Reclining Artist (etching)

Grayson Perry’s ‘Reclining Artist’ is a colour etching featuring the artist as its subject. Perry says, “This is me, both as artist and model in my studio. I wanted to make something in the tradition of the reclining nude. I’m hoping it will be popular with educated middle-class people who might enjoy spotting the art-historical references within it. ‘Reclining Artist’ is both an idealized fantasy and also the messy reality. It is perhaps me expressing my desire to be a sex object and also show off my cultural capital and boyish paraphernalia. The sofa is draped in a test piece of my 2011 tapestry ‘Map of Truths and Beliefs’. Alan Measles, my teddy bear and metaphor for masculinity and god, appears as a sculpture, as an inflatable and on a dress hanging on the wall. The cat is called Kevin.”