RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

Convened by artist Sarah Jones, this one-day symposium brought together lookers and listeners from art and theatre to consider the noise and voices of objects. With speakers including Michael Meschke, Paula Claire, Anna Makrzanowska and Marie de Brugerolle.

RA Schools Spring Symposium 2016 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

Following Julia Wachtel’s show at Vilma Gold, the artist returned to London for a rare in-conversation event with RA Schools graduate Oliver Osborne.

Always compelling, Wachtel’s paintings take on the aesthetics of contemporary mass image consumption through a process of observation and montage. Through an in-depth study of her work, she discussed the developing character of her painting from the 1980s to now.

Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson was joined by the RA’s Artistic Director Tim Marlow to discuss his extraordinary architectural projects and works in public spaces over the past 20 years.

Artist Olafur Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space. This event coincided with the publication of Studio Olafur Eliasson: Unspoken Spaces, the first major book and monograph on his architectural projects and works in public spaces around the world.

RA Schools Autumn Symposium 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

Acclaimed artist and filmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson discussed women in art now, identity and consumerism, examining the first 45 minutes of her 80-minute film !Women Art Revolution (2010). This prizewinning film chronicles the evolution of the feminist art movement in the United States in the context of the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movement. Rare video footage and interviews include Marcia Tucker, Yvonne Rainer, Mike Kelly, Judy Chicago, Martha Rosler and the Guerilla Girls.

RA Schools Annual Lecture 2015 Supported by the David Lean Foundation

In 2015 we welcomed the legendary artist Frank Stella in conversation with Dr David Anfam. Frank Stella began his career with his renowned Black Paintings exhibited at MoMA in 1959 and was elected an Honorary RA in 1993. In 2000 he was the first American to have a dedicated gallery space within the Summer Exhibition. David Anfam is a leading scholar and curator of mid-century American art. His many books and catalogues include studies of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting and the landmark Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné.

RA Schools Spring Symposium 2015
Supported by the David Lean Foundation

Organised by artists Adham Faramawy and Cécile B. Evans, this day critically examined embodiment, outsourcing, and emotional labour in relation to new technologies: the interfaces we live with and through today.

RA Schools Autumn Lecture
Supported by the David Lean Foundation

Nicolas Bourriaud reminds us that since the 19th century, modern art has been an agonistic field. He tells us that what he calls “the exform” is a sign or form seized by exclusionary stakes, cultural, social or political: “From Gustave Courbet’s ‘realism’ to Liam Gillick, the exformal appears as a moving territory suffused by centrifugal forces, the unwanted and the official, mechanisms of rejection and rehabilitation. This duality might still be the core of what we call ‘contemporary art’.”

RA Schools Spring Lecture
Supported by the David Lean Foundation

A one-day outdoor Symposium at Highgate’s East Cemetery with further talks, screenings and performances at Lauderdale House. Featuring: Dr John Troyer, Martin Westwood, Patrick Coyle, Blue Firth, David Lillington, Tom Trevatt, Matt Drage, Holly Slingsby, Jordan Baseman.

JMW Turner RA, one of the UK’s greatest ever painters, entered the RA Schools in December 1789. At that time we were still based at Somerset House on the Strand, and drawing – both from casts and from life – was an integral part of our education system.

We did not then teach painting as a discipline in its own right, although the President, Sir Joshua Reynolds, delivered regular ‘Discourses’ on the subject. Turner became an Associate of the Academy in 1799, and he attended life classes here at the Schools for much of the rest of his life.

William Blake joined the RA Schools at the age of 21, having already completed a seven-year engraving apprenticeship. Whilst here, Blake rebelled against the ideals espoused by Reynolds – in particular, his pursuit of “general truth” and “general beauty”.

In his personal copy of Reynolds’ Discourses, Blake wrote the now famous line: “To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.”

Despite frequently disagreeing about the way the Schools were run under Alfred Munnings in the 1940s, renowned pop art pioneer Richard Hamilton has since looked back fondly on his time at the Schools. In a letter to Sir Hugh Casson in 1985, he wrote:

“I think back on the time I spent in the Schools with fond nostalgia. The perspective lectures given by the great Walter Bayes have lasted me a lifetime. Sir Walter Russell was a wonderful Keeper. Even the thought of those red fire buckets bearing the Royal crest, filled with mustard coloured sand from which the odd du Maurier fag end protruded, beings a tear to my old eyes.”

After attending St Martin’s School of Art from the tender age of 15, Sandra Blow studied here at the Schools from 1946 to 1947. She then went to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, before returning to London in 1949 and becoming a tutor at the Royal College of Art, together with Jean Cooke RA.

It was in the 1950s and ‘60s that Blow emerged as an abstract artist and colourist of lasting significance, alongside the likes of Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton,and Gillian Ayres RA. She was elected as an Academician in 1979.

William Heath Robinson, “The Gadget King”, is best known for his exquisitely detailed drawings of impossible scientific inventions and other bizarre contraptions. His success as both a cartoonist and illustrator was arguably down to his great skill as a draughtsman, which he perfected while studying here at the Schools until 1895.

One of the greatest architects of his age, John Soane entered the RA Schools in 1772. It was here that he first became acquainted with William Chambers, and through him, acquired his belief in the superiority of French architecture.

Soane also credits the Academy with saving his life, when he spent a weekend producing a drawing instead of going to a boat party with his friends, one of whom drowned. Soane himself could not swim. In her biography of the architect, Gillian Darley wrote that “the Royal Academy Schools suited Soane’s needs perfectly”.