Cathy's Art Diary

Useful online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the career to date of Grayson Perry. Jacky Klein, author of a book of the same title of this talk, took us through Perry’s career   discussing how he used his Turner Prize win changed his fortunes and how he has used the profile that gave him to develop new work. She then took us through the five main themes in Perry’s work, class and taste, identity, gender and sexuality, politics and masculinity. She had some great illustrations and, having worked with him on his biography, gave us some interesting insights into his ideas.

Innovative online lecture from the National Gallery on how technology might influence art in the next decade. Jacky Klein from the Courtauld took us through various new technologies and how they had been used by artists. It should have coincided with the Durer exhibition which is now later in the year as a comparison to how he responded to the new technology of his time, printing. I would say most of the work she discussed was conceptual art so were more about analysing idea rather than producing fine art works however there were some fascinating projects. I must admit I don’t like virtual reality so I won’t rushing to see Jon Rafman’s “Sculpture Garden” which combines a VR maze with a real sculpture. However I did like Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Fireworks Over Beijing” which combined images of an alabaster model of the Forbidden City with film of fireworks over it to represent the fact they are now illegal in the city due to fire. I did like some of the AI works including the one shown h...