{"id":5089,"date":"2025-05-01T16:12:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/exhibition-review-delusions-of-grandeur-at-the-wallace-collection\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T16:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:13:03","slug":"exhibition-review-delusions-of-grandeur-at-the-wallace-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/exhibition-review-delusions-of-grandeur-at-the-wallace-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition Review: \u201cDelusions of Grandeur\u201d at the Wallace Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/a>
Perry plays with the ascribed femininity of 18th-century French Rococo and the ascribed masculinity of arms and armor. Cassandra Parsons<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Wallace Collection in London is brimming with fine and decorative arts: oil paintings from the 14th Century, Limoges enamel, 18th-century chests of drawers veneered with mahogany and Renaissance objects. This solemn reservoir is on view in Hertford House\u2014the distinguished former residence of the collection\u2019s namesake Sir Richard and Lady Wallace\u2014in a lavish manner that reflects the moneyed tastes and lifestyle of its founders.<\/p>\n

\n<\/section>\n

What could disrupt such a stately array? Well! English artist Grayson Perry<\/a> (b.1960) remixes the on-site references\u2014grandiose to some, stodgy to others\u2014in \u201cDelusions of Grandeur.\u201d As someone who has, at every step of his career, dismantled the snobbery of the art world and espoused accessibility at the heart of creativity\u2014he wrote Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in Its Struggle to Be Understood<\/i><\/a> a decade ago\u2014this setting seems in contradistinction to his ethos. But the 40 new works here were made to willfully skewer wealth, not champion it.<\/p>\n

\n

SEE ALSO: <\/i><\/b>Getty\u2019s Glenn Phillips On Securing Raymond Pettibon\u2019s Archive<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, as someone who has deconstructed and reimagined gender roles in his creations and in his life (he\u2019s long been vocal about being a cross-dresser), he was compelled to explicitly play with the ascribed femininity of 18th-century French Rococo and the ascribed masculinity of the arms and armor (or what the press release dubbed \u201cthe gendering of decoration\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>
The exhibition pits Perry\u2019s handcrafted and A.I.-enhanced works against the museum\u2019s historic holdings in a sharp dialogue of past and present aesthetics. Cassandra Parsons<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perry flips assumptions about identity via ceramics, tapestries, furniture. Many are handcrafted, but these join pieces made with A.I.-generated images of Perry as his alternate persona, Shirley Smith: tiara-topped and holding a rifle, sitting casually on a swing with unkempt bleached hair askew. Perry\u2019s custom works, whether classically crafted or digitally enhanced, are displayed alongside a selection of the Wallace Collection\u2019s holdings, which Perry created in direct or indirect response to. Perry writes in one of the wall captions: \u201cI struggled with the opulent aesthetic, which I found cloying at times. Fortunately, I worked out a strategy that helped me find a fresh perspective.\u201d Incidentally, Perry wrote all the exhibition captions and narrates the audioguide.<\/p>\n

As part of his reappraisal of the museum\u2019s history: \u201cI wanted to look at the sophistication and refinement of the collection through the eyes of an \u2018outsider artist,\u2019 so have made something in the style of a self-taught art sculpture,\u201d he writes alongside Man of Stories<\/i>, his ceramic\/mixed media work spiky with beads and pebbled, embodied by a silhouette in a crinkled blue cape covered with pins (\u201cBREX SHIT,\u201d \u201cCampaign against living miserably,\u201d \u201cFuck the Tories\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/a>
Through the persona of Shirley Smith, Perry channels his ongoing critique of class entitlement and societal norms into vibrant, theatrical form. Richard Ansett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDelusions of Grandeur\u201d opens with works by visionary outsider artists Alo\u00efse Corbaz and Madge Gill<\/a>\u2014Gill exhibited at the Wallace Collection in 1942. The latter\u2019s girlish figures, drawn against graphically intricate, dense backgrounds, are undated, executed in colored ink on paper. These resonate wonderfully with a selection of pen and colored pencil drawings done by Perry\u2019s surrogate, Shirley Smith\u2014a mentally ill woman who believes herself to be the heir to Hertford House and its vast valuables\u2014featuring similarly naive, detailed settings and characters: an adolescent girl clasping a doll in a plush bed as she\u2019s served tea on a tray, or a bow-adorned mother in bishop sleeves reading to her daughter as a servant stands obediently by. Perry\u2019s aesthetic is self-described at one point as \u201csomewhere between upper-middle-class Victorian child and 1970s Laura Ashley garden party.\u201d<\/p>\n

His caption for What a Wonderful World<\/i>, one of his glazed ceramics\u2014upon which posh women in high-collared dresses state in speech bubbles, \u2018We deserve everything\u2019\u2014sizzles with scorn. \u201cWhenever I find myself crossing into \u2018West London\u2019\u2026 I imagine I can smell a great sense of entitlement emanating from the people who live in a cosseted bubble of beige international wealth.\u201d Perry admits his own success has made him more adjacent to this rung of society than his impecunious origins. But his criticism of wealth is underpinned by his self-awareness of his privilege: he side-eyes prosperity at the expense of communal and social values.<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Perry transforms the Wallace Collection\u2019s traditional opulence into a riotously subversive exploration of identity, gender and wealth. Cassandra Parsons<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In another glazed ceramic effort, two busts\u2014titled Serious People<\/i>\u2014flank a brightly-colored tapestry fashioned from 1960s\/70s fabrics called Fascist Swing<\/i>, a pastiche of Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard\u2019s 1768 painting The Swing<\/i>. Rather than dignified homage, Perry describes the busts as \u201cparty balloons about to burst,\u201d and the frothy nature of Fragonard\u2019s original is flipped into a Lisa Frank-hued night terror. Perry points out: \u201cSeriousness is a sought-after commodity in art, but in its attempts to be significant, it can easily shade into earnestness and pomposity.\u201d Even when it falls into pomposity, he is not dismissive and still can connect to the art: he admits to being \u201cdrawn to all those swooning women by Greuze, Schopin, and Boilly\u201d because humans always seek to connect\u2014however far-fetched an art narrative might be from one\u2019s own life.<\/p>\n

In the final room, wallpapered in a patterned bubblegum pink design Perry collaborated on with Liberty, an altarpiece and six oversized ceramic plates stand on either side of an orange bedframe with an appliqu\u00e9d bedspread. Along the bottom of the bedspread is a classic delusion of grandeur line: \u201cI know who I am.\u201d Across the room, a beribboned Madame De Pompadour<\/a> (the 1759 oil painting by Fran\u00e7ois Boucher) smiles placidly from an ornate frame, in contrast to the wool prayer rug on which Shirley Smith is passed out on the floor. It\u2019s a perfect m\u00e9lange of femininities: poised versus chaotic, superficial versus warped. Undeniably, Perry\u2019s irreverent version of grandeur is much more fun than the real thing.<\/p>\n

Grayson Perry\u2019s <\/b>\u201c<\/b>Delusions of Grandeur<\/b><\/a>\u201d is at the Wallace Collection through October 26, 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"At<\/p><\/div>\n