Crowd control
Andrew Lambirth
Summer Exhibition Royal Academy, until 15 August have changed,’ I was told by one Tdisgruntled Academician. Once the members were guaranteed to have their work hung ‘on the line’ (i.e., in pride of place at eye-level), and non-members would get the remaining positions if they were lucky. This year John Hoyland’s large paintings have been ‘skied’, and one of Craigie Aitchison’s screenprints (he refuses to send in paintings because the summer show is such a ragbag) has been hung ‘on the floor’. Jeffery Camp has declined to show anything at all because he’s fed up with his pictures being hung too high to be properly seen. The summer show is doing a grand job of not pleasing its own members, while the non-members compete for less and less room once the Honorary RAs have been given the best places. Many professionals are disheartened at the repeated failures to get into the summer show: even if works are accepted, this is no guarantee that they’ll be hung. It’s clear that something must be done.
Why not split the show into two exhibitions of half the duration? One could be exclusively of RAs, to give them room to show their finest work, the other an International Open exhibition, encouraging the best painting and sculpture from around the world. Each could last for a month, and, if the Academy really put its heart into mounting such a double-decker extravaganza, the result could be exceptional. As it is, the Summer Exhibition stumbles into its 237th year with the usual mix of good, bad and indifferent hung a little more thinly (except in the Weston Rooms) than usual. One gallery, IX, has just over a dozen pictures and a couple of sculptures in it. It happens to be an elegant hang with some impressive works (I particularly liked the laced and laddered Alexis Harding abstracts and Humphrey Ocean’s minimally painted red skip with its interestingly grungy edges), but to hang so little is an unpardonable indulgence in an exhibition which supposedly has so much to show.
The exhibition doesn’t start well: Gallery I is the least punchy I’ve seen it for years. It’s full of mediocre work by internationally acclaimed artists who’ve been made Hon. RAs to bring the Academy kudos. James Turrell, whose work I have a great admiration for, is poorly represented by two hologram-type projections. Ellsworth Kelly, another impressive artist, shows eight black-and-white lithographs that might be worth pondering in a one-man retrospective, but look inconsequential here. Gallery II continues with the big names: Mangold, Bourgeois, Freud, and a truly horrendous Rosenquist lithograph. A trio of silkscreens by Chuck Close are nothing more than fancy posters. The room is saved by two Frankenthaler woodcuts and a thicket of thorny rectangles by Joel Shapiro. So far, the only RA (Hon. RAs like Baselitz don’t count) in two whole rooms is the sculptor John Maine.
If you proceed into the Large Weston Room, this rapidly changes, for it is hung floor-to-ceiling with prints by Academicians and non-members. There’s a huge variety of work to be seen, from Alex Calinescu’s lithograph of a fruit-like object to Paula Rego’s ‘Life Room’ studies to Glen Baxter’s meditation on Anglo–French attitudes. I liked John McLean’s monoprints and the posthumous meeting of those old sparring partners Terry Frost and Patrick Heron, screenprinted on to canvas by Leigh Clarke, gesticulating at each other on one wall. The Small Weston Room is packed with treats: notice Eileen Hogan’s sensitive oil studies of Lord Carrington, and the landscape delights of Camilla Shelley’s pink flints and Dorothy Dent’s harvest scene.
Proceed now to the main gallery, III, for the assorted assault of the big guns: three new paintings by Kitaj on the subject of memory and old age, a vast pencil, ink and watercolour drawing by Leonard McComb of rock and sea at Anglesey, Eileen Cooper in blue mood in what looks like a wild-life room, a predominantly black-and-white group of water paintings by Anthony Whishaw, and strong doses of inspired colour and pattern by Albert Irvin at one end, and Adrian Berg at the other. As usual, some works sandbag you, others lie in wait. Gallery IV is notable for such Summer Exhibition stalwarts as Mary Fedden, Freddy Gore and Elizabeth Blackadder. There’s a powerful tribute to the late Peter Coker, which includes his last oil, a luscious near-abstract, and a Butcher Shop painting loaned by Sheffield. Here, too, is Maggi Hambling’s fierce indictment of war, ‘Lebanon’, and Jean Cooke’s radical fish painting, ‘Fancy a Swim?’ Gallery V contains another tribute, this time to the late Norman Adams, quondam Keeper of the Academy, and an artist of rare lyrical and religious vision. Two of the RA’s elder statesmen, Leonard Rosoman and Anthony Eyton, are shown to good effect, in watercolour and pastel respectively. Jennifer Durrant’s small but doughty abstracts (she has a solo show at Art First in Cork Street until 22 June) hold the attention, while Peter Archer’s ‘The Chimney Field II’ commands the usual respect. Gallery VI, however, seems to be the alien heart of this year’s summer show, which is devoted to multiple images. Here be monsters: strange things by Colin Self and Michael Craig-Martin, Adam Dant and Dan Hays. Even Tracey Emin has got in somehow.
Without the input of such valued and distinguished Academicians as John Craxton, and awash with overblown works by Hon. RAs, this year’s Summer Exhibition is something of a let-down. Still, there’s a magnificent Sandra Blow — a large painting called ‘Span’, which opens out like a secret being unwrapped — and a poignant Allen Jones profile sculpture, three vigorous abstracts by Henry Mundy, a couple of Michael Kidners, and the memorable juxtaposition of Alex Ramsay and Stephen Chambers, all in the Lecture Room. In the Central Hall there’s Caro, Hall and Carter, not to mention the first ever sculpture by Gus Cummins (he calls it ‘a two-and-a-half dimensional painting’). And how can I conclude without mentioning Gillian Ayres and Ann Christopher, shortlisted at the time of writing for the £25,000 Wollaston Award? Then, with over 1,300 exhibits, there are the hundreds of really quite good works there’s no room even to list. As exhibitions go, it must be one of the oddest mixtures currently on offer, and, as such, it’s still worth a visit.
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