Playing to the Gallery Helping Contemporary Art in Its Struggle to be Understood

Initially I bought this as a guide to help me better understand the art world which in turn will equip me with better observation skills.

This was a wonderful anecdote that is shrewd, funny, but written with so much love. I loved the illustrations throughout. It made a highly engaging read.

The book doesn’t give you full answers: it’s not “The Secret”. And I believe that is the best thing of modern art. The imagination is endless, the possibilities are never ending, and no matter how “advanced” society becomes we always have art to turn to: for meaning, liberty, kinship, solace, and hope.

A nice quick read that brings up some interesting questions about art and the art world without being too preachy. It's written in a very conversational tone, which I liked. And I loved the illustrations throughout the book.

Interesting read, attempts to contextualize the “art world” for outsiders. What was most compelling to me was the conclusion where Perry speaks on motivation in art.

“I am haunted by this image: after a lecture once I had a student come up to me, who said, almost whimpering, 'How do you decide what to do vour art about? And I was struggling to say something and then I looked at her hand and saw she had an iPhone, and I said, 'Well, I didn't have one of those.' Because she has every image, access to all information, in her hand. When I started, I had none of that. It's a challenge for young people today, how to navigate the abundance of information and images.

But it's important to make art because perhaps the people that get the most out of art are the ones that make it. So I don't think it's important to be a good artist, no, unless you really want to be one and then it can be very painful if you aren't.”

A light, witty and accessible rumination on the nature of art and the art business. What art is, what standards might be used to judge a piece of work as so, how economics feeds into the equation (but not too much of this; Perry is an artist, after all), why are art pieces sold for so much. The best thing about this book is its premise: answering questions about art that people may be embarrassed to ask. Other books have been written to answer these questions, but Perry makes several refreshing points while being entertaining, satirical and earnest.

Really enjoyed this book. After seeing an amazing Grayson Perry exhibit at the national portrait gallery last year it was cool getting into the artists head. Best part of the book: there are illustrations which are included to accentuate the chapters.