My 8 year old daughter could do that

New Grayson Perry artwork available now.  Cost £1.60 from your local newsagent.

Grayson Perry will be delivering the Reith Lectures this year, which will almost certainly be entertaining and stimulating.  Inside the Radio Times he has some interesting things to say, dissing Damien Hurst and Lowry as well as the easier target of B&Q's favourite artist Jack Vetriano.  Expanding on the "my eight year old could do that" comment he says "the point is that an eight year old could not do it.  Modern art plays with us.  It can look easy, but why, if anyone could do it, do they not?"

And how does Perry define art?  "If it's nice to look at and it makes you feel good, it's art".  However he goes on to say that it needs to be validated by "your peers, your teachers, dealers, critics, curators and the public who go to a show, or stay away."   That seems pretty lame to me.  It is only art if someone else says it is?  I'd go back to Warhol and "I have a Brillo box and I say it's art".  Or Peter Byrchmore: "everything you ever do is art.  Art is a hammer."

Listen to Grayson Perry delivering the first of his Reith lectures on Tuesday, Radio 4, 9:00 am.

Ten of my favourite rhinos.

 

 

 GoRhinos in Southampton summer of 2013.  Now at Marwell Zoo, to be auctioned at the end of October