Playing to the Gallery

This book, inspired by Grayson Perry's popular BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures and filled with pictures, is an entertaining and intimate adventure into the art world. 

This funny, personal journey through the art world answers the basic questions that might occur to us in an art gallery but seem too embarrassing to ask. Perry gives those questions a space to be answered in an attempt to give more guidance on the at-times intimidating world of contemporary art.

As Grayson Perry has now become fully paid-up member of the art establishment, he wants to show that any of us can appreciate art (after all, there is a reason he's called this book Playing to the Gallery and not 'Sucking up to an Academic Elite'). This funny and informative book is filled with good jokes, cartoons, and memorable epigrams, but above all full of thought-provoking ideas that make you want to pause on every page.

Grayson Perry's first art prize was a large papier-mâché head he awarded to himself as part of a performance art project at college in 1980. Since then he has won many other awards, including the Turner Prize in 2003. He is now one of Britain's most celebrated artists and has had major solo exhibitions all over the world.