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Humphrey Ocean RA. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition can be bewildering. Chosen and hung by artists, it is a testing ground unmatched by anything anywhere else in the world on this scale and of this quality. Forget exhibitions as you know them. Here is the mind, fired up and ready to go, in more variations than you are used to coming across under one roof. Every single artist submits work knowing it may be shown in conditions that cannot be pre-determined. This is something of a gamble and requires confidence, but most artists can handle that. The pay-off is they know their work will be shown in some of the most beautiful day-lit galleries in the world. Also, not a lot of people know that the money made from the exhibition goes towards the Royal Academy Schools, in other words towards the next generation.
I suggest it best to look at the show as process rather than the more usual form of curatorial choice. It is an unpredictable sampling of how people are thinking and, in turn, visitors think and decide for themselves and that adds to the danger. If you are still perplexed, don’t worry. There are now, thank goodness, so many places on earth where art is clearly and spaciously laid out, which allows for contemplative thought, and that may be more your thing. This is an alternative where every summer for the last 244 years artists play unsafe in a fantastic context. Internationally known artists and complete unknowns sit side by side showing what they are up to now. Try it.
