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Art Quotes by Grayson Perry

50 Art quotes by Grayson Perry

All Art quotes Grayson Perry’s page

Grayson Perry says an artist's job is to make new clichés. He points out that art is a process of trying, failing, and improving, and that schools try to shape artists while fighting clichés. He also notes that the art world ties intellectual importance to market value and museum quality.

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Art is not some fun add-on to life.

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Anything can be art but very little is good art.

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We learned how to look at art from religion.

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To appreciate art you’ve got to work at it a bit.

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“An artist's job is to make new clichés.”

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Nothing frustrates me about the art world. It is a lovely place. There are many daft things that amuse me about it…

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I operate on anger quite a lot. Its what gets me up in the morning to make art quite often. Well, irritation…

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From birth until I went to art college when I was 19, there are perhaps less than a dozen photographs of me.

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I've got a pot in my studio that is just a bitter rant against the art world. I call it my Dorian…

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Beauty and seriousness are perhaps the most shocking tactics left to artists these days.

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I was sort of mute when I went to art school. There were two girls there who thought I was German because…

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I cant make art to please everybody all the time. I make art that I like.

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Im a maximalist, so Im probably not very elegant. My art is not a coup de grce. Its a war of attrition.

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I tick so many boxes. Thats why I get a lot of gigs - because I can do the lectures, I can…

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I think sometimes in the art world theres an implication that you need an entry-level education to walk through the door of…

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Artists should imprint their handwriting on the work, because if they give a piece to a fabrication studio, the craftsmen there may…

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Well, intellectual importance is directly linked to financial value in the art world. I mean, thats the thing you really want -…

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I enjoyed the thought that hovering behind my work is a unifying belief system, just as there is behind Egyptian or Ancient…

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In the art world, originality is seen as a precious commodity and its increasingly difficult to get because the territory of art…

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You cant be an artist without going to art school. Its impossible. Art schools like being plunged into a sheep dip that…

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“The sound a box of Lego makes is the noise of a child's mind working, looking for the right piece. Shake it,…

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Part of being an artist is that you are achingly self-conscious about every aesthetic decision you make, and taste is at its…

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Contemporary art often plays to the part of us that is very uncomfortable with not being sure, that cannot maintain a state…

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I embrace the middle ground, because curiously it has more edge to it than the cutting edge. It has been a weirdly…

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Until we can insert a USB into our ear and download our thoughts, drawing remains the best way of getting visual information…

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We live in a media saturated world. I'm sure artists of the past would have dealt with it in just the same…

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And it's been one of my big sort of campaigns throughout my career, really, is to sort of make art accessible but…

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Desmond Morris says that men make better artists because they are greater risk-takers; on the other hand, he thinks that women are…

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You don't work in a vacuum. If you're a visual artist you work in a visual culture. If you're a pop musician…

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How art works is really interesting. It comes from our unconscious, a lot of it. And were communicating in ways were not…

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As human beings, we are addicted to novelty. Part of being stylish is surprisingness. Part of being an artist is surprisingness. If…

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It is true that there are not many smiling faces in modern art galleries. Happy art is much harder to make. Art…

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Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did. Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that havent yet been colonised by the art…

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I was once judging some prisoner art, and you wouldnt believe the number of eagles and tigers and symbols of freedom and…

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I like the idea of my art being a covetable object; I like preciousness. A lot of art seems to flaunt its…

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As an artist I'm very aware of what I call Picasso-napkin syndrome - I've got this 20th century version of the midas…

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Success in the art world means getting invitations to exhibit in some great places. I had shown in contemporary art museums in…

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There are some very unsavoury aspects of art dealing that go with the unregulated nature of the market but its all part…

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I haven't been to Oxbridge. I haven't even been to a London art school. My qualifications are pretty meagre for such a…

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Artists have their very distinctive voices that theyve developed over a long period. It takes time to find your voice, your vocabulary…

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More by Grayson Perry

“Because I am a transvestite, people often assume that this gives me a special insight into the opposite gender. But this is rubbish: how…

We have this idea that seriousness is of higher value. But surely there is more human pleasure and delight in time spent with humour…

“An artist's job is to make new clichés.”

Well, within my business, visual art, the intake is 75 per cent female and yet you look at who has showed their work and…

For me, earnestness is the greatest crime an Englishman can commit.

And it's been one of my big sort of campaigns throughout my career, really, is to sort of make art accessible but without dumbing…

The basic premise of taste, as Stephen Bayley, the cultural critic, said, is that taste is that which does not alienate your peers. Most…

Well, intellectual importance is directly linked to financial value in the art world. I mean, thats the thing you really want - museum quality.…

Some people will have working-class, front-room grandma taste that is better than other people's. I went to stately homes that are a bit duff,…

You cant be an artist without going to art school. Its impossible. Art schools like being plunged into a sheep dip that inoculates you…

You don't work in a vacuum. If you're a visual artist you work in a visual culture. If you're a pop musician you listen…

I was very excited when the Holburne Museum proposed a show of my ceramics from the 80s and early 90s as it would also…

My tapestries are woven on a computer-controlled loom. I design them on Photoshop. I recently did some digitally-routed woodcuts because I wanted the woodcut…

I haven't been to Oxbridge. I haven't even been to a London art school. My qualifications are pretty meagre for such a brief, but…

Art is a process. Its expressing yourself and doing something, and throwing yourself into it and getting better at it and trying again. Thats…