The Best Possible Taste - 3607 Words

The phenomenal change in British society in the past two centuries has molded the kind of material world we now live in today. Centuries of revolutionary design have created a life that can be blissfully taken for granted. The social structure in Britain is made up of classes and it is Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry who classifies the fragmented groupings as â€Å"social tribes† (Perry, In The Best Possible Taste, 2012) during his BAFTA award winning Channel 4 documentary In The Best Possible Taste. Perry undertakes in an investigation, which sees him visit areas of the country, which are stereotypically portrayed as being working class, middle class or upper class to determine what makes us different to contrasting social classes in†¦show more content†¦Grayson Perry was keen to investigate and identify what separates the different classes in Britain and what makes them have conflicting tastes. His journeys lead him all over the country investigating †Å"politics of consumerism and the history of popular design† (Perry, The Vanity of Small Differences, 2012) and why we all have varying tastes when it comes to choosing clothing accessories, home interior designs and what we drive and how this affects our ability to understand the taste of others in a different class. Whilst investigating the varying taste of the different classes, Grayson Perry noted that a middle class or upper class persons reaction to lower class taste is to be â€Å"disgusted, recoil and cringe† (Perry, In The Best Possible Taste, 2012) to which he dismissed as sad. Inspired by his favorite artist, William Hogarth and his series of eight paintings called A Rakes Progress (Hogarth, 1733), which sees a character named Tom Rakewell journey through the different class divisions in the 18th century. During Tom Rakewell’s journey he experiences the working class and what it is like to leave the working class and move up in society in to the middle class and then in to upper class before finally dying a tragic death in a mental institution. Tapestries were made for Lords and royalty and would depict great mythical battles and a