career is a marathon, it’s not a sprint."

He further explained: "And I think one of the best descriptions of that process is by a guy called Arno Minkkinen, a Finnish photographer, and he had this thing called - The Helsinki Bus Station Theory, he said. And when you’re leaving art college, he said, and you choose your style and what path in the art world you’re going to take, it’s like going to Helsinki bus station. There’s about twenty platforms and each platform, maybe ten buses leave from it, and you choose your bus and you get on the bus. And each stop is a year in your career. And maybe after about three stops, you get off and you kind of walk into a gallery and you show them your work and the people look at it and they go, “Oh very nice, very nice. Reminds me a bit of Martin Parr though.” (LAUGHTER) And you go, uurrrgh!! (exasperated sound) I’m not original, I’m not unique, and you get really cross. And you get a taxi back to the bus station and you get on a different bus. And of course what happens is the same thing - you get off at three years and the same thing happens. What you need to do, says Arno Minkkinen, is stay on the effing bus!"
Sixth. Crossing the boundary from student into the realm of the artist. He said:

"And then there’s that boundary, you know the boundary between being a student and becoming an artist. And I think that moment often happens to you at a party. You’re at a party and someone says to you, “Oh what do you do?” and you go, “Errrr …” and you have to summon up the courage to say it and you go, “I…. I’m an artist.” And I think that’s quite a poignant moment. You know you’ve crossed that boundary, you’ve started out on that hazardous path."

Seventh. It's a privilege.

"I think it’s a very noble thing to be an artist. You’re a pilgrim on the road to meaning."

Eight. Be careful of the "Picasso Napkin Syndrome". He said:

"It started to get into this sort of airy-fairy whatever anybody will pay for it kind of arena, and that’s a very strange moment. And at that moment, you start getting what I call “Picasso Napkin Syndrome” (LAUGHTER) and this is after the mythological power of that famous artist. He could sort of pay for an expensive meal by just doodling on the table linen. And it’s a very dangerous blessing that an artist can get - that Picasso Napkin Syndrome - because it’s like the Midas touch. You’re suddenly tempted to churn out your signature works because there’s a big collector demand for it and anything you sign is worth money! I mean literally artists like Andy Warhol literally did that. He would just sign you know a dollar bill and then suddenly it would be worth a hundred dollars. And that temptation to churn it out is very dangerous."

Nine. Be wary of the art world. He said:

"It’s a delicate organism and the art world can be very corrosive. Caustic atmosphere. I protect my ball of creative energy, I protect it with a shield made of jaded irony. (LAUGHTER) A helmet of mischief and a breast plate of facetiousness. And I wield my carefully crafted blade of cynicism.

Lastly. As Grayson Perry said:

"There’s no recipe for being an artist. That’s what’s good about it nowadays - you can be any sort of artist."

Grayson Perry - Outside Artists

In the fourth lecture of his Reith Lecture series on BBC Radio 4, Grayson Perry said that, for artists, "self-consciousness is crippling." He suggested that non-trained artists are more unfettered, more unencumbered and freer from this concern. He said: 

"One of the groups of artists perhaps who don’t suffer from self-consciousness as much as others are outsider artists. Since I was a teenager, I’ve loved outsider art. Outsider art is art done by people who haven’t been to art school, probably don’t even have much knowledge about the art world or the market or they’ve maybe not even been doing it for other people; they just do it for themselves and never show anybody."

He continued:

"But becoming an artist is not just a process of having low impulse control or a burning unconscious desire to express yourself. There is a point, a fixed rung if you like, on the greasy pole of becoming an artist; and it does feel - many artists here will probably say - it does feel like a greasy pole. There is a fixed rung and that is going to art college because anybody can become an artist without going to art college - I mean outsider artists are a fantastic example of it - but it’s very difficult to make a career as an artist."

Grayson Perry made another interesting observation on the returns made by those who have invested time and money on going to university. He said:

"I mean on page thirty-one of the Department of Innovation and Skills Report, The Returns of Higher Education 2011, there’s a rather stark graph. I feel quite bad almost bringing this up in an art college, but I thought I have to confront this situation, which is that compared to someone who’s never been to university at all, the average art student will make just 6.3 per cent more money than that person. Women though will make 11.7 per cent more; men 1 per cent less than if you never go to art college. And that’s quite a shocker. But in many ways, I find it almost heartening because I think people still want to go to art college! And we’re always talking about arts, not about money or anything like that. So if these people, they still want to go to art college even though statistics staring them in the face are telling them they’re probably perpetuating their poverty by doing it, (LAUGHTER) I think that’s lovely. I think that’s a good thing. We almost need to celebrate it. But for an individual, there is no guarantee of making money in the art world." 

Grayson Perry - Who decides what makes good art?

Ahead of the Reith lectures Grayson Perry recently asked, who decides what makes good art? 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c37b1b6a-3017-11e3-9eec-00144feab7de.html