Quotessence
Home / Authors / Grayson Perry
Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry Quotes

Artist

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtMenPeopleArtistThinkingArt IsEmotionMasculinityWorldClass

Famous Grayson Perry Quotes

“We may try to numb anger, but when we do we numb joy and pleasure on the world too. This numbing does not mean we stop having the feelings, it just stops us from being aware that we are having them. Those feelings are still churning away, tensing our bodies, writing unconscious scripts for us, storing up stuff to unload on to the world, on to our kids, but preferably on to our therapists. This numbness also inhibits the ability to have good relationships as well.”

EmotionAngerRepressionSuppression
Book:The Descent of Man
Create image

“Psychologist Carl Rogers used the word ‘congruence’ when describing this relationship between the idealized self and the real self. Congruence is when the two selves fit harmoniously, when a person’s idealized self is congruent with their actual behavior. However, the idealized self is an often unreachable version of ourselves that we and society create while the real self is the messy, imperfect inner truth. We want to be the idealized version because we believe that society will then regard us positively, so we struggle to maintain a version that does not really fit.”

Self ImageSelf ConceptCongruenceIdealizationCarl Rogers
Book:The Descent of Man
Create image

“Contemporary 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.”

ArtQualityEmotionalJudgingResponseSensualUncomfortableClue
Author:Grayson Perry
Create image

“The 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.”

PeopleGivingCarFitBehaviorWho You AreCriticsUnconscious
Author:Grayson Perry
Create image

“Until 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.”

WorldWayWantLooksArtCultureChurchStyleInformationSourcePagesDrawsEarsMarkRemainsFolksScreensDrawingBest WayObsessionMagazinesLandscapeVisualsPensOur ThoughtsInteriorsHelloAdaptedDownloadsInsertReplicateFolk Art
Author:Grayson Perry
Create image