The RA's
2010 Summer Show didn't create any ‘eureka moments' for me, sighs the Countess du Ruel. It reminded me of other Summer Shows of the
last few years. In the big rooms where
the RA academicians show their vast, brightly coloured canvases I could have
sworn I had seen it all last year. This
hype about the show giving the amateur the chance to be hung alongside the best
artists is a joke. The show's about
making money for the academy, and the amateurs are kept firmly in place.
I went
along last week prior to the opening to see a painting by my friend
Madeleine. She said the only way to get
accepted is to submit something very small. The academicians, on the other
hand, have a very different rule of thumb: very large.
When I
found the room where Madeleine's painting was hung it was so crowded with
amateurs trying to find their small paintings that hers wasn't easy to see once
I did find it. The format is the same
for each exhibition, the minor art is hung in the minor rooms and the major art
in the major rooms. There aren't any
surprises. When you think there were ten
thousand entries, you would think the jury might have played a few new tricks
with the 700 or so that are selected.
The
academicians take the best places with generous spaces in between works and
giant airy rooms to enjoy them in. The
amateurs are crowded into tiny rooms, one on top of another right up to the
ceiling, the most unremarkable being crowded into the Small Weston Room, where
paintings are stacked high and sold cheap.
I enjoyed a
Pimm's at £7 a shot while I wandered through the rooms. I can't remember seeing anything I would
actually buy, except maybe Lawrence's
McCombs's study for mosaics at Westminster Abbey, if I had £90,000 going spare. David Mach's Silver Streak, a giant gorilla
made of coat hangers, was fun for a mere £250,000. I can see it in the lobby of Goldman Sach's
London HQ.
What a
welcome relief it would be if they had hung all the expensive paintings upside
down or together in a broom closet, so that we might wonder or ponder or
consider why. As it was we trooped through
the rather stale exhibition convinced we've been there and done it all before.
I'm
basically tired of big, hyped up art events that attract huge crowds and are more
about market forces than art. Many of
these RA Summer Show artists are familiar brands just showing their signature works. I don't remember the last time that my heart
leaped seeing something on offer at the Summer Show.
Still there's always hope that next year will surprise us!
