Classic Chats: Grayson Perry on why he hates classical civilisation

Summary

Instant Classics Podcast
Classic Chats: Grayson Perry on Why He Hates Classical Civilisation
Host: Vespucci
Guests: Grayson Perry, Mary Beard, Charlotte Higgins
Release Date: April 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

This lively episode of Instant Classics welcomes acclaimed artist and cultural commentator Grayson Perry to unpack the provocative theme behind his recent Rumble Lecture: "Why I Hate Classical Civilization." Joined by hosts Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins, Perry explores his personal antipathy to classical (Greco-Roman) culture, reflecting on how the classical legacy shapes (and sometimes stultifies) British cultural and aesthetic life. The conversation crosses childhood memories, art’s role in subversion, the use and misuse of classics in authority and revolution, museum culture, and the ongoing tension between conservatism and radical potential in classical traditions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Grayson Perry’s “Visceral Reaction” to Classics

• Origin Story of the Lecture ([04:06])

  • Perry describes being spontaneously asked to lecture on Greco-Roman civilization by Professor Will Wootton, quickly responding "Oh, I hate classical civilization."
  • This off-the-cuff comment became the lecture theme, leading Perry to self-examine the roots of his aversion.
  • Quote: "I literally laid that out as the abstract for the lecture and it was welcomed. And so then I was in a position of thinking, well, why did I have that intuitive reaction in the moment?" ([05:16], Grayson Perry)

• Childhood Encounters ([06:31])

  • Early exposure included handling a Romano-British pot at school, followed by uninspiring Latin lessons with a bullying, eccentric teacher—setting a tone of detachment and skepticism.
  • Quote: "He used to say that at teacher training college the only thing he learned was how to throw a piece of chalk so it hit a pupil smack in the middle of the forehead, and to land an exercise book on a desk at 20 meters." ([08:47], Grayson Perry)

2. Artistic Identity: Resisting the Classical Cliché

• Avoiding Classicism in Art ([10:42])

  • Perry expresses frustration at the recurring interpretation of his ceramics as “classically inspired,” despite his conscious move away from Greek and Roman styles, favoring Islamic, Chinese, Japanese, African, or European influences.
  • Quote: "One of the reasons I don't like classical civilization is that it's up there in the pantheon of cliches, you know... I tend to go into ancient civilizations much. It's just because it's a cliche. I have done them." (paraphrased, [10:42], Grayson Perry)

• Relationship with Museum Displays ([12:46])

  • Perry recounts how, when curating his British Museum exhibition, he avoided selecting classical objects, voicing being unmoved by their seeming omnipresence and “clichéd” aesthetics.
  • Quote: "I've seen them too many times. I've seen them on every building in every suburban town... So you're just, you're just ramming home all the things that I dislike about Greco Roman civilization." ([13:49], Grayson Perry)
  • He credits mentor Ian Jenkins for trying to spark enthusiasm by highlighting nuances like the original polychromy of sculptures—but to no avail.

3. The Classical as Authority and Establishment

• The Symbolic Power of Classical Forms ([15:09], [21:53])

  • Perry critiques how classical motifs define “taste,” “culture,” and “education” in British society, seeing classical forms as supports for authority—from town halls and banks to museums.
  • Quote: "My job is to push back against that... I basically pride myself on being the person to get the first shot in at the sacred cow, you know, when the ears are just plucked, coming over the horizon." ([15:09], Grayson Perry)

• Mary Beard’s Counterpoint: Classical Form as Revolutionary ([16:13])

  • Beard argues that classical style has revolutionary roots (e.g., during the French Revolution) and has served radical as much as conservative purposes.
  • Quote: "What you're missing is the sense that classical form and classical literature is revolutionary as much as it's conservative." ([16:13], Mary Beard)

• Misappropriation of Classics by Authoritarians ([23:05], [24:30])

  • Discussion of how the classical idiom has also been appropriated by authoritarian regimes (Hitler, Mussolini, Trump), emphasizing the ambivalence and dangers of “classicism” as a symbol.

4. Museums, Access, and the Power of Culture

• Museums as Temples vs. Welcome Spaces ([27:31])

  • Perry confesses to enjoying the “perturbing” or “scary” aura of grand museums, likening them to sacred spaces demanding effort to access—contrasted to the modern trend of hyper-accessibility.
  • Quote: "I want the temple. I want the special place with the special things." ([28:32], Grayson Perry)

• Gatekeeping and Achievement in Culture ([29:27])

  • Perry values the “friction” and sense of achievement in engaging with demanding culture, advocating for effort over frictionless, instant accessibility.
  • Quote: "These high friction experiences need to be encouraged because we're living in an increasingly frictionless world. So it's actually... what makes it satisfying." ([29:27], Grayson Perry)

• Anger and Critical Engagement ([30:17])

  • Beard adds that museums should allow anger and dissent, not just reverence; she wants visitors to feel permitted to criticize and challenge what they encounter.
  • Quote: "I want people to be... actually saying this kind of stuff makes me angry. You know, look at who made this. ... And I think people are very loath to feel... cross in a museum. And I kind of want to encourage crossness." ([30:17], Mary Beard)

5. The Irrational and Embodied in Classics

• Beyond Rational Classics ([34:34])

  • Beard references E.R. Dodds’s The Greeks and the Irrational, which revealed the wild, chaotic, and passionate undercurrents in Greek culture, countering classical stereotypes of serene rationality.
  • Perry connects to this through the play Equus and his own biography, linking classics with irrational, ecstatic, and sometimes disturbing aspects of humanity and culture.

• Dionysian vs. Apollonian ([21:08], [41:22])

  • Perry sees himself more as Bacchic (Dionysian, chaotic) rather than Apollonian (ordered), but recognizes that classical civilization encompasses both instincts.
  • Quote: "My wife always says that sanity is somewhere between rigidity and chaos. I probably see the classical aesthetic as more rigid because of the way it has been used in British society..." ([21:08], Grayson Perry)

6. Class, Education, and the Privileging of the Classical

• Classical Culture as a Tool of the Elite ([38:17])

  • Perry’s core frustration lies less with the ancient world itself than with how classical civilization has been weaponized in Britain to construe good taste, citizenship, and the supremacy of theorizing over embodied or artisanal learning.
  • Quote: "I think my prejudice is against what has been used for good and ill over the centuries and also how it's pervaded the kind of classically educated, upper middle class, dominant view of what it is to be a good citizen in Britain today." ([38:17], Grayson Perry)

• Techne vs. Episteme ([40:15])

  • Discussion of the overvaluation of abstract/theoretical knowledge (episteme) versus practical, embodied knowledge (techne), drawing on Greek vocabulary.

7. The Multiple Lives of Classics

• Ambivalence, Utility, and Revolt ([41:30]-[46:45])

  • Beard argues that classics are neither inherently conservative nor radical—they are an open tradition, used (and misused) for various ends from imperialism to revolution, from repression to empowerment.
  • Quote: "It's always on Pinnable down. It's always cutting both ways. Although there are lies out there and we can all name them who want to make it look as if Classics justifies a conservative social order... Well, for some it does, but jolly well doesn't for me." ([43:41], Mary Beard)

• Classicists’ Self-Critique ([46:45])

  • The hosts discuss the discipline’s ongoing self-interrogation regarding its history, legacy, and complicity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I pride myself on being the person to get the first shot in at the sacred cow..."
  — Grayson Perry ([15:09])

• "My job is to push back against that... I've learned art history as a series of rebellions."
  — Grayson Perry ([15:09])

• "Classical form and literature is revolutionary as much as it's conservative."
  — Mary Beard ([16:13])

• "When I got the gig to do this exhibition at the British Museum... he noticed I wasn't choosing many things from Ancient Greek or Rome. And I said, yeah, it just doesn't rock my boat."
  — Grayson Perry ([13:49])

• "Sanity is somewhere between rigidity and chaos."
  — Grayson Perry ([21:08])

• "You don't expect people to understand classical music the minute they hear the first bars of a Tchaikovsky concerto... We, these high friction experiences need to be encouraged because we're living in an increasingly frictionless world."
  — Grayson Perry ([29:27])

• "Museums should also make us angry, not just reverent."
  — Mary Beard ([30:17], paraphrased)

• "Classics is an enormous pool of influence... it is there to be used for whatever you want."
  — Charlotte Higgins ([43:45], paraphrased)

• "I do feel more kindly towards the classical civilization having done it and done this podcast... anger is underrated as a motivator for any creativity."
  — Grayson Perry ([48:37])

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Key Timestamps

• 00:36 – Mary Beard introduces Grayson Perry’s artistic background
• 04:06 – Perry describes how he came to deliver the Rumble Lecture
• 06:31 – The roots of Perry’s aversion: childhood brushes with classics
• 10:42 – The accusation: Perry’s pots as “classical” and why it frustrates him
• 13:49 – Perry on deliberately excluding classical objects from his curation
• 15:09 – Perry’s mission: rebellion against the cliché
• 16:13 – Beard’s counterpoint: the revolutionary history of classical forms
• 21:08 – The Dionysian (chaos) vs. Apollonian (order) in classical life
• 27:31 – Museums as temples and the value of inaccessibility
• 29:27 – The pleasure of high-friction cultural experiences
• 34:34 – The irrational in Greek culture
• 38:17 – Perry’s core critique: the class and ideological legacy of classics in Britain
• 41:30 – Beard on the radical uses (and abuses) of classics
• 46:45 – The field’s self-critique and its enduring dilemmas
• 48:37 – Perry reflects on reconciliation, anger, and creativity

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is humorous, self-aware, irreverent, and intellectually sharp—true to Perry's persona and to the hosts’ own blend of rigorous scholarship and critical wit. There's frequent mutual teasing, a willingness to challenge each other, and a genuine search for nuanced understanding of the classics' ambivalent influence.

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Summary for Listeners

If you haven’t listened, this episode will up-end any expectation that a discussion on classical civilization must be reverent or dull. It’s about the push-and-pull between tradition and rebellion; between elite taste and popular resentment; between art as subversion and authority. Grayson Perry’s candid autobiography becomes a lens for questioning how the classics are woven into contemporary culture, while Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins open space for self-critique and the radical potential of ancient heritage.

Transcript

[Charlotte Higgins]

This week on Instant Classics, we are delighted to be welcoming a very special guest to the show. It's Grayson Perry. He's one of Britain's most celebrated artists, a national treasure known for his remarkable work in ceramics as well as in other media such as tapestry and sculpture. He's also beloved for his insightful TV documentaries examining subjects from Britishness to modern masculinity. And frankly, he's also famous for his amazing outfits in his guise as Claire, his more elaborately dressed alternative Persona.

[Mary Beard]

Grayson won the Turner Prize in 2003, delivered the BBC's Reid Lectures in 2013, was knighted in 2023, and in between has made a host of remarkable exhibitions, both as artist and as curator. I particularly remember his exhibition at the British Museum in 2011, the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. But more recently, there's been a show at the Wallace Collection in London. Delusions of grandeur.

[Charlotte Higgins]

We all suffer from those, I think, from time to time.

[Grayson Perry]

Not me.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Never you, Grayson. Never you. You are the exception to the rule. The reason we've invited you onto the show today, Grayson, is that recently you gave a fabulous lecture in London, the Rumble Lecture at King's College London, which had the fantastically provocative title and deeply fascinating title to us, why I Hate Classical Civilization.

[Mary Beard]

And this is Instant Classics, the podcast that uncovers the ancient stories still shaping the world today. I'm Mary Bearded.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And I'm Charlotte Higgins. Each week we dive into the myths, the dramas and the characters of the classical world to discover what they still mean to us. Now this episode, why Grayson Perry Hates the Classics.

[Anita Anand]

To some, he is the revolutionary hero who restored China to its rightful place on the global stage.

[William Duranpole]

To others, he's a brutal despot accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than either Stalin or Hitler.

[Anita Anand]

Mao Zedong has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Yet he started life in a muddy provincial village.

[William Duranpole]

A rebel son who hated his father survived a 6,000 mile walk across China and and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions from Empire the Goal

[Anita Anand]

Hanger World History Show. I'm Anita Anand.

[William Duranpole]

And I'm William Duranpole.

[Anita Anand]

In this six part series, we're joined by world renowned expert Rana Mitter to explore the life of the father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

[William Duranpole]

We'll track his rise from a bookstore owner to a guerrilla commander. And we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power. And we'll descend into the dark experiment of the Cultural Revolution. A time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their parents, and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred Relic.

[Anita Anand]

Subscribe to Empire, wherever you get your podcasts to listen.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Now, honestly, Grayson, if only you knew how many classic, classically inclined people were literally rubbing their hands in glee waiting for you to give that lecture. Because there's nothing classicists like more than being provoked and, you know, challenged. And so actually, what kind of sort

[Grayson Perry]

of sense that I think.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is catnip. It's catnip.

[Mary Beard]

It's the masochistic discipline beyond all others, actually.

[Charlotte Higgins]

So, but listen, so I want to know why you or how you came to give a lecture about something that you loathe and despise so much.

[Grayson Perry]

But it was completely by chance. I mean, I was walking to work one morning and this man on a bicycle, I think he had his child on the back of the bicycle, he sort of screeched to a halt next to me, said, you're Grayson Perry, aren't you? And I said, yes. And he said, would you give the rumble lecture? And I said, what's that? And he said, he said, I'm the professor Will Wootton. I'm professor of classics at King's College and I have to organize this lecture. And I said. And he said, but it has to be about Greco Roman civilization. And I said, oh, I hate classical civilization. Then. That was my visceral reaction in the moment. So I'm hoping I would dismiss this bloke who wanted my kind of micro celebrity to add luster to his particular discipline. And he sort of said, ah. And he sort of, like, you see,

[Mary Beard]

you fell into the trap not realizing that classicists really like being rubbished in public, you know, that's the masochism you forgot.

[Grayson Perry]

So in that moment, I sort of got that. And he went, yes, so do it about that. And so, you know, and I literally laid that out as the abstract for the lecture and it was welcomed. And so then I was in a position of thinking, well, why did I have that intuitive reaction in the moment to that? You know, So I had to kind of reverse engineer the lecture to think what led up to that moment and that statement. And so it was quite an interesting self examination, aesthetically going back through my work and my life and my attitude to. To sort of classical civilization, to sort of find out why, why, what provoked me to say that, you know, as someone who's kind of delved into culture, all global cultures from all over the world over the course of my career, it was sort of interesting how I did have a particular antipathy.

[Mary Beard]

I'm interested in that. I mean, I'm going to have to confess. Charlotte was at the lecture and Mary wasn't at the lecture. But Charlotte's given me a heads up. This visceral hatred goes back a long way, doesn't it? I mean, we're talking about child grace in here, not just reflective middle aged grace. And we're talking about your first encounter with all this.

[Grayson Perry]

I don't, I don't think I would call it that. I, I had a particular hatred for it. I mean I, you know, my first thing, you know, I can remember having any contact literally with classical civilizations. They passed round a Romano British pot when I was a primary school, which you can't imagine them doing that today, like actually passing a real antiquity or do they do.

[Mary Beard]

Well, they've stopped but I used to do it with visiting primary schools to our faculty. And there was a cupboard of pretty crap Greek pots that you could unlock and I would get these out and I'd pass them around and at a certain point you always knew what was going to happen. Pretty much this is your reaction. Some kid would say, these aren't really real, are they? And he said yes. And at that point kind of eyes widened and they thought these are two and a half thousand years old. And it was dramatic, you know, the sense that you're actually touching something two and a half thousand years old. They never dropped them. You know, if they had dropped them it wouldn't have mattered very much because they could have been glued back together again and you know, they were, they weren't very good. But now, you know, you said that wouldn't happen now and you know, in my case you're right because these pretty rubbishy Greek pots are now all locked up, you know, in a glass case and you can only touch them if you wear blue gloves. Dinner and all the fun's gone out of it.

[Charlotte Higgins]

But this wasn't the moment, Grayson, I take it that sparked a lifelong interest in making pots. I mean, like, it feels like this was not the moment, but.

[Grayson Perry]

No, I mean it's a more complex and perverse moment than that that sparked. I won't go into it now, but I have talked about it at length at other times. Then I went to kind of secondary school and for the first three years we did Latin, which I didn't really enjoy and see much point in. And that probably started the ball rolling, you know, in some ways you had

[Charlotte Higgins]

a horrible teacher, didn't you?

[Grayson Perry]

He wasn't, but I mean he wasn't, he was a sort of old school bullying teacher. I don't he was. He was funny, but he was quite aggressive. And he used to say that at teacher training college. The only thing he learned was how to throw a piece of chalk so it hit a pupil smack in the middle of the forehead, and to land an exercise book on a desk at 20 meters. That was his two skills he'd picked up.

[Mary Beard]

Greyson, you're confirming my theory that whether people like their Latin teacher or really dislike their Latin teacher, they always remember their Latin teacher are horribly or distinctively or wonderfully unforgettable.

[Grayson Perry]

He was. I mean, we used to take the piss out of him because he used to have this thing. We'd say, oh, yes, this is the root of the English word, you know, the Latin word or whatever. And. And then he would say, look, if we say it. If we say it fast, very like 20 times, it would. It will transmute into the English word. And so we used to take the. The piss out of him by getting two words that sounded really, really different and completely different meanings and then kind of do the same thing. So we'd sort of go, you know, I can't remember like that. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Yeah, there you go. It's absolutely the same, isn't it?

[Charlotte Higgins]

One thing you said on the lecture, Grayson, was that people sometimes accuse you of basing your own pots on classical models, or that people look at your pots, if they're classically inclined, and say, oh, I see that you must have been looking at these Greek hydrias or whatever, which I'm sure I'm one of those people who at some point has said, you, God, they really remind me of Greek amphorae. And that. That is actually something you really don't like, because it's just not true. Right? You don't.

[Grayson Perry]

I think it goes to the root of one of my. Sort of. One of the reasons I don't like classical civilization is that it's. It's up there in the pantheon of cliches, you know, And I tried to avoid that in my. My life. And I have made vases based on Greek and Roman wares, but I. I sort of grew out of it very far. When I first started making pots and evening classes, I made some sort of little urns that sold very well, actually, but I kind of moved on from them. And then I sort of developed as my kind of dislike of. Of Greek pottery particularly sort of continued. I. I avoided it. And I tend to. My models are usually Islamic or Chinese or Japanese or African or European. They're Not. I don't tend to go into ancient civilizations much. It's just because it's a cliche. I have done them. When I had my British Museum show, I did a big. A big Greek style part, but I never liked them because they were unglazed on the whole. That was something I didn't like about them, you know, because they're. What are they? They're in Gobi, aren't they? Most Greek vases, I think the Romans had glaze, but I don't think the Greeks used glaze. They were mainly kind of in Gobi decorated. Which for me broke the. One of the. Because, you know, I like to work with. A nice pot's got to be shiny. It's one of the rules, you know.

[Mary Beard]

I think some of this came out from that exhibition at the Beer and the Team of the Unknown Craftsmen because there was an installation right in front of one of the big classical monuments in the British Museum, you know, the Nereid Monument, so called. And it was kind of talking.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Your.

[Mary Beard]

Your installation was talking to the Nereid Monument in a way. But there was sort of nothing classical in the installation.

[Grayson Perry]

Well, that was when. That was late. That was during COVID That happened. My original exhibition was all contained within the gallery in the center of the great court. But that piece, the Tomb of the Unknown Cross, I think it did have a few classical references. It certainly had the title of the exhibition in Latin on it. Which. Which Ian Jenkins, who was then, I think one of the keepers of. Of. Of the department. He. He helped me translate. But he. Ian, he was a sort of really friend, friendly, lovely guy. And he was one of the first. When I got the gig to do this exhibition at the British Museum, he was one of the first people that I was put in touch with because he was. Because he was fun, basically. He was a fun guy and. But he noticed as I was progressing with the exhibition and selecting. Cause I looked, you know, I tried to scoot through the entire collection as well as I could.

[Mary Beard]

Eight million objects.

[Grayson Perry]

Yeah, I mean, as well as I could. You know, he noticed that I wasn't choosing many things from Ancient Greek or Rome. And I said, yeah, it just doesn't rock my boat. And so he sort of took it on that he would try and kind of get my enthusiasm going. And we spent a whole day sort of going around the department and looking at the statues and just trying to get a. Get a bit of kind of energy that I would. I could connect with you. He went through the whole. Oh, these statues Were painted once scenario with me, you know, and he's like, mate, you're losing me. These things that I'm blind to them. I've seen them too many times. I've seen them on every building in every suburban town of. I've seen the pediment on the council house, all of the symbol, symbology, the Greek myths. I've seen them in a lot of books, boring paintings that I don't particularly like from certain places that I don't particularly like. So you're just, you're just ramming home all the things that I dislike about Greco Roman civilization.

[Mary Beard]

If you dislike it like that, somebody saying, oh, by the way all this sculpture was painted does not help a jot. I think if you dislike it, you just. I just makes it unappealing in a slightly different way.

[Grayson Perry]

For me, it just hovers in a classical civilization, particularly in Britain. I mean, I'm sitting here in a Georgian house looking out at Georgian Square, you know, and so I can probably see several references to classical architecture out the window. So we're surrounded by it the whole time. And it sort of pervaded our view of what is culture, what is tasteful, what is educated. And my job is to push back against that. You know, My job, you know, I sort of learned art history as a series of rebellions. And so anytime I feel that something has become a kind of establishment cliche or an orthodoxy within my business, I feel okay. Because, you know, I basically pride myself on being the person to get the first shot in at the sacred cow, you know, when the ears are just plucked, coming over the horizon.

[Mary Beard]

Well, I'm going to say, you're going to have to let me half explode at that because I know exactly where you're coming from. But, but what I think you're missing, and that's partly because some of the biggest proponents of classical art, neoclassical art in the modern world, have tried to cover this up. What you're missing is the sense that classical form and classical literature is revolutionary as much as it's conservative. If you go back to the French Revolution and you say, look, what's one of the questions that the revolutionaries had once they'd killed the king? Well, what it is, is how do you design a new architecture which fits a revolutionary moment? And what do they choose? They choose forms of classical architecture. Now, they don't do the kind of standard boring, oh, this will become classical. If I shove eight columns along the front. What they're saying is, look, if you look harder at classical form, you'll discover There's a revolutionary center to it of pure real geometric form that sort of overturns that very traditional image of what classics is. So French revolutionary architects were busy. Often they didn't actually build the stuff, but they were designing it. They were turning out ways in which they could make a classical work for the revolution. And. Yeah, so, you know, you got Karl Marx saying, look, guys, the French Revolution was four in classical dress.

[Grayson Perry]

Right.

[Mary Beard]

And I mean, why I kind of. Why I can feel where you're coming from is that quite a lot of effort has been taken to make us forget that bit of classics, to see classics as something, a classical art form, to see it as traditional, stereotypical conservative, unbothered by what's going on around it. Whereas actually what I want to do is kind of dig up the center of classics and find all the ways in which it's been used differently, which I think are much closer to what you. What, what you find congenial than what, what you see, you know, in a, In a columned facade.

[Grayson Perry]

Yeah, I mean, I think my prejudice was sort of based on the kind of cliches that were kind of, you see, in every high street. I mean, Chelmsford Town hall, you know, had a classical columns and pediment. And so by the time I was at art college, you know, that those, Those things were pretty well fixed in my mind. And even. No, no, no, no sort of attempts to, to sort of re. Exoticize somehow the past that was work would work on me. I mean, I made a little film when I was at college called the Rapper the Sabine Women, which I made on a camera which cost me 30 pence from a jumble sale. So it was quite sort of ropey, but it was basically the thing was me as a classical statue painted white. And then there was. It was sort of intercut with pictures of the Elgin Marbles or what they call them now, the Parthenon Marbles. And then there was my girlfriend's sort of stiletto clad foot coming into the frame, kicking bits off of me. So I gradually turned into a kind of limbless statue dancing to sort of disco music, I think it was. So it was sort of. Even then it was something which I had to sort of take the piss out of.

[Charlotte Higgins]

But then in that film, which I saw a bit of. Cause you showed it in the lecture, you remain the idiom to me, even though you're kicking against the sort of classicism. And you start off, you know, your figure is like a statue. It's sort of in contrapposto and Then you lose limbs and you become more and more pagan and bacchanalian. And I know that you kind of, you veer to, you're much more a kind of, you think, you know, you're much more a Dionysiac than an Apollonian person. You know, you veer towards the playful, the chaotic and sort of anti rigid. But I suppose what I would say to you is that that Bacchanalian dionysiac element is just as classical as the stiff. Oh yeah, I think rigid figures of statuary.

[Grayson Perry]

I think you're right. I think that's just part of human nature. My wife always says that sanity is somewhere between rigidity and chaos. I probably see the classical aesthetic as more rigid because of the way it has been used in British society, particularly, particularly in architecture where I think it's the kind of sort of godfather of good sort of modern taste. And so I, that's where I really start getting upset with it because you know, it, it's sort of been handed down that to be chaotic and barbarian is somehow sort of not as good.

[Mary Beard]

It's not just good modern taste. I mean if you look at the kind of Trumpian angle, it's classical architecture as a symbol of authority, you know. And if you go back to the high street, your, you know, your old high street and you look down the street, you know that the buildings, this is the tradition on British high street. The buildings that are going to have columns on the outside are either the town hall, that kind of authority or it's the bank, you know that it's not. Or the magistrates court or the magistrates court, you know. And you know, the bank is saying, you know, I think banks kind of with their, with their columned facades do capture some of that, that kind of combination of, you can trust us. But, but this is the economic authority of the state and at the same time you don't mess with the bank.

[Grayson Perry]

And it's interesting now when you go into a bank and you know they've changed and they feel like quite slightly rundown community drop in centres for kind of the hopeless, you know.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yes. Because the only people who go into the bank now are people who need physical help. That includes me from time to time.

[Mary Beard]

At which point I say combat the columns guys.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah, but I think you're right. I think where I would sort of counter even, even my dear friend Mary is, or you know, semi counter her is that even there's the revolutionary fervor of the French Revolution on the one hand but, but there's also revolutionary fervor. That is classicizing. That is less attractive, I think, even than the French Revolution. And that is kind of, you know, in two words, Albert Speyer. Or have you supposedly pronounce his name, Albert Speer. Anyway, Hitler's favorite architect was. And that is a revolutionary architecture of its kind is absolutely classicizing. And you showed some brilliant images in the lecture, Grace, and also of. I mean, there was a sort of brilliant sequence where you just showed British Palladian mansion after Palladian mansion, the sort of, you know, 10 perfectly gorgeously attuned 18th century British stately homes. And when you see them en masse like that, it's, you know, your point is very well made. It's about the supposed harmony, authority, wealth. Yeah, the cottages are. Were never. The estate cottages were never.

[Mary Beard]

It's like Trump. Trump wants columns on, you know, state capitals. He doesn't want columns on the data centers, data processing centers, you know, that are all over the American countryside. You know.

[Grayson Perry]

Yeah, it's become a kind of, you know, it's literally an icon of kind of history and authority because, you know, the logo for a museum is often a little sort of, sort of Doric pediment or whatever.

[Mary Beard]

I think we have to be a bit careful, though, with that sort of museum iconography. I know exactly what you mean. And people now, they will show you and they will talk about the museum as site of slightly oppressive authority, which is then modeled by its classical facade. And I see exactly what the logic is there. Go back to the 18th century. And in some ways what the classical imagery of the museum was doing then was actually saying, this is a civic building. It was the idea of classical architecture as being civic architecture. And this wasn't art being put under the ambiance of state religion. It was saying, this is civic discourse. This is for citizens. And I think we tend to just slightly get the radicalness of museum design back in the late 18th, early 19th century. We tend to misread it when we read it in some ways rightly, but we read it again as authority. House of loot, house of state oppression. When, when they were built, they were partly saying, this is a place that citizens come, and the ancient world stands for citizenship as much as it stands for authority.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I think that's a lovely point, but are they not also saying temple? Are they not also saying temple?

[Mary Beard]

But that's not our religion. You know, we're not in a cathedral here. Okay, you'll bring up St. Paul's but. But, but essentially, you know, I think it's. I think there's a very strong sense that you can think about civic obligations and civic responsibility and civic privilege, the privilege of being a citizen through that classical model. That's not the only thing which is coming up. I'm totally, totally sure. And now it does. It feels like it exudes, you know, the authority of the state and the, and the kind of, you know, those vast columns you get outside lots of museums, you know, that is towering over me. This is culture being culture with a capital C being oppressive with a capital O. But I think that that's not where it starts.

[Grayson Perry]

I think I quite like that though, in a way. I get a bit disappointed if a museum is trying too hard to be friendly. You know, I suppose it goes back to I, I came into sort of culture in a time and through my particular biography in a way that, where it was quite inaccessible. You know, I never went to museums as a child and I used to look, just look at old encyclopedias that I didn't really understand. And culture was this sort of strange foreign land that I had to kind of, sort of, sort of decipher without really understanding it. And so when I wanted a museum to be a little bit kind of perturbing, I wanted it to be kind of a little bit, you know, scary when I went in. And that's how, and then when I was in and when I started to kind of feel comfortable in museums, then I thought, oh, I've achieved something. If it was sort of like a drop in center for the local junkies, you know, designed by some trendy soft edged architect, you know, I don't want to go in there, you know, beanbags

[Mary Beard]

on the floor and things like that. Oh shit.

[Grayson Perry]

No, I want the temple. I want the special place with the special things.

[Charlotte Higgins]

That's an interesting perspective, said the Guardian writer. You made me remember a really interesting conversation I had with a curator working actually at the Pitt Rivers in Oxford at some point where she said she was so aware that people just walk in. The Pitt Rivers in Oxford is not a classical looking museum, but it has all the elements that we're describing of being really quite sort of imposing. It's imposing, but it's gothic imposing. And just watching people kind of edging their way in nervously and just not knowing what to do when they cross the threshold. And unless you, unless you are familiar with the rituals inside the temple, you just don't know what to do.

[Grayson Perry]

You don't expect people to understand classical music the minute they hear the first bars of a Tchaikovsky concerto. You know, it's like you have to work it. We, these high friction experiences need to be encouraged because we're living in an increasingly frictionless world. So it's actually. And also it gives you a sense of sort of ownership and achievement. Worked for that. And that's what makes it satisfying, is I look at this thing or hear this thing, or read this thing. I have worked to enjoy this. When I started mountain biking, it was really, you don't enjoy mountain biking for the first six months at least. It's too hard work. But then when you get fit enough, you go, I'm enjoying mountain bike partly because it was hard. And I think culture is the same. It's too fucking accessible.

[Mary Beard]

But also, I mean, I think the other side of that about having to work hard is that I think you have to work hard to. To realize it's absolutely okay to feel angry with what you see. I mean, I think what kind of pulls, you know, what half offends me about museum visiting as a kind of thing to do is that it seems to be built on reverence. You're supposed to feel impressed by what you see. You're slightly intimidated, but. But you are sitting there walking around in the shadow of greatness. Whereas I want people to be. To feel okay. To be doing is actually saying this kind of stuff makes me angry. You know, look at who made this. You know, why. Why are we being asked to admire stuff that is basically, you know, the product of the exploitation of the governing class of whoever. And I think people are very loath to feel. They don't think that it's right or proper to feel cross in a museum. And I kind of want to encourage

[Grayson Perry]

crossness, but I get cross at the opposite. I get cross at kind of desperate sort of attempts to make it kind of sort of okay, you know, sort of to pat the audience on the head and say, yes, you're one of us. You're one of us. Everybody's creative. Yes. It's like, mate, no.

[Mary Beard]

Hello, lovely listeners. If you're not yet part of our Instant Classics Book club, well, now is the perfect time to join because we are making our way through one of the most exciting works of literature ever. That's Homer's Odyssey.

[Charlotte Higgins]

We would love you to join our book club, which we absolutely adore. So please do join now to give you all the access to our previous episodes and loads of other perks like being able to join our online community and getting early booking access to our live events.

[Mary Beard]

All details are on our website, instant classics. Pod.com. again, I'm pushing back against your bit, Grayson, is that I think that quite a lot of these ideas are there in classics and classical studies, but you have to work a little bit to find them. And one of the most famous books written about Greek history in the last century, really, is a book called the Greeks and the Irrational by a guy called, er, Dodds, written in the 1950s. And what he's doing is he's trying to say, look, we think of Greek culture as if it's kind of men in sheets being terribly calm and playing liars and things. In fact, it is a seething bloody mess of what we would call irrationality. But what's interesting is he starts this book with a little encounter in the British Museum and it's against. He's walking around the path in the marbles, there's not many people there and they're looking in a slightly desultory way. And the story goes, true or not, that a guy comes up to him, a young, looks like a student, and says, you know, do you know, I just don't really get all this stuff now. What I don't like about it is he's all so terribly rational, right? So he was being a little bit angry. And what, er, Dodd says is, in a sense, and again, true or not, it's that what sparked him to say, I see what you mean. We're taught that Greek culture is very rational, but I'm going to show you that underneath that, you know, there is seething bloody mess of, you know, of the irrational.

[Grayson Perry]

Because in my lecture I talk about Equus, the play in the film. And because that. I saw that when I was a student and it really hit home for me, not because it's an amazing story, but the psychiatrist in the film, you know, who was an enthusiasm for classical civilization sort of thing, and he goes on holiday to Greece every year. He is jealous of this young boy who has murdered, who has blinded these horses, because he saw in him that he was completely in touch with his own irrationality, his own kind of pagan instincts, and he constructed his own very meaningful kind of psychoerotic rituals. And that to me, because that spoke to me, because I had that same experience when I was young as well. I sort of. To develop my own psychoerotic rituals as a child. And so I can see what you mean, because he wanted to be in touch with that irrationality through his interest in ancient civilization. And yet there he had it in front of him, the real thing happening now.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And it's too much to take, you know, it's Almost. This is the play Equus by Peter Schaeffer, written in the 1970s, which we will put in the show notes. But what you're describing, it does remind me of Euripides play the Buckeye, in which the kind of. The forces of irrational, ecstatic. Out of your head, out of your mindness. The followers of Bacchus, you know, perform these extraordinary rituals on the top of Mount Kithairon, a mountain outside Thebes, which involve ripping animals limb from limb, sort of living in nature, various sexy things happening under the trees by the light of the moon. But it's kind of. It's sort of wonderful and also terrifying. These are women. Imagine how threatening that might be as an idea, if you're one of those rational Athenians sitting down in Athens. These women have left their looms, have left the city, have left their children, and are disporting themselves in this extraordinary and terrifying way on the mountainside. And the play is kind of about that force coming into conflict with the sort of rigid rules based down in the city ruler. And it all goes terribly. It all goes terribly wrong, as you might imagine. It becomes, you know, it's an extraordinary play in which you're. To me, you're kind of invited to see how far you will go mentally with the joys of the irrational women on the mountaintop. But it ends in a very bloody way. I highly recommend. I mean, this seems to me to be my prescription to you, Grayson, as the kind of classicism that you might enjoy because, you know, it's. It takes these forces and it pits them against each other. And of course, er, Dodds, who Mary's talked about, and we mentioned, er, Dodds in our previous episode also, you know, these are all things that are contained within classicism. So, you know, not that I want to convert you, Grayson, I just wonder whether broadening your, you know, there might be a bit of classicism that you can go with, and that's the women on the mountaintop living together and having sex. Doesn't that sound great?

[Grayson Perry]

I don't think my prejudice is really against anything that's ancient anyway. I think my prejudice is against what has been used for good and ill over the centuries and also how it's pervaded the kind of classically educated, upper middle class, dominant view of. Of what it is to be a good citizen in Britain today. And that's what I really push against, is that sort of good taste and the sort of responsibility of the good bourgeois. And there's something that sort of seems to have sort of Come out. Because I think it's the privileging of the intellect, I think, is the thing. And it's linked to what we were just talking about in a way, in that, you know, I often like to tease academics by saying that they regard their bodies as this sort of unwieldy shopping cart that just carries their brain about, you know, and. Yeah, yeah, you know, and I mentioned in my lecture Tony Blair's most famous quote, which is education, education, education, of course. And. Yeah, but it's the same sort of education three times, Tony. That's the problem. And that's. That's why the further education system in this country is in such disarray, is because we over privilege all this epistome.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Show off.

[Grayson Perry]

It's the one word he's used, a

[Charlotte Higgins]

Greek word in the podcast. Klaxon. You don't have to translate that, Grayson, because we don't just chuck Greek and Latin into the podcast without explaining it.

[Grayson Perry]

Well, it's one of the five sorts of great wisdom, I think, and it means theory. And I think, you know, I think that that gets over privileged. Whereas we have bodies and we have emotions and kids, they're not necessarily educated so well to use their bodies or their emotions.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yes. You talk about techno in the, you know, techne, which is the kind of wisdom that involves the use of, you know, making things technology or artisanship, the

[Grayson Perry]

things AI can't do.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah.

[Grayson Perry]

I can probably write a lecture on ancient Greece quite well, but it can't make a Greek pot very well.

[Mary Beard]

Promise you, Grayson, it cannot write a good lecture on. You certainly can't write a good essay. The AI summaries you find are really lousy. Right. So, I mean, Classics is a kind of one of the bastions of opposition to a unthinking use of AI. But it's also, I mean, I think what's for me, you know, I find that I kind of agree with most of what you say, but what's kept me in the kind of classical business for so long is not actually. I mean, I know you accused me, I have a little bird told me you accused me of being, you know, a bit Apollonian, a bit sort of a bit too much.

[Grayson Perry]

It was only that I had a photograph of us together which I sort of matched with Apollo and Dionysus, that's all.

[Mary Beard]

You know, I might look like a fusty old pensioner female academic, but actually I'm a body trying to get out. And what Classics has kind of helped me with is precisely seeing the messy, the nasty, the Unpalatable. The disconcerting bits of the world. You know, the mum who kills her kids. You know, I'm thinking Medea there. And it's shocked me, actually. I feel more shocked by Classics than. I feel reverent to it. I feel shocked by what it's. What it's. How it's challenging me. And, you know, I just. I wish I'd got. I wish I'd been your Latin teacher. I think that's for the like, two or three. You know, I really wish that I could have, you know, I could have, you know, got to the young Grayson. You would have thought the same, but you'd have framed it differently, I think. And I think. I think I do think much the same as you. But I'm saying, look, you know, I hate the, you know, the ideology of Nazi architecture. I hate the way Mussolini put himself, you know, into the position of Julius Caesar, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm also interested in revolution and the way Classics underpins that. I'm interested. Look, late 19th century, the proto gay rights movement in the UK, where do they get the legitimacy from? They get it from 5th century, 4th century Athens, universal male suffrage. Where do people get that? You know, where did people. How do people brand and legitimize that in the early 19th century? Well, thanks to 5th century Athens. So it's always on Pinnable down. It's always cutting both ways. Although there are lies out there and we can all name them who want to make it look as if Classics justifies a conservative social order, you know, and they're spouting little bits of Latin on the front bench of the House of Commons. The message is, classics equals conservatism. Well, for some it does, but jolly well doesn't for me.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And Marx was a classicist, a point that's always worth repeating.

[Grayson Perry]

Oh, yeah, he's done a lot of good work, isn't he?

[Charlotte Higgins]

It is always worth remembering that Classics is like this enormous pool of influence, knowledge, ideas. It doesn't mean one thing. And I know you know that. I know you know that, Grayson. It's there to be used for whatever you want to use it for. I mean, it is, you know, is a power and you can use it for good or ill. Yeah, I mean,

[Grayson Perry]

I will Wootton asked me to give a lecture about why I hate classical civilization. So I had to come up with something, you know, that was the. I think I did a pretty good job.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I think what you came up with was brilliant. And I totally agree with. I agree with almost Everything you say, I mean, you did you. Talking of AI, you used AI in the lecture to build an image of the triumphal art of a kind of playful image of the triumphal arch that Donald Trump had said that he would like to, to, to build in Washington, which was, which was extremely entertaining.

[Grayson Perry]

Yeah, Put a bit of McDonald's into it as well. So it was kind of, it was, yes, the Arctic triumph, sort of with kind of a McDonald's theme with the golden arches. Yeah, the golden arches. Literally. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, what's the most famous arch in America? It's the, the gateway to the west, which is like half a McDonald's logo, but it's like 700ft high or something. I was being provocative. It's my job. And you know, the one thing I've learned over you, because my entire kind of performing career came out of giving lectures to students and not wanting to be the boring one, trying not to

[Mary Beard]

be boring, you know, but we've all, we've all been there.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I thought it was a terrific lecture. Grayson. You delighted all the class. I mean, everyone in the audience was a classicist and they absolutely loved being provoked. But, but it's not just, it's not, I don't think it's not just masochism, actually. I think, I think there's an element of that. I think it's because. I think, I think actually classicists on the whole are very self critical about, not, not all classicists, but a lot of professional classicists are incredibly self critical about the discipline itself, because we know, because people are self aware about the fact that it's been used to uphold seriously unpleasant or questionable ideas. And you made this point in your lecture of grace and it has been, you know, the kind of idea, and we talked about this last week, Mary, the idea that good imperial administrators of the British Empire were trained as classicists. You know, this is a tricky inheritance for contemporary classicists and they are constantly self critical about it. Which is why your, your lecture was you know, actually enjoyable, provocative, but also, you know, in a way singing similar, a similar tune to the, in a different key because you're Grayson.

[Mary Beard]

But you just, you still have to say, okay, you know, you can't be a classicist. You know, there are, if you've got your eyes open and not see the way that the subject has legitimated, all kinds of things that are, you know, somewhere on the spectrum between absolutely foul and slightly distasteful. Right, done that. You know, my only plea is to say, well, just try looking at Some of the other ways it's being used because it's, you know, it's very easy for the masochist, the masochistic classicist to say, my subject has been, you know, wholly put to the use of causes of which I disapprove. Well, it has been put to the use of causes of which many of us disapprove. It's also been put to the use of some causes of which we do approve. And subjects kind of. They don't go one way or the other. It depends how you choose to use them, apply them, think about them. I'd like to let classics a bit more off the leash, you know, find, you know, refine the messy side, refind the. The irrational, because there's a great tradition of that in the subject, but somehow people tend not to notice it. I want to make them notice it.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Well, I think we should leave our conversation there. That. Honestly, Grayson, thank you so much for coming on to talk to us today. It's been an absolute joy and stuff. Just such huge fun to talk to you. And your lecture was fantastic. You were stepping into the most exquisite Manolo Blahniks when you gave the lecture, because both Mary and I have previously given that particular lecture. So you filled those monolo Blahniks very well.

[Grayson Perry]

And I do feel, I do feel more kindly towards the classical civilization having done it and done this podcast, because know, it got it out of me. It got that. It got the bile out of me, which, because anger is underrated as a motivator for any creativity, I use it all the time.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Absolutely brilliant. Well, we're very glad, we're very glad to have, like, been part of the therapeutic process that has brought you to a more loving relationship with the classics. Grayson. Our work is done, but at least

[Mary Beard]

you're not indifferent to that.

[Charlotte Higgins]

It has great.

[Grayson Perry]

Lots of love.

[Mary Beard]

Thank you. Next time.

[Charlotte Higgins]

As ever, we want to know your thoughts and comments, ideas, questions. And so if you have them, please do send them to [e-mail] or on our social media at Instant Classicspod. Bye.