Last night I attended the opening night party of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Despite criticism from the press over the years, it is very difficult to change direction when there is such a great history and tradition in what you do. However, I thought the exhibition this year was great fun, with lots for the masses as well as afficionados. Of course there’s a lot of talk about the David Hockney, Bigger Trees Near Water, which is an oil on 50 canvases and takes up a complete wall. Much enjoyed. I was also very impressed by the four pieces by Professor David Mach RA, who seems to have given us an advance on Warhol by painting the iconic figures in so much more detail, dare I say because he’s a better artist.
I have said over the years that the point of getting to the RA is that you can usually pick up something of high quality at a sensible price, usually when the artist is unknown. My example this year is the excellent piece by Matthew Chambers, called Crescent - a ceramic at a cost of £900. Because I was attending a 25th Wedding Anniversary party at the House of Commons - at which I left my wife - I didn’t get to the RA in time to buy it myself and to my annoyance found a red dot glaring at me. Professor Ken Howard RA, one of our finest painters, has 6 oils in the show this year, and I am unable to write on this blog what his wife Dora told me about the one of him in the nude, which certainly caused a lot of interest.
One of the departments that rarely gets high praise, but deserves it, is architecture, possibly because it’s not always considered to be art. But Gallery VI has some very exciting models of major buildings, including Lord Foster's Campus de la Justicia Madrid, which shows him at his best, but his old rival, Lord Rogers fights back with an amazing working model of the roof section of the new terminal at Madrid. One of the sad things about architecture is that there is rarely anything for sale. Putting aside these great names and remembering my love of the theatre and sport, I was fascinated by The Roundhouse, Camden by John McAslan & Partners and a print of the Olympic Velodrome by Stefanie Hicki.
If you really want to see the works, you have to get there early in the morning otherwise you spend most of your time waiting for the crowd in front of you to move on before you can get to see the paintings - not a problem at the opening, as it's always filled with beautiful women looking inwards, and not so beautiful men looking at them, which allows art nuts like myself to look at the pictures.
I have said over the years that the point of getting to the RA is that you can usually pick up something of high quality at a sensible price, usually when the artist is unknown. My example this year is the excellent piece by Matthew Chambers, called Crescent - a ceramic at a cost of £900. Because I was attending a 25th Wedding Anniversary party at the House of Commons - at which I left my wife - I didn’t get to the RA in time to buy it myself and to my annoyance found a red dot glaring at me. Professor Ken Howard RA, one of our finest painters, has 6 oils in the show this year, and I am unable to write on this blog what his wife Dora told me about the one of him in the nude, which certainly caused a lot of interest.
One of the departments that rarely gets high praise, but deserves it, is architecture, possibly because it’s not always considered to be art. But Gallery VI has some very exciting models of major buildings, including Lord Foster's Campus de la Justicia Madrid, which shows him at his best, but his old rival, Lord Rogers fights back with an amazing working model of the roof section of the new terminal at Madrid. One of the sad things about architecture is that there is rarely anything for sale. Putting aside these great names and remembering my love of the theatre and sport, I was fascinated by The Roundhouse, Camden by John McAslan & Partners and a print of the Olympic Velodrome by Stefanie Hicki.
If you really want to see the works, you have to get there early in the morning otherwise you spend most of your time waiting for the crowd in front of you to move on before you can get to see the paintings - not a problem at the opening, as it's always filled with beautiful women looking inwards, and not so beautiful men looking at them, which allows art nuts like myself to look at the pictures.
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