The Easel

15th April 2025

Grayson Perry’s Delusions of Grandeur asks not if it’s great or even good art, but if it makes you laugh – and it does

Perry, a potter and famously a transvestite, seems a very British artist., His art is both cerebral and full of anti-establishment humour. A new show of pots, prints and tapestries, spread amidst the ornate rococo splendour of London’s Wallace Collection, is a case in point. Replete with fictitious identities, it includes items such as a tapestry in “hallucinogenic” colour that “makes you chuckle with respect at [its] mad hubris”. The only thing that doesn’t work, says a writer, is Perry’s claimed status as an underdog.