Abstraction, Words, and Detail: Grayson Perry

Abstraction, Words, and Detail: Grayson Perry

From night classes to Turner Prize Winner

When a Grayson Perry exhibition arrives on your doorstep, it is too good an opportunity to see the work of a true artist who observes the things in our life that we take for granted. He uses words, colour and abstraction in a way that few can rival. Also, he looks at the UK, and especially England, with the eye of a forensic investigator. He can document a whole era in a single piece of art. As someone who loves the detail of everything, I admire his attention to detail.

So, when you are faced with “Alan Measles for God” when you arrive at the exhibition, you know you are in for a treat. As you look more into the art, you see the inhumanity of the war in Afghanistan:

I love his use of words in his art and where you really have to examine his work in great detail. In this piece, we see one wheel with racism, sexism and poverty, and on the other, we have democracy, free speech and tolerance. It perhaps sums up the divide in our society from good to bad:

You could observe this work for hours and still find new things. This is a map of human-induced death, including Hirashimi, the Nashville school shootings and Auschwitz:

His self portrait of himself as a politician and in the portrayal of Englishness brings back memories of Margaret Thatcher:

And, what’s in a flag?

And his integration of famous brands into our life just takes your breath away:

And, for this, it is difficult to see how detailed this has been drawn:

Let’s just focus in on one part (Little England), and you can see the detail of “Blandscape”, “Somewhere”, and “Well-to-do Peasants”:

And in abstracting the moving up in social classes:

And, in a single piece of work, he brings together iconic elements of a point in time:

I suppose I love his work as I love jigsaws, and where you need an eye for detail. In this piece, there are so many things going on:

But, for me, it was the beautiful mugs that stood out:

But, my favouriate is a look at the US in detail:

and where you need to look close up to reveal his use of emotive words:

For the rest, I leave you to make your own mind up:

And he brings alive his subjects with a real warmth and sense of joy:

Conclusions

If you are in Edinburgh over the next few months, please consider getting tickets: