Fiery work proves you can't dismiss RA summer show
The debate on the merits of the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, which opens next week, is now almost as much a tradition as the show itself.
The exhibition is almost universally despised by critics, but remains a fixture in the UK art calendar and hugely popular with RA visitors.
This year the exhibition's coordinator, artist Christopher Le Brun, has added fuel to the fire by claiming that some Royal Academicians - the artists at the heart of the Academy - are embarrassed by the quality of amateurs' works hanging alongside the Academicians' own endeavours.
A fellow member of the hanging committee even described some of the public submissions as "just psychotic".
To his credit, Le Brun has tackled the perennial problems of the summer show - cluttered displays and seesawing unevenness of quality - head on.
His display in the largest gallery here, featuring almost 100 works, has been given a traditional "salon hang". Works are crammed right across the walls, just like the summer shows of yore.
Sadly, it backfires, emphasising the anodyne abstractions and flimsy figurations that typify the clichéd view of the summer show. But at the heart of it all is something fantastic: Keith Tyson's Deep Impact is a swirling apocalypse of a painting, seemingly conjured from fire and brimstone. It simply leaps from the wall - deep impact indeed.
That's the thing about this annual ritual: it cannot be dismissed in its entirety. There are plenty of gems here - you just have to work hard to mine them.
A room curated by artist Michael Craig-Martin, for instance, offers a potted history of recent British art, with great pieces by Cornelia Parker and Tacita Dean, both RAs.
And what of the amateurs? Well, their contributions are no more embarrassing than the worst works by the Academicians here, but tame works like Ann Johnson's Little Owl are the norm, and the exhibition doesn't seem to highlight any great artist waiting in the wings.
Crucially, though, sales from the summer show help fund the RA Schools, from which genuinely exciting new artists are emerging. However indirectly, the summer exhibition might well lead to the next big thing.
The RA Summer Exhibition runs from June 7 until August 15.
