Beauty and seriousness are perhaps the most shocking tactics left to artists these days.
Grayson PerryIf 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 PerryUntil 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 PerryI 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 PerryDesmond 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 PerryContemporary 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 PerryTaste 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 PerryThe 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 PerryIt 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 PerryI 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