Pampered pets, polite portraits and enough wan landscapes to fill a field – this show mirrors the numbed, aimless condition of Britain after 14 years of Tory misrule
his year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is best enjoyed as a mirror of the numbed, aimless condition of Britain after 14 years of Conservative government. It is a gasping death-rattle of mediocrity, a miserable garden party of vapid good taste. There are no laughs and precious few glimpses of good art. Nothing points to the future. All you will learn from it is that the small “c” conservatism of British middle-class culture has reached the end of its rope.
“Art Is in All of Us”, affirms a typically profound placard by Bob and Roberta Smith RA. If only. That radical-sounding statement might seem to promise a show that’s a wild, democratic, free-for-all romp. After all there are more than 1,200 works of art here, apparently chosen pretty much by flipping a coin. But it is almost all the same, all tepid, polite and pointless.
Clubby cosiness descends into unconscious self-parody in one gallery, where a fireplace with bric-a-brac on it is fixed to a wall. Elsewhere, plangent violin sounds emanate from an installation of a chamber orchestra whose empty seats and abandoned instruments are so, so sad. Next to that is a big, average painting of Stowe, the country house in Buckinghamshire, by Anthony Eyton RA.
A few decent works crop up as if by accident. Anselm Kiefer’s colossal woodcut of sunflowers with black centres, nightmare blooms incised deeply into paper, penetrate your imagination like ghosts on a battlefield sprouting from dead soldiers’ bones. Yet its hanging – next to a series of small still life flower arrangements – is ridiculous.
Just because the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has been going on since 1769 does not mean it must continue forever. It doesn’t reflect what’s new or great: the random appearance of fine artists is just a waste. All the best stuff here – there are typically strong works by Georg Baselitz, Rose Wylie RA, Sean Scully RA, Frank Bowling RA – would look better if they weren’t surrounded by dross.on “varnishing day” to outshine Constable.
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