Cracked, smashed, but worth a visit: the RA Summer Exhibition
Tom Gayford, Thursday, 31st July 2008
Apollo Muse invited you to submit your reviews of the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Below is a review of the show, written by Tom Gayford, who visited the RA after a certain accident hit the headlines...
If you’re desperate to escape the summer heat, it might be worth your while to drop into the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition (open until the 17th of August) – but watch your step. Last Saturday a visitor slipped and knocked over a nine-foot tall sculpture by Tatiana Echeverri, leaving it in fragments on the floor.
Not all of the exhibits are so fragile, however, and if you exercise due caution the exhibition is well worth a visit. The eclectic and wide-ranging nature of the show – 1,129 exhibits have been chosen from about 10,000 submissions – means that there is a wide variety of art in many different forms to choose between, so that even the choosiest visitor should be able find something they like. The visitor can move from rooms filled with more conventional drawings and paintings, to those containing video art, photography and modernist sculpture, a divide symbolised by two of the exhibition’s better works, Donegal Man by Lucien Freud, and Jeff Koons’s Cracked Egg (Blue) pictured above. The arrangement of the works in each room has been overseen by a different member of the hanging committee, which this year included Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Tracey Emin (who chose the ill-fated sculpture) and Anthony Green, which means the way the art is displayed also constantly changes according to the taste of its curator as you move through the exhibition, mirroring the differences – in style and subject – of each individual piece within the room.
Although some of the pieces are a little underwhelming – Tracey Emin’s room particularly disappoints – on the whole the quality is reasonably high, with some really superb works scattered around. So, if you find yourself with an hour or two to spare in London, the Summer Exhibition would be a good place to visit. Just be careful where you tread.
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