I visited this exhibition at the Manchester Gallery on Saturday 25th. Really interesting to see the work - vibrant colour, thought provoking narrative - tried to explain to my 6 year the story behind the 6 tapestries! ...Grayson Perry comments: "The tapestries tell the story of class mobility, for I think nothing has as strong an influence on our aesthetic taste as the social class in which we grow up. I am interested in the politics of consumerism and the history of popular design but for this project I focus on the emotional investment we make in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive. Class and taste run deep in our character - we care. This emotional charge is what draws me to a subject".
The huge tapestries, six in total, follow the journey of young ‘Tim Rakewell’ as he climbs the societal ladder, from his youth in Sunderland to his grisly death as a rich but unfulfilled bachelor at the side of the road, being papped on iPhones as his young second wife looks on. The detail in the tapestries is amazing and the closer you look the more you see as the story unravels and you see the story behind the work.
They are beautiful to look at too, sumptuously coloured, they are done by machine however Perry doesn’t mind that they are created by machine rather than hand, and embraces the use of digital technology, going so far as to say, “Google is the great tool of the modern artist.”
The Adoration of the Cage Fighters, 2012
The scene is Tim's great-grandmother's front room. The infant Tim reaches for his mother's smartphone, his rival for her attention. She is dressed up ready for a night out with her four friends who perhaps have already 'been on the pre-lash'.
Two 'Mixed Martial Arts' enthusiasts present icons of tribal identity to the infant, a Sunderland football shirt and a miner's lamp. In the manner of early Christian painting Tim also appears a second time on the stairs, as a four-year-old, facing another evening alone in front of a screen.
Although this series of images developed very organically with little consistent method, the religious reference is there from the start. Here I sense the echo of such paintings as Mantegna's Adoration of the Shepherds.
The Agony in the Car Park, 2012
The Agony in the Car Park is a distant relative of Bellini's Agony in the Garden. The scene is on a hill outside Sunderland. In the distance is the Stadium of Light. The central figure, Tim's stepfather, a club singer, hints at Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece.
A childlike shipyard crane stands in for the crucifix with Tim's mother as Mary once again in the throes of an earthly passion. Tim, in Grammar school uniform, blocks his ears, squirming in embarrassment. A computer magazine sticks out of his bag, betraying his early enthusiasm for software.
To the left a younger Tim plays happily with his step-grandfather outside his pigeon cree on the allotments. To the right young men with their customised cars gather in the car park of Heppie's social club. Mrs T and the call centre manager await a new recruit into the middle class.
The Expulsion from Number Eight Eden Close, 2012
Tim is at university studying computer science, where he is going steady with a nice girl from Tunbridge Wells. Tim's mother and stepfather now live on a private development and own a luxury car. She hoovers the Astroturf lawn, he returns from a game of golf.
There has been an argument and Tim and his girlfriend are leaving. They pass through a rainbow. Jamie Oliver, the god of social mobility, looks down. They are guilty of a sin just like Adam and Eve in Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
A dinner party is just starting. Tim's girlfriend's parents and fellow guests toast the new arrival.
The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, 2012
Tim is relaxing with his family in the kitchen of his large, rural (second) home. His business partner has just told him he is now an extremely wealthy man as they have sold their software business to Richard Branson.
On the table is a still life demonstrating the cultural bounty of his affluent lifestyle. His parents-in-law read and his elder child plays on the rug. Tim dandles his baby while his wife tweets.
This image includes references to three different paintings of the Annunciation, by Carlo Crivelli (the vegetables), Matthias Grunewald (his colleague's expression) and Robert Campin (the jug of lilies). The convex mirror and discarded shoes are reminders of that great pictorial display of wealth and status, The Arnolfini Portrait, by Jan Van Eyck.
The Upper Class at Bay, 2012
Tim Rakewell and his wife are now in their late forties and their children are grown. They stroll, like Mr And Mrs Andrews in Gainsborough's famous portrait of the landed gentry, in the grounds of their mansion in the Cotswolds. They are new money they can never become upper class in their lifetime.
In the light of the sunset they watch the old aristocratic stag with its tattered tweed hide being hunted down by the dogs of tax, social change, upkeep and fuel bills. The old land owning breed is dying out. Tim has his own problems: as a 'fat cat' he has attracted the ire of an occupy-style protest camp outside his house.
The protester silhouetted between the antlers refers to paintings of the vision of Saint Hubert, who had a vision of a crucifix appearing on the head of a stag.
#Lamentation, 2012
The scene is the aftermath of a car accident at an intersection near a retail park. Tim lies dead in the arms of a stranger. His glamourous second wife stands stunned and bloodstained amongst the wreckage of his Ferrari.
Paramedics prepare to remove his body. Police and firemen record and clear up the crash scene. Onlookers take photos on their camera phones to upload onto the internet. His dog lays dead. The contents of his wife's expensive handbag spill out over a copy of Hello magazine featuring her and Tim on the cover.
At the bottom of Rogier Van de Weyden's Lamentation, the painting which inspired this image, is a skull. I have substituted it with a smashed smart phone. This scene also echoes the final painting of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress where Tom Rakewell dies naked in the madhouse.
'In The Vanity of Small Differences Grayson Perry explores his fascination with taste and the visual story it tells of our interior lives in a series of six tapestries (and three programmes, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, for Channel 4). The artist goes on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain, to gather inspiration for his artworks, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative partly inspired by Hogarth's A Rake's Progress.
Perry has always worked with traditional media; ceramics, cast iron, bronze, printmaking and tapestry. He is interested in how each historic category of object accrues over time intellectual and emotional baggage. Tapestry is the art form of grand houses: depicting classical myths, historical and religious scenes and epic battles. In this series of works Perry plays with idea of using this ancient allegorical art to elevate the commonplace dramas of modern British life.
The artist's primary inspiration was A Rake's Progress (1732 -33) by William Hogarth, which in eight paintings tells the story of Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, spends it all on fashionable pursuits and gambling, marries for money, gambles away a second fortune, goes to debtors' prison and dies in a madhouse.
The Vanity of Small Differences tells the story of the rise and demise of Tim Rakewell and is composed of characters, incidents and objects Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds. Hogarth has long been an influence on Perry's works, his Englishness, his robust humour and his depiction of, in his own words, 'modern moral subjects'. The secondary influence comes from Perry's favourite form of art, early Renaissance painting.
Each of the six images, to a greater or lesser extent, pays homage to a religious work. Including Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, Rogier Van de Weyden's Lamentation and three different paintings of The Annunciation by Carlo Crivelli, Grünewald and Robert Campin. The images also reference the pictorial display of wealth and status in The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck and Mr & Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough. Woven into each tapestry are snatches of text, each one in the voice of a participant in the scene illustrated. Each image also features a small dog, reminiscent of Hogarth's beloved pug, Trump.
Channel 4's three-part series, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry was shown in June 2012'.
The Vanity of Small Differences will be showing at:
Manchester Art Gallery (24th October 2013 – 21st January 2014),
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (14th February – 11th May 2014),
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (May – August 2014)
Leeds City Art Gallery (1st August – 1st October 2014).
