Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Beating the Bounds
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Beating the Bounds
The award-winning artist Grayson Perry asks whether it is really true that anything can be art. We live in an age when many contemporary artists follow the example of Marcel Duchamp, who famously declared that a urinal was a work of art. It sometimes seems that anything qualifies, from a pile of sweets on a gallery floor to an Oscar-winning actress asleep in a box. How does the ordinary art lover decide?
In a lecture delivered amidst the Victorian splendour of St. George's Hall in Liverpool, Perry analyses with characteristic wit the common tests - from commercial worth to public popularity to aesthetic value. He admits the inadequacies of such yardsticks, especially when applied to much conceptual and performance art. And he concludes that in his opinion, the quality most valued in the art world is seriousness.
Producer: Jim Frank
View all episodes
By BBC Radio 4
4.3
148148 ratings
The award-winning artist Grayson Perry asks whether it is really true that anything can be art. We live in an age when many contemporary artists follow the example of Marcel Duchamp, who famously declared that a urinal was a work of art. It sometimes seems that anything qualifies, from a pile of sweets on a gallery floor to an Oscar-winning actress asleep in a box. How does the ordinary art lover decide?
In a lecture delivered amidst the Victorian splendour of St. George's Hall in Liverpool, Perry analyses with characteristic wit the common tests - from commercial worth to public popularity to aesthetic value. He admits the inadequacies of such yardsticks, especially when applied to much conceptual and performance art. And he concludes that in his opinion, the quality most valued in the art world is seriousness.
Producer: Jim Frank
More shows like The Reith Lectures
View all
Global News Podcast
7,789 Listeners
From Our Own Correspondent
373 Listeners
More or Less
896 Listeners
Newshour
1,063 Listeners
In Our Time
5,509 Listeners
The Documentary Podcast
1,798 Listeners
6 Minute English
1,869 Listeners
Learning English Conversations
1,072 Listeners
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
2,117 Listeners
Desert Island Discs
2,087 Listeners
Thinking Allowed
301 Listeners
Moral Maze
56 Listeners
The Life Scientific
241 Listeners
The Audio Long Read
837 Listeners
Start the Week
162 Listeners
The Briefing Room
62 Listeners
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
108 Listeners
You're Dead to Me
3,211 Listeners
Americast
772 Listeners
The Bomb
1,041 Listeners
The Rest Is Politics
3,532 Listeners
The Rest Is Politics: Leading
799 Listeners
Radical with Amol Rajan
59 Listeners
Rory Stewart: The Long History of...
78 Listeners