Grayson Perry's 'Delusions of Grandeur' at the Wallace Collection interrogates artworld hierarchies

Grayson Perry's exhibition 'Delusions of Grandeur' at the Wallace Collection in London critiques class and taste hierarchies through a fictional outsider artist named Shirley Smith. Perry, a Turner Prize winner in 2003 and now a knighted figure, blends works by historical outsider artists Madge Gill and Aloïse Corbaz with the museum's aristocratic holdings. The show includes portrait miniatures, narrative paintings like Henri-Frédéric Schopin's 'The Divorce of the Empress Josephine' (1846), and weapons from the collection. Perry's new pieces, such as the etching 'A Tree in a Landscape' (2024) and the tapestry 'Modern, Beautiful and Good' (2024), satirize mental health diagnoses and contemporary charity branding. The artist reflects on his early career reaction against over-intellectualization, positioning himself as an anthropologist of the artworld. The exhibition opened in 2024, following Perry's appointments to the Royal Academy of Art in 2014 and the British Museum trusteeship in 2019. It explores blurred boundaries between insider and outsider art, highlighted by the Venice Biennale's recent inclusion of Gill and Corbaz.