The Reith Lectures: Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery

In this episode, artist Grayson Perry asks whether it is really true that anything can be art.

He draws upon different theorists to ponder what art is.

Philosopher George Dickie said an artwork is “a candidate for contemplation or appreciation.”

Arthur Danto, another philosopher, said an artwork is about something, has a point of view,  and it uses rhetorical ellipsis - i.e. that it engages the audience to sort of
fill in the gaps. So call and response; you know you have to respond to the
artwork.

Danto also said, it needs an art historical context. This is a kind of institutional definition of art. It needs to be in the context where you might find art  .

We live in an age when many contemporary artists follow the example of Marcel Duchamp, who famously declared that a urinal was a work of art. It sometimes seems that anything qualifies, from a pile of sweets on a gallery floor to an Oscar-winning actress asleep in a box. How does the ordinary art lover decide?

In a lecture delivered amidst the Victorian splendour of St. George's Hall in Liverpool, Perry analyses the common tests to help determine whether something is art.

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

2.  is it a boring version of something else?

3. is it made by an artist?

4. photography

5. limited edition test -  if something is endless, it’s giving away part of its qualification as art. 

6. the people that are around looking at it

7. The "rubbish dump test". “Throw it onto a rubbish dump. And if people walking by notice that it’s there and say “Oh what’s that artwork doing on that rubbish dump”, it’s art.

8. Art is able to detain and suspend us in a state of frustration and ambivalence and
to make us pause and think rather than simply react.

He concludes that in his opinion, the quality most valued in the art world is seriousness.

To listen to the Reith Lecture and find out more information, please visit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p01j9rwb

A couple of recommendations for your ears

There have been some excellent arts radio programmes recently, and so here are a couple of recommendations.

Democracy Has Bad Taste

BBC Radio 4
Tuesday 16th October 

The Reith Lectures,

Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery: 2013

In the first of four lectures, recorded in front of an audience at Tate Modern in London, the artist Grayson Perry reflects on the idea of quality and examines who and what defines what we see and value as art. He argues that there is no empirical way to judge quality in art. Instead the validation of quality rests in the hands of a tightknit group of people at the heart of the art world including curators, dealers, collectors and critics who decide in the end what ends up in galleries and museums. Often the last to have a say are the public.

Perry examines the words and language that have developed around art critique, including what he sees as the growing tendency to over-intellectualise the response to art. He analyses the art market and quotes - with some irony - an insider who says that certain colours sell better than others. He queries whether familiarity makes us like certain artworks more, and encourages the public to learn to appreciate different forms of art through exploration and open-mindedness.

Perry was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, and is known for his ceramic works, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and tapestry as well as for his cross-dressing and alter-ego, Claire.

A masterpiece in a primary school classroom; 

Front Row

BBC Radio 4

Thursday 17th October

In this Front Row episode Mark Lawson visits a Luton primary school, as the children get to see a Frank Auerbach painting, on loan for the day. The work came from the Ben Uri Gallery as part of the Masterpieces in Schools programme, a partnership between the Public Catalogue Foundation and BBC Learning. Mark joins the children as they prepare to see a masterpiece first-hand, many of them for the very first time, and hears their thoughts about Auerbach's Mornington Crescent, Summer Morning II.