Royal Academy shows a new face

Press, 28 December 1985, Page 12

Royal Academy shows a new face

By

Marina Vaizey,

art critic of the ‘Sunday

Times,’ London.

Twentieth century German art; Russian revolutionary art; seventeenth century Dutch painting; sixteenth century Venetian art, the golden age of the Renaissance; Roman art from the city of Pompeii, buried by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in A.D. 79; great bronze heads from Nigeria; the jade princess and prince from ancient China; historic treasures from Japan. This is not a list from one of the world’s great museums, but a small indication of some of the major exhibitions held over the last few years in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in the centre of London, the home of the Royal Academy.

Despite its name, the Royal Academy is a private institution, founded in 1768 Under the patronage of King George IH, a great collector-king. The bronze statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, its first painter-president, stands brush and palette at the ready, in the courtyard. , Long before there were museums and galleries round every comer, before auction house sales made news, and before there was plenty of showing space for modem artists in commercial galleries and art museums, the Royal Academy’s primary function was to set standards — with its own professors and the Royal Academy schools — and to show art.

The annual Royal Academy exhibition was (as it still is) the place where any artist in Britain hoping for success wanted to be shown — and sold. Indeed, until 50 years ago, the Royal Academy was home to almost all the major artists in Britain, in spite of many a controversy along the way. Even Constable, the greatest of ninteenth century painters of the English landscape, was accused by some of his colleagues of putting “a surfeit of green” on the walls instead of proper paintings. During the twentieth century the Royal Academy has undergone several crises.

In the 1930 s and through the 1950 s it continued to have major winter exhibitions in the most beautiful galleries in Europe and, every year since its foundation, held its major summer show of Academicians and other contemporary artists who had submitted work. Indeed the Royal Academy and its annual dinner, usually in May, signalled the start of the London season.

However, the forthright Academicians condemned and disliked what they saw as the most outrageous manifestations of modern art. Henry Moore has never joined the Royal Academy and Sir Alfred Mannings, famous painter of racehorses and president of the Royal Academy, though Picasso practically unfit to mention in polite company. Gradually though the Academy was brought into the mainstream of twentieth-century art. Its

natural conservatism — as an august institution, and a self-per-petuating one, as the Academicians elect themselves — was tempered with a new liveliness. Even so, few could have foreseen, 30 years ago, that the Royal Academy, despite the unprecedented growth of museums and galleries in Britain, would resume a central role not only for British art, but internationally. There are 50 full Royal Academicians and 25 Associates who will be elected as full members. They are simply less senior, and Associateship is the point of entry. R.A.s are painters, sculptors, printmakers and architects. It is thought that the selfelecting Academy, complete with its own school, exhibitions for members, significant and important collection of members’ work, made over two centuries, and international loan exhibition programmes, started in 1870, is an institution unique in the world.

With royal assent and patronage, the Royal Academy from its foundation significantly set out to raise the status of artists of “distinguished merit” One eminent Victorian considered that without the Academy, artiste would be regarded as ’"mere carpenters.” In the 1930 s huge international exhibitions were held, but the Academicians themselves became more conservative in the atmosphere of increasing visual innovation. However, as its prominence was slowly threatened, the Academy itself responded with new initiatives.

The Friends of the Royal Academy, scores of thousands strong, is the largest art supporters’ club in Britain. From 1983 the Academy published its own magazine. Though thought of as a national institution, the Academy is entirely independent, private and poor. So it has turned its attention to fund raising, and has been strikingly effective, raising, again under royal patronage, some £6 million ($l4 million). One reason that Royal Academy exhibitions have become so spectacular is that they have to en-

courage public support As Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary, says, the Academy is in the exhibition business.

But it sees a dual role: to bring in the public with its recordbreaking shows and to enlighten and illumine both the public and scholars.

This is why it negotiated with American Express to sponsor a major international conference for the 1984 exhibition of seventeenthcentury Dutch paintings. Such conferences, as well as an exceptionally active role in guiding school and college and university groups round major exhibitions, are now the norm for the academy, which has a high level programme that puts most educational and international scholarly activities in museums to shame.

Moreover, the Academy is again taking a lead in the contemporary area. The 1980 exhibition, “A New Spirit in Painting,” enlivened the debate for painting and contributed directly to renewed interest in figurative and expressive current art which has swept the West,

from Germany to America. It was a controversial and exciting show disliked by many critics, but it had a profound role in stimulating current activity — showing and selling — in contemptorary art

This northern winter, the historic and exciting show of twenti-eth-century German art, which takes a strong and again controversial point of view, is the first in a projected series which will examine the twentieth-century in art, ' country by country. The Academy pays a great deal of attention, too, to the presentation and design of its exhibitions which take many forms.

Unlike national galleries and museums, it has little from its own collections (which except for the Michelangelo tondo are exclusively British), that is in demand for loan shows elsewhere, yet, such is the international prestige, that paintings never publicly seen are now put on display in its grand galleries. The Royal Academy is of benefit to artists, public, and scholars alike. London Press Service.