Congratulations are due to Michael Craig-Martin and the members of his hanging committee. The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition has never looked so impressive, at least not in my memory. And while this may not mean a lot — although the show has been staged annually since 1769, all too often a mess has been made of it — it is no mean feat for the Royal Academy to create what feels like a visually coherent and culturally informative exhibition.
The largest and most famous open submission exhibition in the world is a notoriously intractable event. Yet the hanging committee has managed to accommodate the 1,200 pieces submitted by Royal Academicians and members of the public with a combination of respect for tradition and an admiration for the fresh.
It begins in the courtyard. Instead of finding a scattering of disparate sculptures, the spectator wanders beneath a canopy of tetrahedronal “trees” made by the recently appointed academician Conrad Shawcross. Next, you encounter the work of the Turner-shortlisted Jim Lambie. His trademark strips of vibrantly colourful tape transform the severity of the Royal Academy’s august stone stairway into a river of pulsating colour. Little wonder the flanking statues have been removed. They would probably have toppled anyway in a giddy fit. The historic wall paintings have also been taken down: replaced by the subversively scrawled canvases of Rose Wylie, another new academician.
A hang that puts its focus on the flow of visitors through the galleries leads the spectator under the work of the first artist, over and between the works of the two next, and then into the middle of the octagonal central hall. This is painted a brilliant turquoise. Prismatic panels by Liam Gillick are suspended from the ceiling dome. The fiery glow of a splashy abstract by Christopher Le Brun, the RA president, hangs on the wall.
The startling colour scheme continues. Turn left, and down a stretching bubble-gum-pink-painted vista you see a monochromatic piece by Richard Long. This was the starting point for the hang of the RA’s grandest space: a celebration of colour (including a piece by Craig-Martin himself) juxtaposed with a meditation on more subdued tones. The opportunity for peaceful contemplation comes in the form of a selection of William Kentridge’s drawings of indigenous African trees.
Another solo display is offered with Tom Phillips’s A Humument — a monumental work that has been in progress for close to 50 years and involves altering every page of a Victorian book.
The architectural gallery also presents what feels more than usual like a coherent display. It takes the theme “Inventive Landscape” and brings models of buildings together with landscape works, among them etchings of the Galapagos islands by Norman Ackroyd.
Through strong colour that draws groups of disparate works together, an attentive hang that points out the resonances between them, and a thematic focus that can find a starting point even in such awkward works as a monumental Michael Sandle bronze, this show replaces chaotic muddle with articulate restraint. It offers the public not only an occasion to revel in the traditional, or a chance to catch up on more recent cultural developments, but also to discover the ways in which they may be linked.
At the Royal Academy (020 7300 8027) from June 8 to August 16
