22 June 2017
The RA Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy, 13 June – 20 August
Reviewed by William Morton
The Summer Exhibition is fun. Each Academician has the right to submit six works, and the public is invited to submit a maximum of two each for possible inclusion. This year 12,500 items were put forward by the public, of which 1,200 were selected for hanging. The result is an extraordinary mixture of art ranging from works by established artists priced at £100,000 or more to amateur works for sale for a few hundred pounds.
There is a certain confidence about the work of the established figures, and one can understand why these artists are well-known. Anish Kapoor’s sculpture Unborn is really punchy even though perhaps not easy to live with. Tracey Emin’s neon signs such as I did not say I can never love you I said I could never love certainly catch the eye. Anthony Gormley’s Fall manages to create a looming figure in an abstract woodcut. There is a clinically beautiful sculpture Silent Journey by Ann Christopher. Established artists who did not impress, however, were Gilbert and George whose Beard Speak 2016 seemed a fairly simple idea worked up to a degree it did not deserve.
An enjoyable element of the Exhibition is the wacky art (although, again, many of the works you might want to take home only if you are Charles Saatchi with your own gallery). One fine example is Stephen Cox’s Butter Puja consisting of a series of stone heads daubed with pats of butter. Then there is a painting where the ‘canvas’ consists of machete blades. There are thrones by Gonçalo Mabunda made up of bullet cases, rifle magazines and mortar bombs. There is a letter to Mr Trump in the form of an LP cover taking him to task over his wall. Picasso’s Busy Day is a cartoon showing the great man, inter alia, on the lavatory and depositing large sums of money at his bank. Two large stuffed but ragged figures mounted on rockers with banknotes in their mouths are apparently Defending Integrity from the Power That Be (Tim Shaw).
Both the public and members of the Academy are represented by ‘mainstream’ art works, many of them appealing. They include a number of Sickert-style nudes, paintings of gardens and flowers and Joe Root and plentiful scenes of Venice.
There are also many photographs and some works made of fabric, but none made a great impression. Video films are, of course, now a major art form and some (very highly priced in two cases) are included in the Exhibition. The picture quality is fantastic but the overall effect seemed, to me at least, as often with this art form, just rather pretentious. A room full of detailed architectural drawings is more intriguing and one could, for example, well imagine putting a cut-away ground plan of Mexico City Airport on the wall.
What art does the great British public like? Judging by the red ‘sold’ stickers at the Exhibition, it likes prints or woodcuts of the countryside, boats and the sea. These are among the cheapest items and that no doubt is one reason for their popularity but I do not think it the only reason. You are onto a winner if that is your line as an artist.
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