Grayson Perry Showcases His Latest Exhibition

PERRY: I mean all these designer clothes shops are within a handbag’s throw of this exact gallery. I mean we’re here in London. And so I thought it would be fun to do a piece that kind of acknowledged that but also it’s called “shopping for meaning.” It’s an acknowledgment of the humanity of the rich, in some ways. It’s sort of saying you’re looking for meaning.

AMANPOUR: I do notice you do have a soft spot for the rich. I mean, you are trying to humor — I love that. But you’re trying to also humanize them. I mean we’re living in a moment where the superrich are not the most super popular.

PERRY: A lot of the problems that are attributed to the rich reach very far down the income scale. I mean I’m not saying, you know, it’s the average income, but, you know, someone who can afford a nice house in the middle of a big city in one of the developed countries is doing all right.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

PERRY: And I think that they might want to look into their own eyes before they, you know.

AMANPOUR: And interestingly, in the other room, we saw where you’re actually making fun of them, with their money going on holiday and that whole sort of Instagram superrich. And here, you’re doing what you’ve said just, humanizing them. So again you have this constant flow of contradictions throughout almost every piece and between pieces.

PERRY: Yes. I mean, I’m — you know, that’s the line I want to dance because I think that in the end, as an artist, a polemic is quite dull. It has no crystal. When I see a comedy show I like — when I don’t know whether to cry or laugh, there’s a sweet spot to me. And so I try to sort of, in my own way, with my work, try to find people are kind of oh —

AMANPOUR: Should I laugh? Should I cry? Should I —

PERRY: All these things are very, very important because they’re human, that’s who we are. I don’t want to aggrandize my project. But in the end I want people to acknowledge it. We complicate it. and human, and we can’t deal with that. We’re not a kind of set of facts and statistics.

AMANPOUR: Finally, I just want to sort of get you to talk about your message here. Do you want to read this? You wrote it. It’s the last paragraph in an article you wrote for the FT.

PERRY: Oh, OK. Here we go. In the perverse spirit of the times, I’m trying to critique and call out the hypocrisies and anti-social behavior of the superrich while colluding with them and sucking up to them at the same time. And I think that does sum me up. And I think that in this age of polarization and division in society, I think we’ve all got to come to terms and have a bit of empathy for the other side. And you might find some of their opinions but nobody is really as black and white as Twitter would make you think, you know. And I’ve just been shooting a T.V. series in the states, you know, about these issues.