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The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2011
Kute Fine Art
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is the world's largest open submission contemporary art show. Held every year without interruption since 1769, the exhibition is now in its 243rd year.
This year, more than 12,000 entries were submitted, by artists from 27 different countries. About 1,100 works of art were selected for the show, including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture and film. Almost all exhibited works are for sale.
The exhibition includes work by amateurs as well as established artists. Among the artists showing work this year are Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Allen Jones, Jenny Saville and children's author and illustrator Quentin Blake.
The largest gallery, which is traditionally used for displaying work by Royal Academicians and Honorary RAs, will be shown as a 'salon hang' with paintings hung from dado to picture rail.
The 243rd Summer Exhbition opens to the public at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, London, on June 7 and runs until August 15.
So that is the formalities out of the way. If you visit this exhibition to be inspired, you won’t be. In fact if you don’t have to go don’t bother.
I was actually looking forward to spending a good few hours looking at pictures and stuff, even though I expected some to be awful. Hey, I might even buy one if the price is right!
Sadly some eternity later I emerged from hell, feeling a good deal older than when I walked in and overcome with a depression cloud reserved for those delayed for days at the airport. The only positive thing was that my credit card was still holstered and was never coming out.
This year there was no theme which made it as vague as the years when there was a theme. But honestly, how can so many people produce so much bad art? Why do so many of the works on display feel so dull, weird, slap dash, crap and over priced? Are there hidden guidelines that I haven’t read?
One answer might be that the RA show, now in its 243rd year, is the world’s largest open-submission exhibition. For a reasonable fee, anyone can submit items for selection, and this year there are more than 12,000 entries, whittled down to the 1,100 that have actually made it into the show.
It almost makes you cringe with embarrassment or laugh loudly with ridicule when you consider what the rejects must be like, if this is the cream. Interestingly, all Academicians are automatically entitled to have up to six works in the show. This you would expect to raise the standard, but, if anything, tends to drag it down still further. Many of the allegedly distinguished RAs seem to produce work that is either excruciatingly dull or downright incompetent. You see this closed club know best and there isn’t anyone going to tell them anything different.
The size of the show is huge. Room after room, some of it not much better, a little of it even worse, than the kind of stuff you might find on the railings in Tower Hamlets. Nor are the viewing conditions ideal. Crowds of people jockeying for position and most talking absolute bollocks is not the greatest atmosphere to study what is put in front of you.
It is plausible that the exhibition is more forgiving when intoxicated – your vision is blurred etc. Sadly, driving commitments did not allow this option for me.
My lasting memory is the sheer feeling of “up ones own arse” and this was further compounded by the winner of Charles Wollaston Award. Alison Wilding RA has won the prestigious £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award for her work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011. Presented to the ‘most distinguished work’ in the Summer Exhibition, the award presents one of the most significant art prizes awarded in the country. The Judges this year were Phyllida Barlow, Martin Gayford, Tess Jaray RA and Chris Stephens. It was a millstone for goodness sake and on that note I rest my case.
Chris Sabian is an artist with http://www.kutefineart.com and co-owner of http://www.paragonprints.co.uk
Article submitted Friday, June 17, 2011 & read 19 times.
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