ANY organisation that
approaches its 250th anniversary must necessarily feel a little
nervous; is the Royal Academy where it once was under Sir Joshua
Reynolds? Are the equals of Constable and Turner among those
showing this year? Is it still "an annual exhibition open to all
artists of distinguished merit"? If not, why not?
At the risk of sounding like
a mere political punter, I would say that there are signs of green
shoots, although the recovery of this patient is neither assured
nor steady. Under the presidency of Sir Hugh Casson (1910-99),
whose work is currently celebrated in a small exhibition in the
Academy (to 22 September), the Summer Exhibition slid inexorably
into the worst of Sunday-picture painting. One of this year's
Drawing Prize winners (626) exemplifies the old problems. "Could do
better," it used to say on my school reports for such work.
The crowded hanging spoke of
cheap supermarkets piling high and selling cheaply. Now it is
leaner, but the money still rolls in, which is critical to
maintaining the work of the Royal Academy Schools, where Piers
Gough, Roberto Cipolla (Computer Vision), and Tracey Emin
are among the professors.
Jo(e) Public is charged £25
for each work submitted (limit of two works), and a further 30 per
cent of sale price plus VAT, which is about the nearest we get to a
proper policy for open submission. Royal Academicians (45 Senior
Academicians, 73 Academicians, and 24 Honorary Academicians) may
submit six works. Hearteningly, more than 110 Academicians are
showing work.
In the list of exhibitors,
only Academicians are accorded titles and post-nominal honours.
Jo(e) Public is simply listed as that, with not a doctorate,
professorship, peerage, or membership of a learned society among
them.
So it is not quite a level
playing-field yet.
Whereas in the grim days of
the 1980s and 1990s, every other picture was of Venice, flowers,
gardens, or Venice (again), now most Academicians are willing to
show alongside the "amateurs" who pay their fee and hope for the
best. Or maybe the commercial galleries that represent them know
that it is good for business. The Lisson, Alan Cristea, Hauser
& Wirth, Richard Green, White Cube, The Redfern, Marlborough
Fine Art, Timothy Taylor, The Fosse, and Browse & Darby have
all sponsored entries from their stable of artists.
Intelligently hung, and with
a more spacious feel than before (although there are still 1270
works on show), this exhibition is a more satisfying one than for
many years. The exceptions are more glaring, perhaps, but more
easily dismissed.
When I arrived, I ignored
the bottle-top curtain (Tsiatsia) with which the Egyptian
El Anatsui has draped the listed façade of Burlington House -
although I cannot quite ignore the fact that he has walked away
with the year's most expensive prize - crossed the courtyard, and
entered the Academy. Imagine Jo(e) Public submitting a sculpture
that measured 15 × 23 metres? I doubt whether it would be
accepted.
Once in the exhibition, I
walked past Sir Anthony Caro's half-octagonal steel wall in the
Central Hall, and headed right, into the Lecture Room. Although
there are any number of Academicians (including David Remfry,
Anthony Green, John Bellany, and Ken Howard - more views of Venice,
in two delightful quartets of San Marco, and of the open Loggia in
Udine) represented among more than 200 works on display in this one
room, most are from the open submission.
It proved a good place to
start, and I returned to it twice before leaving, as Mick Rooney RA
has clearly worked hard to curate an exciting and upbeat display.
Here the quirky (Dr David Tindle RA's pot of upside-down asparagus
painted in egg tempera, and Joan Hickson's Pierre et Gilles-like
soldiers in To End All Wars) and the closely observed
(Elizabeth Butterworth's Grey Wing and Michael Tarr's dish
of highly coloured olives) are sensitively chosen. James Butler RA
does himself, and his subject, few favours in a maquette for a
Diamond Jubilee statue.
The largest room in the
exhibition (III) is always the hardest to hang. Norman Ackroyd has
managed this deftly, not least as he has had to make a shrine for
the late Senior Academician Mary Fedden, who died during last
year's Summer Exhibition, aged 96. At the Slade, Victor Polunin,
who had earlier worked for the Ballets Russes, had taught her
something of the European sensitivity of la belle
peinture, and Fedden remained firmly in that tradition, moving
away from abstract art to a neo-Romantic world of still life,
popular on greeting cards.
As well as Ackroyd's own
beautiful watery etchings, the long gallery has a troubled and
enigmatic self-portrait by Tony Bevan in charcoal, and demonstrates
that the older artists Diana Armfield (half-realistic landscapes)
and Bernard Dunstan (music rehearsals and domestic interiors
glimpsed through a hazy memory) have lost none of their power.
Their work is hung around one another's as if in deliberate
artistic embrace. Thankfully, not a Hockney landscape in sight.
The linchpin of the west
wall in Gallery II is a large six-part print by Stephen Chambers
which seems oddly out of place for no readily definable reason,
rather like advertising for a parish priest in the columns of
The Spectator. The names of fictional characters hang from
gold branches - Mrs Miniver, Captain Hook, Robert Lovelace, Mrs
Danvers, Harry Lime, Don Giovanni, and Clare Quilty among them.
Perhaps the all too obvious clue comes in the title of the work:
The Good Bad.
Words come easily, too, to
Chris Kenny in his enjoyable digital print Menu. Taking "a
lovely bunch of coconuts" as his starting point, I treasured the
offer of "Mutton dressed as Joan Collins", "a peck of fickle
peckers", "a blissful fish of Venus", and "one stagione short of a
full quattro".
The fanciful engravings and
screenprints of London and Delft by Professor Chris Orr are also in
Gallery II, and repay close attention. Detail is also the hallmark
of his The Princess Has a Pea, a story-book-like
illustration awaiting a narrative: will the white bunny rabbit
cross the railway tracks safely before the toy train returns, and
can the fish escape the cat's paw at the poolside?
Peter Freeth has again been
left in charge of Gallery I, and has confidently chosen prints and
engravings (his own métier), while Professor Humphrey Ocean has
selected works for the two smaller side galleries. Apparently, the
judges for the sculpture prize shortlisted Richard Long's
underwhelming thumbprints in Cornish china clay, Cornwall
Spiral, as well as Ocean's own clever Lemon Static,
which may be why Ocean has accorded Long a whole bare wall to
himself.
We are on safer ground again
with Norman Ackroyd's choice of works for Gallery IV, including Joe
Tilson's Postcard from Venice, although Anselm Kiefer
should perhaps stick with his day job. For the first time, Kiefer
has submitted a print. Melancolia (the title is a homage
to Dürer) measures 375 × 280cm gross, but it does not show the
Honorary Academician at his best. The brightness of Philip Sutton's
three oil paintings is, by contrast, much more transparently a sign
of good work.
To either side of Gallery
VI, which is traditionally reserved for architecture judiciously
chosen by Eva Jiricna, John Wragg, a Royal Academician since 1986,
has satisfyingly mixed both paintings and sculptures.
Portraiture stands up well
(Room VIII) with the venerable art critic William Feaver trapped
magnificently by Frank Auerbach in graphite and chalk, and Rodney
Graham photographing himself as a sous-chef on a fag break beneath
a spreading tree (Betula Pendula "Fastigiata").
Deservedly, Celia Paul has won an award for the quiet oil painting
of another tall woman, Annela, selling at half the price of Julian
Opie's inkjet print of Maria Teresa I, in his usual
cut-away style. Green shoots indeed.
The 245th Royal Academy
of Arts Summer Exhibition runs at the Royal Academy, Burlington
House, Piccadilly, London W1, until 18 August 2013. Phone 020 7300
8000.
www.royalacademy.org.uk