More means worse
Andrew Lambirth The 239th Summer Exhibition Royal Academy, until 19 August (sponsored by Insight Investment) The Royal Academy Summer Show boasts that it is the world's largest open submission contemporary art exhibition, but this year it focuses on invited artists and distinguished foreign visitors. Thus it neglects both the Academicians, its real strength and raison d'être, and the until now faithful corps of British artists who submit year in, year out. As more and more non-RAs are rejected — or, possibly worse, are accepted but not hung — and while many of the RAs themselves are sidelined and crowded together, the nature of this exhibition is changing for the worse. It needs to be said from time to time that the Academy would not exist without its RAs. It's not a publicly funded institution like the Tate or National Gallery; it is essentially an exhibiting society of artists. Sometimes it seems as if the Academy is embarrassed by its greatest resource and the very thing that gives it its singular identity.
The show starts badly: the visitor is greeted by monsters. Jake and Dinos Chapman, invited non-RAs, have knocked up some sheetsteel dinosaurs with cutting edges, joking that they might have been made 'by Richard Sen-a's delinquent son'. Inside the building, Gallery I features contributions from Tallies, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg.
There's also one of Andreas Gursky's remarkable photographs of Bahrain, a Kitaj self-portrait and a stripped drum kit by Richard Wilson, all skins gone. (Sounds like a comment on the whole exhibition.) Two small, beautiful paintings by Mick Moon have the kind of intrigue and resonance one wants from this show but rarely finds. Hasten into Gallery II for a tribute to the late Sandra Blow. Her thrilling colour and exact sense of placement — her brilliant orchestration of abstract pictorial elements — are evident here, even in these apparently quieter works. She is much missed. On either side are crisp unsubtle compositions by Michael CraigMartin, one a self-portrait, the other a study after Seurat. Elsewhere in the room are a couple of Sir Anthony Caro's life drawings, always guaranteed to raise exclamations.
Take a deep breath before venturing into the Large Weston Room, as ever devoted to prints, and packed to the gunnels. Here are a few things that caught my eye: a striking red and green woodcut by Nana Shiomi and a relief print done from a rubber band matrix by Tara Donovan; a welcome shaft of humour from Glen Baxter; quiet things like John Carter's silkscreen of displacing quadrilaterals and a wood engraving of Melbury Beacon by Howard Phipps; Leonard McComb's powerful etching of camellias and Robert Mangold's columnar abstractions; Tony Bevan's etched table top against a violet blue ground. The Small Weston Room is in its usual livery of mainly small works jigsawed together. Larger pictures such as Melissa Scott-Miller's view of Islington or Anthony Eyton's still-life with mirror and self-portrait, or his portrayal of lovely broken light in Varanasi, India, orient the viewer and prevent visual indigestion. Among the smaller pictures I particularly liked Robert Dukes's shore crab, Peter Archer's farm track and Elizabeth Blackadder's lobster.
From here proceed to the heart of the show in Gallery III, the largest room, rather dominated by the two largest paintings. The end wall is given over in its entirety to a vast multi-panel computer-organised landscape by David Hockney of very little interest. To its left is a group of bright jewel-like paintings by Adrian Berg, Hockney's contemporary at the Royal College, full of wit and invention, showing what really can be done with landscape painting. The other monster painting is by Anselm Kiefer, a cracked mud confection which incorporates a model submarine made of lead and a dead brier. It has a strange dysfunctional beauty which sucks in the gallery's oxygen: Gus Cummins's 'Cabaret' acrylic next to it, though nicely paced and abstracted, looks a bit stifled. Even Stephen Chambers's boldly coloured leaping figure on the other side suffers. Other things to note: Leonard Rosoman's group of atmospherically webby Biro drawings next to a block of paintings by Jeffery Camp, deep into his late style of near-abstraction. (His big dark painting is a little like Redon.) A tribute to the late Kyffin Williams holds the other end wall with his familiar slabby textures; more interesting to me is a powerful group of small John Hoylands, and nearby a glorious abstract reverie of evening in the Spanish sierras by Barbara Rae.
Gallery IV is a traditional hang of traditional work, featuring some of the Academy's best-loved favourites such as Maly Fedden and Freddy Gore. There are also six small square canvases by Jean Cooke, original and minimal as ever, and a host of Mick Rooney's diptychs, cataloguing a world of lust and intrigue which is only just mythical. One of Eileen Hogan's garden square paintings makes a telling contrast. Gallery V is devoted mainly to works on paper, with some joyous Gillian Ayres Carborundum etchings (with hand-painting) and Jennifer Dun-ant's poignant lines of dots. A big triptych drawing by Michael Sandle proves that political art is alive and well. Among the paintings here are a couple of stylish Humphrey Ocean oils about the pleasures of driving, and Luke Elwes' contemplative and poetic 'Vessel'.
The Architecture Room, Gallery VI, looks very snazzy this year, carpeted in gorgeous bright blue with walls to match. Hung with admirable clarity by Ian Ritchie, this room of models and plans makes more sense than usual. Whether it's Richard Rogers's elegantly undulating roof for the new air terminal in Madrid, Chris Wilkinson's 'House of Human Rights' or Future Systems' Prague Library, there is plenty here to study and decode — even to enjoy. Gallery VII is given over mostly to abstraction. Note the Dick Smith diamond painting and the three interference acrylic paintings by Graham Mileson. Alex Ramsay contributes one of his mystical journeys, all whimsical linearity and sparing glitter, while Sandra Beccarelli makes a swarming collage from chopped electrical tape. I enjoyed the painterly zest of Nicholas Carrick's 'Babylon to Baudelaire' and the strong drawing underpinning the decorative colour of Derek Balmer's 'Remembering Africa'. David Nash's wood sculptures make a welcome point of rest in all the competing pattern-making.
The next two rooms are the new-look Summer Exhibition at its worst. Gallery VIII has just seven exhibits in it, all by German sculptors invited by Tony Cragg, who has lived in Germany for more than 30 years. Stephan Balkenhol is usually worth looking at, and I quite liked the shiny lump of Trashstone 306' by Wilhelm Mundt, made from production waste in glass fibre, but these works are given too much space and too much prominence, and I question the wisdom of inviting their submission. Does this not strike at the very nature of an 'open' submission? Gallery IX is the first room in a RA summer exhibition ever to be devoted to photography, and its content is very thin indeed. Gursky, in Gallery I, is the best photographer in the exhibition, though Paul Graham's whited-out image is quite beguiling. By giving up a room to photography — and God knows there is quite enough gallery space devoted to it worldwide — the Academy restricts what it can show of painting, prints or sculpture.
Look at the Lecture Room: it's as crowded as a bazaar with all the sculpture that couldn't be properly installed elsewhere. Of course there are some excellent things, by Nigel Hall and Richard Wilson, Bryan Kneale and Ken Draper, with an immense Picasso-esque wall drawing by Dhruva Mistry, but their voices tend to get lost in the mêlée. Ivory Abrahams's big 'Head of the Stairs' sculpture looks fresh and resilient, waiting to find its home in the right atrium. And a group of new drawings by the veteran constructivist Michael Kidner spreads a little joy over one corner. Better to move swiftly on to the Central Hall, though this is short on inspiration this year, relying on a wall text by Richard Long and some underwater flashing numbers by Tatsuo Miyajima. Thankfully, Janet Nathan's driftwood constructions and Anthony Whishaw's paintings give pause for thought, before it's time to exit through Gallery X This room is supposedly devoted to the theme of light, but is mostly full of dull and uninventive stuff. I don't think either Tony Oursler or Bill Viola needs the showcase of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Others do, and they're the ones — along with the public —who suffer.
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