At the Academy
The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition seemed to me a very customary hodge-podge, for all the publicised efforts to up-date it. Things of genuine quality or originality are easily smothered in an omnium-gatherum of 1,600 ob- jects the paintings sometimes hang three and even four deep. Chantrey Bequest purchases have brought in good early abstracts by Hitchens and Nicholson, and private canvassing several other sensitive dissenters. But the discord becomes more acute between the time-honoured features —three unworthy portraits of the Queen, for example, and showcases of effete miniatures and statuettes—and the simulation of some contem- porary effervescence. Peter Blake's toy-shop with
fun and games in the window and bulbs that light up is easily absorbed in this medley. It was heartening to see again six Churchill canvases
from his vintage period in the political desert. His Pool at Chart well, delicious in paint quality,
is a hair's-breadth from solving the awful problem of goldfish darting in translucent depths.
And surely the. Marlborough tapestries at Blen- heim is Winston's most spirited and assured production, by any professional standard? It would be interesting to discover just what attracts the majority of summer visitors up that majestic staircase nowadays. I suspect it is largely the social atmosphere still, and the kind of portraiture that belongs to it. Now and then this can possess such quality and wit as Ruskin Spear's nearly caricatured Archbishop of Canterbury. Assured of a volume of work of this class (an annual impossibility) this perplexed institution would have little need for faux modernisme.
Previous page
