Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences: The Vanity of Small Differences (reprinted)

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Judgment’ is a complicated word, both in a secular and a religious context. It can mean ‘passing judgment’ and ‘condemning’. Or it can mean trying to estimate the nature of something accurately as in awarding first prize to a cake. In terms of postmodernity, Clive Hazell argues that consumer culture has been seen as predicated on the narcissism of small differences to achieve a superficial sense of one's own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness. [7] The phenomenon has been portrayed by the British comedy group Monty Python in their satirical 1979 film Life of Brian [8] and by author Joan Didion in an essay (part of her 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem) about Michael Laski, the founder of the Communist Party USA (Marxist–Leninist). [9] The contemporary comic genre contains many novel and sophisticated artistic expressions. Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning MAUS and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, winner of the 1991 World Fantasy Award for short fiction, could be called fine art storytelling.1 And the comics drawn by Chris Ware in his Acme Novelty Library would find a comfortable home among fine art books. An intelligent evening (2 November 2017, sold out) of laughs, discussion, insight and costume changes in this one-off show at the London Palladium. The exhibition (31 January–27 September 2020) crosses genres, media and timeframes to provide a playful and provocative framework for probing how Britain's literary and visual culture has perpetuated an idea of a utopian society that fosters nostalgic yearnings for a seemingly lost past.

So, too, his humanity stretches to the inherited sadness of the upper classes, who cannot live in the moment ever, only in the past, as they keep their crumbling gaffes alive in cold deprivation. I was once helicoptered into a stately home (don't ask) and shown around. We were given the finest wines known to humanity, yet I was shivering with my coat on. No one remarked on my discomfort. At a time when social mobility has ground to a halt – when inequality booms and cannot be bust – Perry reminds us of how we tell each other who we are and who we belong to. In these conservative times, this is a radical thing to be doing. That is why this work is important. Sometimes things not only look good; they are good. I am making a moral judgment here, but then I recognise myself – my flaws, my dreams – in these tapestries of joy and despair, of ugliness and beauty. And so, it might be said that their way forward is to be found by coming out of hiding before God. And in the process, they will discover that God is not, as they suppose, waiting to condemn them, but to recreate them if they are prepared to work with him. Honest self-knowledge is the process of coming out of hiding. And that process is made possible by the fact that God has given us a God-like life which we might put on – the life focussed by Jesus living such a life in a particular time and place which has to be recreated for us and in us by the Holy Spirit acting in our own particular time and place.

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Post-Bourdieu, we read Susan Sontag's definition of camp – "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration … esoteric – something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques" – and began to see postmodernism as camp for straight, middle-class people. Kitsch is fun but employed with a sneer. Style as a knowing wink that only a chosen few can understand has become popularised. Its edginess has become marketable; this is no longer about playing with identity, but simply displaying one's expanded visual vocabulary. Camp, which is meant to be a way to survive, is commodified, becomes just another signifier of knowingness, no longer a radical aesthetic at all. The same thing happens to minimalism. "You want to sell your house, love? Paint it white. Strip the floorboards," says the estate agent. Make every bedroom look like a boutique hotel. One of the purposes of liturgy and worship is to look at ourselves in the light of the gospel, making self-reflection a core spiritual discipline. A point that the Dean likes to make to visitors is that, although these tapestries were made ten years ago, they are, after Brexit, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and the war in Ukraine, “of more relevance than ever before” in their exploration of how united or divided we are as a nation. Grayson Perry writes in the Guardian and reveals two new works ahead of his Serpentine Galleries show Inspired by Hogarth’s morality tale, A Rake’s Progress, Perry’s tapestries follow the socially-mobile life of fictional character Tim Rakewell from infancy to untimely death.

A collaboration with Yale Center for British Art, where it was first displayed, the exhibition (20 March – 17 June 2018) traces the changing nature of British studio pottery through the evolution of specific types of vessel. References to classical art and religious painting also inform the work and reflection on this aspect of the tapestries was a key element in the conversations that led to this exhibition, the first showing of these works in an ecclesiastical setting. The Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd Nicholas Papadopulos, says that his concern, knowing that several panels are titled after famous works of sacred art, was to be sure Perry’s treatment of the sacred themes was respectful and enlarged understanding and appreciation. Some of Claire’s best-known outfits are featured in this display (4 November 2017 – 4 February 2018), including the Bo Peep dress worn when Perry was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003. Published by Particular Books, the accompanying book for Perry's show at the Serpentine Gallery (8 June – 10 September 2017) contains all his latest works.Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close”, 2012. Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry, 200 X 400 cm. British Council Collection. A specially designed guide will take you on a journey around the museum in search of historic motifs found in the tapestries, and you can hear perspectives from experts in very different fields through newly created audio.