Date published: 2009/06/06
The Royal Academy's 2009 summer exhibition officially starts on 8 June, with the preview days for Academy "Friends" and "serious" collectors already happening.
Unfortunately, the years do not improve the art on display, and this year seems to have hit a new low. Not surprisingly, the taste is typical upper class English taste, and in art the English upper class have long since lost the plot. The work by the academicians is particularly trite and mostly seriously over-priced. Of course, there was the odd good bit of art, mostly by non-academicians (e.g. a bronze of a raven by Dido Crosby).
On the academician front, Bryan Kneale probably made the best effort, in particular with a large stainless steel sculpture in the forecourt. David Mach had four of his now standard postcard art works (the best one of a lion). At 25k each they are not for the ordinary punter, but three had already sold.
A lot of the academicians stick with the same subject year in and year out, some of them literally. Jennifer Dickson does prints that have evidently been heavily manipulated in Photoshop, and every year it is of formal country gardens. This year she branched out into having one of a church wall. Craigie Aitchison does crucifixion scenes over and over again (not particularly interesting when it is the Nth time in a row), and the main difference from before he was an academician is that the canvases have just gotten bigger.
In recent years the architecture room has been far and away the best, because architects still have to produce models (in 2D or in 3D) that have to resemble what they want to build. Unfortunately this year Will Alsop arranged the architecture room. Alsop seems to be one of those architects who really wanted to be an artist but didn't make it. The room is hung to make it as difficult as possible to see any architecture. Instead presumably we are supposed to be impressed with Alsop's vision of the world. As in most recent years, the best effort is by Eva Jiricna, for a gallery she did for the V&A (in particular, as usual, the staircase).
There was a lot of photography on display in the exhibition this year. But the selection was incredibly weak, with hardly an interesting image in sight. And, in a new departure for the RA, the entire last room was dedicated to videos.
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