The Descent of Man – Greyson Perry

‘The descent of man’ by Grayson Perry is an overlook at the idea of masculinity and how it effects the way that our society is run. From the start Perry discusses the idea of holding back emotions and channelling them through anger and the brutish nature that a stereotypical man would show off; this one way discussion throughout the entire book gives and insight into the particular views of the author yet are somehow made to appear as though they are fact, due to the fact that the book itself has been written from the perspective of a male.

In relation to the idea of clothing Grayson Perry discusses how the use of suits and ties symbolise power and wealth; “With their colourful textile phalluses hanging round their necks” this quotation gives an air of resentment about it, as Perry seems to be disgruntled with the idea of how such a small community of people can dominate the rest and carry most of the highest paid jobs even though they only represent a small proportion of the population, along with how the majority are white men not allowing for minorities to have the same roles. The tone of this carries on throughout the book covering various different topics such as emotions, stereotypes and mens rights giving a negative but constructive idea of the society we live in today.

The initial brief for this piece was to create a passport, a document that could give an idea of your character/personality within an inanimate object; I initially wanted to create a flick book, due to the way that they are made this would enable me to create a small animation instead of just trying to use pictures to sum myself up. This idea was a good plan until I realised how much of a perfectionist I had become, creating hundreds of small images to build one scene would not be viable in the time limit given. Working from this information I began to build a large quantity of small individual drawings of myself; these illustrations had many different looks as the task for me was to produce as many as possible instead of trying to get a perfect likeness.
To create a more aesthetically pleasing composition (something that is important within my art style) I began to include small pink circles behind all of my illustrations as the idea of creating a perfect circle by simply cutting it out is not easily done looking further into my perfectionist art qualities.
I built my colour scheme around the idea of minimalism with only three colours used, I liked the tonal qualities that each gave to to final outcome especially the pop of pink that made the images stand out against the simplistic illustrations, without this base of colour the images wouldn’t have stood out as much and looked a lot less refined.
If I were to take this piece further then I would just look into producing a larger selection of portraits as I think the whole outcome would look best if it were on a larger scale potentially filling several walls in order to produce a 360 degree panoramic outcome.