Literature Review

Grayson Perry Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl by Wendy Jones

This book is a biography of Grayson Perry’s life, focusing mainly on his journey to becoming the transvestite and artist he is today. Although it is written by Wendy Jones it is written in the first person perspective from Grayson Perry. Over the course of six years they put together interviews to produce the book. This book shares all the experiences within Perry’s life. It goes into detail about his parent’s divorce when he was only five years old, later leading to the abandonment by his father a few years later. To block out what was going on in his life he created an imaginary world with his teddy bear, Alan Measles. This teddy bear is still seen as an important object within Perry’s life and work. Grayson Perry lived in this imaginary world up until the age of fifteen. His mother soon remarried to the milkman she had cheated on his father with, this man had a bad temper and would often be abusive towards him and his mother. By the age of fifteen he had started to wear woman’s clothing while home alone, and even on occasion had left the house in them. Perry found a way to get back in touch with his father after eight years of not seeing him, his mother kicked him out of the house for this. He moved in with his dad and stepmother, he was kicked out of their house a few months later when they found him in his stepmothers clothing. During sixth form one of his teachers suggested he joined an art school, this sent Perry on his artistic journey. He joined a foundation course at Braintree college, then later moved onto studying at Portsmouth University. During his time at university he became more experimental with his transvestite alter ego ‘Claire’ gaining more confidence to wear make up and wigs. One artist Perry was inspired by was Henry Darger, who saw the world as too painful and used his art to create an alternative one. Perry related to his use of escapism as it was something he had done from a young age.

What I feel this book does is show how Perry grew not only personally but within his artwork. Showing us all the experiences from throughout his younger life and how they impacted him not only at the time but still today. You can often see small parallels within Perry’s works. What I have taken from this work is that the personal lives of an artist can effect their art; the style, the meanings, the media and more. Also from reading this book I feel like I have a greater appreciation of Perry’s artwork, that at times I didn’t fully understand. I also understand more of his eccentric personality with his alter ego, who often is in more childish over the top dresses. You can see how the bad things going on around him growing up effected him in a way that he used escapism similarly to Henry Darger.