Coming from an edition of 59, of which one work has been recently acquired by the House of Commons, ‘Print for a Politician’’ has as its ultimate goal that of socially labelling every individual. Quoting his 2006 Guardian interview, ‘I was thinking of all the bickering that's been going on in the world and what fun it would be to label everybody socially.
I made a long list of all the different groups I could think of off the top of my head and scattered them randomly on the surface. There are minimalists, chauvinist pigs, elitists, parents, fat people, townies, locals, the old, Sunnis, Shias, fantasists, working class, thick people, satanists. Everything.
It shows that we can live with this difference.’ Inspired by Chinese scroll paintings, the work is of colossal dimensions, measuring 7 ft by 2 ft. It can also be connected to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s representations of the ‘Buon Governo’ and the ‘Cattivo Governo’ in Siena, Italy.
Grayson Perry stresses the playfulness of the artwork, explaining that in some African languages there is only one word for art and play. His description of the world is thus to be interpreted as an experiment, and it is important to Perry that his work is not cerebral.
