Grayson Perry's Art Club' Exhibition

[BitMuch]

www.channel4.com/programmes/graysons-art-club. I really enjoyed watching this series during lockdown because the amateur artists are very diverse and it showcases some interesting work. In this week's episode, for the final exhibition of their work, Grayson Perry dressed up in a way he is open about being very sexually aroused by. He has these clothes specifically designed to hide an erection. He didn't dress this way in any of the previous episodes. I found this totally disrespectful of him, especially when he was talking to the amateur artists who travelled to Manchester for the event despite covid, including a 17 year old girl and a young man with autism. The programme was primarily about the members of the public and showcasing their art. It's a nice pre-watershed family-friendly programme that has children on it, like a young 12 year old boy who made a collage of his twin brother who passed away.

Why does Grayson act out his fetish in events he attends that are not remotely 'adult' in nature?

Grayson went to a a primary school event with the Duchess of Cambridge and decided to wear his fetish gear to that so I have no idea where he draws the line. This is so accepted by society at large but I cannot feel comfortable with it. He seems so Jekyll and Hyde. Would a man wearing a gimp suit be invited along with a royal to speak with children in a primary school?

Also, his wife Phillipa Perry was the joint presenter and she made art too so I don't know why her name was missing from the title. It would have been more accurate to be called 'Grayson and Phillipa's Art Club'.

[BitMuch]

Quotes from Grayson Perry (in online articles I can view for free):

'Does he still find it [transvestism] sexually exciting? “Oh yes,” he shouts excitedly. “Yeah!” But there is a problem, he says, with being a very public tranny. You mean, you couldn’t be seen at the Royal Academy in a nice frock and a stiffy? He nods enthusiastically. “You couldn’t do it. If I could manage it, I’m sure I’d be thinking how to do it. But I can’t.”

'However wholesome they looked, the pots illustrated scenes of child abduction, sadomasochism, masturbating teddies, sweet little girls with penises hanging from their dresses.'

'But why, for instance, the Little Bo Peep look? “It’s a classic look. I used to call it the crack cocaine of femininity. It’s the furthest from the male macho look you could get. It’s vulnerable, it’s young, it’s humiliating.'

“When she [his daughter] was very young, we used to say, ‘Oh, Daddy’s dressing up to go to a party’, which was pretty true most of the time. I never sat her down and talked about my sexuality. Too much information!”

From www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/04/grayson-perry-dress-tranny-art-who-are-you-tv 2014.

'Perry, who is best known for his beautifully crafted ceramics that are illustrated with images of “explicit scenes of sexual perversion—sadomasochism, bondage, transvestism” '

'So I made my first ever plate, which was called, Kinky Sex.'

'Perry’s interest in dressing-up and fetishism started at the age of seven when he made a noose out of his pajamas, which he attached to the headboard in his bedroom and tied around his neck.'

'Grayson moved onto his own “bondage games… set in a prisoner-of-war camp where [he] would be bound and humiliated by the prison guards.” Eventually, Grayson found an outlet for his feelings in transvestism, which he described in [his autobiography] Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl: . . .
My body and mind only whispered, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, try that.’ It would be a turn-on and the reward was a bit of a stiffy and a bit of a feel.'

From dangerousminds.net/comments/grayson_perry_rebel_in_a_dress 2014

'People ask why do I do it[crossdressing],' he says. 'It's a turn on!'

'Sometimes,' he says, 'I wonder if we live our lives so that we can fulfil our deepest sex fantasies. That they shape our lives. Perhaps Roosevelt became president so that he could jump into bed with everyone.'

'In 1979, [Perry] saw the Outsiders Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and came across the work of Henry Darger, who remains his favourite artist. His subject matter is mainly known for its obsessive depictions of little girls suffering various forms of torture. 'Several critics have speculated as to whether he was in fact a child murderer or serial killer,' writer Matthew Michael has commented.

For Perry, Darger's wounded little girls represented a violent fantasy world where children were a metaphor for a sub-personality that lurks within the complex adult. 'My research into him by chance coincided with Claire regressing into her child image, so it felt very poignant,' he says. Injured children re-occur as a motif in his work. His latest pot, The Plight of the Sensitive Child, shows children in frilly frocks taking crack.

Paedophilia horrifies him, but so do the knee-jerk reactions that serve to cordon the subject off and disallow discussion. 'I like the idea of diffusing rampant paedo-paranoia,' he says.'

'Claire isn't in a separate compartment,' she [Phillipa Perry] points out. 'His compulsion is as much a part of him as his blue eyes.'

''Flo,' who is 11, is unsurprised by any idiosyncrasies that her father might be perceived as having. 'She just rolls her eyes.' When asked recently by a friend what he put on his pots, she calmly replied, 'Child abuse mainly', and when her father commented that she was an 'arty' child, she replied that she did no know whether that was a compliment or not.'

'Claire is also developing a new agenda. Perry hopes she will encourage others to live out their fantasies.'

'She' may have achieved a new incarnation in time for the Turner hoopla. 'She has changed,' he says. 'I am no longer interested in deceiving people into thinking I'm female. And I've stopped being embarrassed.'

From www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/sep/21/art

Perry is adamant that dressing up is not performance art. ‘It’s a fetish and being a tranny is enormous fun,’ he says.

From www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/bazaar-art/news/amp32545/amazing-grayson/ in 2014

“I’m on an up. My life is f---ing charmed,” he says with a touch of defiance. “I have enormous fun doing what I want. I’m very lucky.”

When he started wearing women’s clothes as a youth, it was a furtive, dangerous act. The risk of discovery and humiliation gave him a sexual thrill. Dressing up as Claire is still a turn-on, he insists, but the circumstances have changed. "I like dressing up. I’m a transvestite. So, I get excuses to dress up all the time. It’s fabulous.”

From amp.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/provocative-artist-grayson-perry-centrism-is-now-an-insult-20191126-p53e55.html in 2019.

I ask him if he dresses up only for performance. [He is dressed normally in white shirt and jeans.]

“No, it’s not performance ever. I dress up ’cause I want to. The ideal transvestite experience is walking down the street with a mirror held in front of you"

'Is dressing up as a little girl a way to access paedophilia safely?

“Dressing up is partly about the right sort of attention. Little boys don’t get the kind of attention for just being which girls get. Nobody says to a boy, ‘You look lovely today, my precious.'”

Do you know the work of Hans Bellmer?

“Yes, I like it. He’s the first explicit perv artist in the modern canon.”

From
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/graysonperry in 2006. I would recommend reading the whole of this disturbing interview to get the full context. He talks at length about "little girls".


I'm feeling much more uneasy after finding these quotes than I was previously from things I'd heard him say on TV. Can we now all discuss this with the knowledge that dressing this way is, in his words, "sexually exciting" "a turn on" and "a fetish"?

[Lettera]

Dido, do you have an opinion on men who deliberately dress or present themselves in such a way as to provoke a reaction that will arouse them sexually? (I am not suggesting that this is what Perry does.) That is the subject of my post, not goths, punks or anyone else you consider 'looks a bit out of the ordinary'.

[Poorlykitten]

Grayson doesn’t design his dresses and hadn’t done for years... ‘Since 2004, he has mainly worn clothes designed for Claire by the fashion students at London’s Central St Martins. They take part in an annual competition to design new dresses, Perry judges their work, awards prizes and purchases up to 20 of their creations every year’

[BitMuch]

Thank you so much Datun, your posts are so clear headed. I'm not well versed in safeguarding but I know many women here are.

I don't think my post is "policing" this man, I'm criticising his decisions to wear his fetish gear around children. How are parents supposed to object to their child being part of his sexual fantasy when he is supported by such powerful establishment figures like the Royal family? Would he enjoy it even more if parents did object to his visit to their children's primary school? Does that mean people should stay silent about concerns in order not to arouse him further?

Personally, I think if people criticised this behaviour more, he would be able to get adequate boundary breaking kicks without going into primary schools. The more normalised
him exhibiting his fetish in public is, the worse he has to do to get the feeling he wants and that seems to increasing involve children as his audience.

I'm certain I've heard him on TV talking about the design of his skirts to hide an erection. I've googled but I can't find mention of this specific thing. I don't know the exact phrase he said and it might not have been been wrote about online so other documented quotes of his would be best to quote. He has wrote about and extensively been interviewed about how these clothes are fetish wear and make him aroused. All the dresses of his shown online dress are in a style that does hide an erection but even if I was misremembering it, it doesn't make a difference to my unease with his behaviour of acting out a fetish at inappropriate events. I obviously totally agree that if he chose transvestite clothes which didn't hide an erection for his school visits, that would be worse of course. From googling I've found he used to go on stage in nightclubs naked with a bell attached to his penis in his twenties. Just because he could be behaving worse, doesn't mean I have to be comfortable with his current openly sexually motivated behaviour around children and in non 'adult' contexts. I think a comparison to a man wearing a gimp suit being invited into primary schools is apt and hopefully that would not be celebrated or enabled by people in positions of power.

[BitMuch]

Also, Phillipa Perry who was joint presenting this programme did not act out any fetishes at all even though she does also describe herself as 'kinky' www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-04-04/philippa-perry-talks-sex-surrealism-and-living-with-grayson/. I'd like to hold her husband to the same standard of behaviour she holds herself to, which we also follow without any problems.

The linked interview is relevant I feel, especially these parts:

'That sounds like [Phillipa] would forgive most male transgressions if they were cheerfully delivered. “I do feel that we’re extra super-harsh on men. Even in the 1970s, actually, when I suffered from being groped in lifts in offices and stuff like that. I had a boss make a drunken pass at me once and my reaction was just to hit him on the nose, boof! There was blood everywhere. I gave him a tissue and said sorry.”

It’s less easy to accept some of surrealism’s darker moments, such as the implications of paedophilia in Hans Bellmer’s fetishised photographs of pubescent female dolls in the 1930s. “I think because Bellmer showed that part of himself, and was aware of that part of himself, he was probably less likely to act on it. Those things might be disturbing, they might look very violent and sexualised, but they’re not sexy. They’re not ‘porny’. They are worrying, they’re disturbing, but they’re really not porny. I think the Chapman brothers are porny.”

Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman’s skits on porn have included putting penises on mannequins of children.

'Adopting the alter ego Claire, the 56-year-old artist has gained as much attention for his public transvestism as for his remarkable Turner Prize-winning pots, though his wife claims his flamboyant other life has long ceased to register with her as a public work of art. “I’ve never known anything else,” says Philippa of the man she first met at a creative writing class in 1987. “I’ve been with him so long.”'

[Datun]

As I said Perry has never been shy about publicising his relationship to fetishism. Quite the reverse.

The kink and his obsession with sex gets so enmeshed with his intellectual artistry and creative knowledge, that people appear to blithely accept it, when they wouldn't dream of it for a common or garden fetishist.

It appears to be all about the marketing.

[BitMuch]

Grayson Perry, in his own words, not a GC or feminist ally:

'Gender has always been important for the artist, who has long cross dressed and whose 2016 book The Descent of Man addressed modern masculinity. “No one’s as sexist as a transvestite. We like gender roles. I always describe myself as gender rigid,” he laughed. “I signed up for a gender and I want them to be very clearly delineated so I know I’m dressing up in the wrong clothes.” - www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11658/grayson-perry-sarabande-foundation-lee-alexander-mcqueen-inspiration-series 2019


Perry reveals ‘One of the reasons I dress up as a woman is my low self-esteem, to go with the image of women being seen as second class. - www.saatchigallery.com/artist/grayson_perry


“I'm not camp," he says by way of example. "I'm a very heterosexual man who likes putting on dresses, gets off on it, and that's the end of it, really.”
Despite his penchant for loud colours and lavish eye make-up, he isn't a fan of drag. “No one is as sexist as a transvestite, because we get off on wearing the wrong clothes; so, if there was androgyny, we wouldn't exist.”

• www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/grayson-perry-the-comedic-everyman-in-a-dress-20191212-p53jh7

[Poorlykitten]

He does,however, throw a mean pot

[Datun]

[quote BitMuch]Grayson Perry, in his own words, not a GC or feminist ally:

'Gender has always been important for the artist, who has long cross dressed and whose 2016 book The Descent of Man addressed modern masculinity. “No one’s as sexist as a transvestite. We like gender roles. I always describe myself as gender rigid,” he laughed. “I signed up for a gender and I want them to be very clearly delineated so I know I’m dressing up in the wrong clothes.” - www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11658/grayson-perry-sarabande-foundation-lee-alexander-mcqueen-inspiration-series 2019

Perry reveals ‘One of the reasons I dress up as a woman is my low self-esteem, to go with the image of women being seen as second class. - www.saatchigallery.com/artist/grayson_perry

“I'm not camp," he says by way of example. "I'm a very heterosexual man who likes putting on dresses, gets off on it, and that's the end of it, really.”
Despite his penchant for loud colours and lavish eye make-up, he isn't a fan of drag. “No one is as sexist as a transvestite, because we get off on wearing the wrong clothes; so, if there was androgyny, we wouldn't exist.”

• www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/grayson-perry-the-comedic-everyman-in-a-dress-20191212-p53jh7[/quote]

It's like he's swallowed FWR whole.

The issue that kicked this off today was the lack of understanding over women who say men should be able to wear dresses, but not those dresses.

And he has demonstrated the reason in his comments.

Men who dress as women, require binary dressing to be as extreme as possible. They require the gender boxes to be rigorously enforced. That's why feminists challenge it.

Men who wear dresses, or like feminine clothing, because they like the clothes, but aren't trying to impersonate a woman, are deconstructing the gender boxes. The clothes aren't for women.

And yes, women's status as lesser than is what produces the arousal.

This sort of process is discussed all over FWR. I'm amazed people haven't got it at the click of a finger yet.

[MedusasBadHairDay]

I wrote yesterday that I knew very little about him, having read those quotes I think I'd like to go back to knowing very little about him.

[testing987654321]

Men who dress as women, require binary dressing to be as extreme as possible. They require the gender boxes to be rigorously enforced. That's why feminists challenge it.

And that's why I think we need to go through a process of pretending we don't see it for now.

To explain, when a teenager acts up (sighs, body language) one strategy is to ignore and carry on responding to them normally until they also behave normally because their insolence isn't receiving any attention.

At the moment virtually the only men wearing dresses and skirts are doing it for the same reasons as Perry.

If we just act normally, no big deal, other men who just want to wear them will do it as well.

And finally we will get to a place where the normals outnumber the fetishists and clothes will just be clothes.

[CatsCantCatchCriminals2]

Thank you very much BitMuch for taking the trouble of finding those quotes by Perry.

I'd like to add this for the few posters on here who don't seem to get it:

If a man wears a dress and his erection underneath is obvious - that's horrible

If a man wears a dress that conceals his erection around other people including children - that's horrible too

If a man does either of the above in private - crack on mate

This really isn't that complicated and shouldn't be that hard to grasp!

(I want a thread about kinks and why they are unacceptable in public.)

[BitMuch]

And that's why I think we need to go through a process of pretending we don't see it for now.

I don't want to pretend not to have seen this man, in his words, "getting off" at an event for primary school children with a powerful Royal. Or on an enjoyable family-friendly TV programme about some great amateur artists of primary school age and up. That programme was partly funded by the Art Fund charity and was intended to be 'promoting art for the health of society and as an art school for everyone'. Pretty sure children and people who don't consent to being a prop for a man's fetish were intended to be included in 'everyone'. I would have completely enjoyed the final episode without that aspect which was entirely unnecessary, as shown by his "turn-on" not being included in the rest of the series which was still as popular. He is taking the piss.


He says "No, it's not performance ever." "It's a turn on!"

'Perry is adamant that dressing up is not performance art. 'It’s a fetish and being a tranny is enormous fun,' he says.'

He says "'I wonder if we live our lives so that we can fulfil our deepest sex fantasies."

“I’m on an up. My life is f---ing charmed,” he says with a touch of defiance. “I have enormous fun doing what I want. I’m very lucky.”

Dressing up as Claire is still a turn-on, he insists, but the circumstances have changed. "I like dressing up. I’m a transvestite. So, I get excuses to dress up all the time. It’s fabulous.”

'Claire is also developing a new agenda. Perry hopes she will encourage others to live out their fantasies.'


I don't think pretending to ignore the behaviour of this proud self described "fetishist" in inappropriate contexts will encourage normal men to wear more dresses and skirts at all. Perry says himself he doesn't want that. I think well-meaning people ignoring or just not knowing about his entirely sexual motivation for dressing as this way is why he is escalating into acting out his "fetish" which is "not performance ever" in a primary school with these children.

I instinctively knew there was something wrong about the motivations of the 50-60 year old transvestites in wigs, stockings and skirts who got on the bus I got to school as a child and I made sure never to talk to them, just like the other creepy old men who would try to talk to young girls on the bus. Children these days just have to Google the name of the man visiting them at school to find his long, open descriptions of how he dresses that way purely due to "a fetish" that is "still a turn on", "enormous fun" and "never performance". I was never forced to talk to the dressed-up transvestites in my town, least of all by a Royal Princess. There's been quite a few of these men locally for a long time and seeing them definitely doesn't seem to have encouraged normal men with non-sexual motivations to wear more gender-bendy clothing, as some posters may hope.

[JustaPatioWithAspirations]

“No one’s as sexist as a transvestite. We like gender roles. I always describe myself as gender rigid,” he laughed. “I signed up for a gender and I want them to be very clearly delineated so I know I’m dressing up in the wrong clothes.” -

I can't fault the logic

[Datun]

@BitMuch

And that's why I think we need to go through a process of pretending we don't see it for now.

I don't want to pretend not to have seen this man, in his words, "getting off" at an event for primary school children with a powerful Royal. Or on an enjoyable family-friendly TV programme about some great amateur artists of primary school age and up. That programme was partly funded by the Art Fund charity and was intended to be 'promoting art for the health of society and as an art school for everyone'. Pretty sure children and people who don't consent to being a prop for a man's fetish were intended to be included in 'everyone'. I would have completely enjoyed the final episode without that aspect which was entirely unnecessary, as shown by his "turn-on" not being included in the rest of the series which was still as popular. He is taking the piss.

He says "No, it's not performance ever." "It's a turn on!"

'Perry is adamant that dressing up is not performance art. 'It’s a fetish and being a tranny is enormous fun,' he says.'

He says "'I wonder if we live our lives so that we can fulfil our deepest sex fantasies."

“I’m on an up. My life is f---ing charmed,” he says with a touch of defiance. “I have enormous fun doing what I want. I’m very lucky.”

Dressing up as Claire is still a turn-on, he insists, but the circumstances have changed. "I like dressing up. I’m a transvestite. So, I get excuses to dress up all the time. It’s fabulous.”

'Claire is also developing a new agenda. Perry hopes she will encourage others to live out their fantasies.'

I don't think pretending to ignore the behaviour of this proud self described "fetishist" in inappropriate contexts will encourage normal men to wear more dresses and skirts at all. Perry says himself he doesn't want that. I think well-meaning people ignoring or just not knowing about his entirely sexual motivation for dressing as this way is why he is escalating into acting out his "fetish" which is "not performance ever" in a primary school with these children.

I instinctively knew there was something wrong about the motivations of the 50-60 year old transvestites in wigs, stockings and skirts who got on the bus I got to school as a child and I made sure never to talk to them, just like the other creepy old men who would try to talk to young girls on the bus. Children these days just have to Google the name of the man visiting them at school to find his long, open descriptions of how he dresses that way purely due to "a fetish" that is "still a turn on", "enormous fun" and "never performance". I was never forced to talk to the dressed-up transvestites in my town, least of all by a Royal Princess. There's been quite a few of these men locally for a long time and seeing them definitely doesn't seem to have encouraged normal men with non-sexual motivations to wear more gender-bendy clothing, as some posters may hope.

It is quite astonishing, and a very strange phenomenon, that people just won't see it. They won't look at it.

Perhaps they have been trained to look at cross dressing as something far more akin to a human rights issue, an inclusive issue, a diversity issue. A cultural acceptance the same as LGB.

I know that here, on FWR, we don't. But it is amazing how many people, despite Grayson Perry shouting it in their faces as loud as he can, don't hear the words sexual fetish.

And one which involves using the general public as props, including children.

He must be as baffled as I am, I'm sure. But hey, as long as it's enormous fun.

[BitMuch]

I don't know Datun, I don't think he would be baffled. Perry has been deliberately working on achieving this response from the public for decades in his published desire to enable public transvestic fetishism by himself and others in pretty much any context, stating 'Claire is also developing a new agenda. Perry hopes she will encourage others to live out their fantasies.' and 'I like the idea of diffusing rampant paedo-paranoia.' in 2003 in an interview titled Frock Tactics www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/sep/21/art. He has been very successful in his openly stated aims as we have seen. In the 2000s he complained about how difficult it is to not be trusted as a man around children so that's another desired change he has now achieved for himself. "It’s a difficult time for being a man.", "For a boy to say he likes classical music or likes the teacher or likes studying is virtually impossible now." he says in this interview www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/graysonperry which contains disturbing conversations about how his fetish has a focus on little girls:


In the past few years Grayson has repeatedly posed for press photographs dressed as an idealised kind of Victorian girl, in knee-length blue dresses and a blonde wig with a bow.]

“Alice is the most famous incarnation of that look.”

Her world is also sinister and strange.

“It doesn’t harm to have those associations.”

You wouldn’t get this conjunction of innocence and sex in a modern kid because they are too knowing. There are modern kids in your work but most of the children doing anything outrageous are distanced in time.

One thing I like about what I call the toilet-door symbol [the outline of the female seen outside public lavatories] is that it is universally understood. Go to any country in the world and draw that keyhole shape and they’ll say ‘little girl.'”

Middle-class little girls.

“No!”

Isn’t it a middle-class outfit, with the white socks and black shoes?

“In England. But African and South American girls, even from poor families, have that silhouette when they go to school.”

Is dressing up as a little girl a way to access paedophilia safely?

“Dressing up is partly about the right sort of attention. Little boys don’t get the kind of attention for just being which girls get. Nobody says to a boy, ‘You look lovely today, my precious.'”

Don’t they? My parents said things like that to me.

[He looks blank.] “Not now. It’s all about doing now. You played football well.”
How awful. It must be related to the current neurosis about paedophilia. I’m thinking about that general anxiety today among men, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, with regard to touching children who aren’t their own, which has had the particular effect of isolating boys from love.

“Oh yes—which is weird and very damaging. For a boy to say he likes classical music or likes the teacher or likes studying is virtually impossible now.”

So as the opportunities for real prowess shrink for males, they become more self-conscious about projecting a male image?

“Yeah, it’s a difficult time for being a man.”

How did you lose your virginity and what was your first sexual experience? They are not the same.

“Huge difference. Over ten years apart in my case. My virginity I lost conventionally with a girlfriend when I was 19. But I was taught to fuck by one of my lecturers at art school who was twice my age.”

Transgenerational sex is frowned on these days. Yet another example of the chasms which have been driven between age groups.

“Contact between older and younger is how knowledge is passed on. And it was a good experience for me."

Do you know the work of Hans Bellmer?

“Yes, I like it. He’s the first explicit perv artist in the modern canon.”

[BitMuch]

Trigger warning for very disturbing descriptions of pedophile artists' work:







I've seen in multiple articles and interviews that Perry proudly talks about his two favourite artists Hans Bellmer and Henry Darger who are both pedophiles who focused their on sexualised and tortured depictions of little girls. Darger was an American born in 1982. He is known for 'his compulsive drawings of naked girls with tiny penises being strangled, blown up, beheaded and disembowelled'. Some suspect Darger kidnapped and murdered a 5 year old girl who lived near him and he collected pictures of. Darger also repeatedly applied to adopt children but was not allowed. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/jan/12/art

Hans Bellmer was a German born in 1902. He is best known for making pedophilic sculptures of girls. 'Bellmer’s first Doll was an articulated construction of wood, plaster, metal rods, nuts and bolts which represented a young girl. It embodied a number of qualities of the surrealist object: subversive and erotic, sadistic and fetishistic. Bellmer completed a second doll sculpture in the autumn of 1935 and photographed it in different stages of dismemberment in over a hundred different scenarios, often shown wearing little white socks and the black patent leather shoes of young girls.' as described by the Tate website. 'After the war, Bellmer lived the rest of his life in Paris. Bellmer gave up doll-making and spent the following decades creating erotic drawings, etchings, sexually explicit photographs, paintings, and prints of pubescent girls.' from Wikipedia.

I haven't linked any websites that have any pictures of their work because they're evil sadistic nonces who made horrific shit that is bad enough when described. I'm feeling sick honestly and I wonder about how galleries get away with the legality of it when sexual drawings depicting children are illegal under UK law now according to www.stopitnow.org.uk/concerned-about-your-own-thoughts-or-behaviour/concerned-about-use-of-the-internet/get-the-facts/no-grey-area/. Gavin DeBecker is right, we have to remind ourselves that this man is not charming, he is trying to charm us. And it works so well. Grayson Perry shouldn't be acting out his fetish purposely around children and on family TV programmes but he is, so people assume it isn't true despite every time he proudly proclaims his sexual motivation.

I'm going to get together some undeniable quotes from Perry about his motivation and complain to Channel 4. Hopefully for the next series they will not enable him to act out his fetish around unconsenting people on a nice TV programme watched by whole families. He's perfectly well-known and liked without wearing any fetish gear and he has shown he can present whole programmes without indulging his fetish, like all the previous Art Club episodes and that trip to America he did recently. Phillipa Perry was a great, respectful co-presenter so it's not like they'd have to find another presenter if he can't do family TV without his "turn-on". I'm not very hopeful they'll care but choosing to turn a blind eye to purposeful fetish-driven boundary violations is more unlikely to make a difference.

[BitMuch]

*Darger was an American born in 1882.

[ArabellaScott]

I did not know about Darger being suspected of murder.

His artwork is technically brilliant, but yes, highly disturbing subject matter and unfortunately elements of the art world who love 'shock value' like it precisely because of how dark it is. He is classed as an 'outsider' artist - untrained, and I would say mental illness was a feature of his life. So his work wasn't made to show in galleries like Perry's is - it was hidden, I think, and only discovered after his death.

[Poorlykitten]

I've seen in multiple articles and interviews that Perry proudly talks about his two favourite artists Hans Bellmer and Henry Darger....
I would very much like to see links to these articles?
Darger's art has been the focus and inspiration for many people, including other well known artists, musicians, comic books and documentaries....his work is in many permanent collections all over the world.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Darger - the art equivalent of Lord of the Flies? The Vivian Girls?
Bellmer - the man who portrays females as cupie dolls?

And the Darger accusation is thin...

[nauticant]

I would very much like to see links to these articles?

If you're interested why don't you use Google for (Grayson Perry Hans Bellmer) and (Grayson Perry Henry Darger)? You'll find it there.

There's some studied "not getting it" on this thread.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

I have seen the article where GP talks about them.

I also know about them without his input!

Not sure he is the final arbiter of who they were as men or artists!

And no... not getting some of it at all!

Mostly because, as I said iny second post here, some of this sounds very much like the distinction between being gender critical and being entrenched, separatist getting lost!

[nauticant]

www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis4-28-08.asp

You could make the same kinds of comparisons with all the other artists here, from Robin O’Neil’s large, apocalyptic landscapes in graphite, to Amy Cutler’s folk-art style magical realist paintings, to Paula Rego’s choppy oil paintings incorporating Darger’s "Vivian Girls" (dating from the ‘80s, and proving Darger-mania is not new). British art potter Grayson Perry may have the most sincere attachment to Darger (according to Artnet Magazine writer N.F. Karlins, he gave a heartfelt lecture in tribute to the great "outsider" at the AFAM). But Perry’s two vases on view here, once again, simply incorporate images of Darger and his girls as decorative motifs, a fairly straightforward homage to a very complex body of work.

Obviously this might just be lies.