The eyes do follow you round the room...

Much like an STD, paranoia takes a little effort to acquire but, once you have done so, it's an absolute bugger to shift and it will affect the way you interact with others. Having been a regular visitor to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition over the last few years, I had a pretty reasonable set of expectations of how I would feel when I finished wandering round this year's; uplifted, slightly testy at the inclusion of some sub-art club daubs, possibly a bit pissed due to frequent visits to the champagne bar and resolving that I really should enter something for next year, because if Tracy Emin can get that crap on the walls, then a doodle on a post it note should get me inclusion, a red dot and everlasting fame no bother.

I did not expect to leave the place unsettled and more in need of a drink than when I went in.

It all started out so well. There was an expected theme, the Olympics that overtly or otherwise penetrated a lot of the display. In the architecture room for instance there were models and photographs of the Olympic village, the stadium and of course the velodrome and quite right too, as they are remarkable buildings. There was also a larger than usual number of cartography based paintings, drawings and collages on display, reproducing either real maps or maps of imagined places, or of real places reimagined.

This world askew view contributed to a growing sense of unease that had been kicked off with a black and white lithograph titled 'the gamble', a picture of the entrance to an underpass. Anyone who has ever used one instantly recognised the scene and the significance of the title, you could almost smell that distinctive underpass odour of damp, piss and cider.

Thereafter, I wondered if either the entire exhibition had been curated with a sinister theme, or I was just noticing the sinister paintings more than most, or indeed if I was quietly having some sort of episode and imbuing quite innocent paintings with a sinister quality. In fairness, the did seem to be more than a normal number of paintings featuring deserted houses and so on, although even innocent pastorals took on a sinister tone, a green thick hedge might be lovely, but also provides ideal cover for a waiting pervert, or homicidal maniac - flasher or slasher, I'm not sure which was the most intimidating. Suppose it depends on the length of the weapon.

Then I wandered into the gallery with the chair made out of chicken bones, which stank, and the question was settled, and settled beyond question when I caught sight of a large painting of a fish shop front with the proprietor's name - 'Dagon' displayed in large red letters above the shop. The theme was now officially sinister or I was being paranoid, the paranoia being brought on by the sinister theme. Time for more champagne while I pondered why everyone was looking at me, might be the paranoia, might be the 'meep' noises of distress I was making.

In the sculpture rooms, the was a welcome return to normality. What a load of absolute tat. The place looked like a cross between a house clearance of a deceased hoarder who had perished beneath a pile of yellowing leaflets for his local curry house and a charity shop for one of those charities that normal people are reluctant to donate to, like the cats' protection league or the society to provide broadband to peados or something. There was a bright yellow litter bin in the room which was obviously an exhibit but provided both a neat statement on the rest of the junk on display and a powerful temptation to make use of it.

As poor as the sculpture was, it did at least have the virtue of not being a video installation, the last resort of anyone who aspires to be an artist, but can't draw, sculpt or even take a decent photograph and so fakes a career out of producing a grainy three hour film of what looks like a colonoscopy, calls it 'turmoil IV' and prepares to be misunderstood and unappreciated.

Degas at the ballet at the Royal Academy

The first thing you notice when you strap on your audio tour at the Royal Academy's blockbuster autumn exhibition 'Degas at the ballet' is that you have been mispronouncing 'Degas' for years as day-gah. Apparently, if you are qualified enough to record an audio tour for the RA then you are qualified enough to risk pronouncing it 'Digger'. Little did I know that this master of capturing movement and Parisian dancers is apparently the most famous Australian painter since Rolf Harris.

I love audio tours, and in this case, with the subject so often the ballet, the audio tour really lends to the sense of occasion. You have the ballet dancers on the canvas, ballet music in your ears and, by the time you reach the final gallery, every little girl in the place is attempting ballet poses, inspired by the images and dreaming of being the next Darcy Bussell or Angelina Ballerina, depending on cultural reference points or age.

Back on the walls, I was coming to the conclusion that Digger certainly had some chops. His paintings include devices to lead your eye around the picture, with figures and structures vanishing out of frame. My personal favourite was a painting of a night at a ballet about, this being France, naughty nuns. In the foreground of the picture the great and the; good bearded ballet goers sit and chat or watch the nuns whirling, their movements blurred in an uncanny anticipation of trying to capture fast motion on film. One of the patrons is in profile, holding a pair of opera glasses and directing his gaze not to the stage but sideways, out of frame to, one supposes, his mistress's box.

With its capturing of a moment in time, of society, of movement and music, it's a stunning piece of art, but if you had commissioned a painting of a famous ballet that included erotic nuns, and were presented with portraits of a bunch of old blokes, one might feel a little ripped off.

Digger's painting career was taking off at the same time as the development of photography, both still and moving, and the science of photography was just turning into an art. The exhibit was as much about photography as it was about girls in tutus and in terms of informing context, was excellent. What was also clear was the beauty of the cameras back in the early days, little mahogany cameras that were more furniture than something to snap your holiday photographs.

One of the things that most impressed was the 360 degree portrait. Surrounded by cameras, the subject was photographed from all angles simultaneously. It's a pity that they had to wait another hundred years before the technology would exist to animate these and project them as a film, as I reckon the Matrix movies would have been greatly improved if Neo was a portly gentleman wearing a top hat and a beard the size of a cumulus cloud.

The paintings were, though, magnificent. This was the greatest painter of the dancing figure painting at a time where the world of capturing movement was changing forever. Even more wonderful than the paintings were the sculptures, originally created as wax figurines for reference and private contemplation, cast in bronze they were simply stunning.

One could not help but wonder about Digger's sexuality. Luckily, for somebody who spent so much of his time painting young ballet dancers, he appears to have been a confirmed fan of musical theatre. At least I could see no reference to a marriage, then again, if I was famous, and with a flick of a brush make a ballet dancer famous too, why get married? Private in his habits, most of the pictures of him are from his own experiments with photography, showing him and his friends either sitting stiffly for portraits, or clowning around for the camera. The catalogue also has a photograph of him emerging from a gent's loo, the significance of this is not clear and parallels with former Wham! front man George Michael end there as, as far as I am aware, Digger never got out of his skull on weed and decided to drive his horse and carriage at speed into a photo booth or whatever it was.

My one complaint - it was not French enough (there were French people there, enjoying themselves, who had no doubt come by Eurostar to see how a really good exhibit is curated), although the final film, a ten second loop of Digger being papped on his doorstep, was good, the street was full of French people and signs for little bakeries and coffee shops, and it was so Parisian you could almost smell the dog shit, but the Van Gough exhibition was the equivalent of gargling with red wine and rubbing onions underneath your armpits, it was that French.

A right Royal show

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is a fixture of the summer cultural calendar in London, a fixture of the cultural output of the BBC Arts Unit (if you can call a handful of commentators lolling on sofas in the courtyard of the RA and bickering about whether a particular piece is worthy of inclusion or even saving from the recycling ‘output’) and a fixture for the many amateur artists who send their efforts to the RA in the hope of having them included in the largest exhibition of public works anywhere. In essence, it’s not unlike an exhibition of the local art club’s works at a village fete, except it is lent credibility by being housed in a large building and anyone in a village art club can draw better than Tracey Emin (though credit where credit is due, her oversized post-it note with the provocative script on it bubbles up unbidden in my thoughts since seeing it).


Courtyard

This year was a very, very good show though. On previous years, the approach seemed to be to have as many works as possible crowding the walls of the galleries, effective tiling the place. I’m not sure if the curators love art, but they obviously hated white emulsion.


Raphael Revisited
Tom Phillips RA

It may be because I was late in seeing the show this year, in the final weeks in fact, but the gallery was less crowded and so, it appeared at least, were the walls. This was particularly true of the smallest gallery, where in previous years the crush of bodies resulted in the sort of close proximity and temperature that normally results in somebody bolting from the room to roll in the snow. What’s more, you could even see the art.


China Dog, 2010
Humphrey Ocean RA

On the whole, the standard was very good this year. The chaps had got the Pimm’s to lemonade ratio right and the champagne was chilled and not overpriced. As usual, the bar remained the best installation in the place and confirmed my suspicion that one should never see art sober. Certainly, most artists produce the stiff either pissed, stoned, out of their heads on thinners or a combination of all of the above and surely the best way to appreciate it is with a glass of something refreshing firmly clenched.


Four Vases, 1984
Lisa Milroy RA

As well as ‘professional’ artists being well represented, the RA affords and opportunity for members of the public to submit their works also. These are them casually glanced at by a collection of judges, most, but not all, wearing unnecessary scarves. The artist is then either sent a letter telling them they are crap (work didn’t get through first round of judging), they nearly made it (we need the entry fees from the continually hopeful and reckon that this letter is worth you entering for at least the next three years) or you’ve made it. The only thing that approaches this sort of middle-class uncertainty is the result of applying for planning permission for a new conservatory.


Abergwoun (Fishguard)
David Humphreys

While the exhibition seemed less hectic, more relaxed (certainly by my third Pimm’s it was), what it clearly evidenced was that there are, in sheds and garages, back rooms and spare rooms, an awful lot of genuinely talented artists out there who will never outrage the Daily Mail, maybe never get their own exhibition but have created something wonderful and, for one summer at least, had their work exhibited in one of the greatest galleries in the world and were glorious.

The Glasgow Boys audio tour

The Royal Academy is really doing a good audio tour these days and this one was no exception, making much use of Scottish artist Barbara Rae, essentially ensuring one Scottish voice at least to disquiet the London gallery goers. What really sets a good audio tour apart is the use of music and sound effects. Music, I think, would be a particularly good way to make that other reason to visit galleries - cruising for potential new boyfriend/girlfriend material - a lot easier, if one were to key in the appropriate number for the painting and then dance to the music that precedes the commentary. Like birds or badgers, nothing gives a signal about the suitability of a mate more than how you throw some shapes.

As good as music is, sound effects are the new must have for audio tours, to make it a completely immersive experience. The tennis paintings was glorious opportunity to exploit this. It could really have benefited not from the grunts and whooshes that one associates with the modern day game but with the 'pock', 'pock' of a genteel rally and the gurgle gurgle of Pimms splashing into a glass full of ice and hedgerow, not to mention the swish of crinoline and crease of linen

There should, though, be something on the audio tour for every painting, although I realise that this might result in a long tour. It would be good if the owners of the paintings on loan from a private collection had sixty seconds to explain why they bought the painting in question. With luck it would be a little more interesting than 'an investment' or 'the shade of blue really goes with an armchair I have'.

These small deficiencies, especially the idea of composing a score to visit the gallery to, or even something I experienced in the Whitney in New York City, where a composer had produced a 'sound response' to a painting, makes me wonder if it is not time that the audio guide market was opened up. With the ubiquity of the iPod and iTunes podcasts, might it not be simple enough for early visitors to the exhibition to go, get the catalog and put together a podcast, each chapter either an explanation of the painting (resisting the temptation to just make everything up and also resisting the temptation to pretend to be the owner of a piece on private loan who explains that he bought the piece because he likes to 'self pollute' when looking at it, not just when at home but especially when he visits it on public display and he sees somebody listening to a bootleg audio tour on their iPod turning round with a growing sense of suspicion and alarm) or, better yet, a soundtrack to the thing. Oh, and some banging tunes to groove to.

The Glasgow Boys

You may have assumed, quite reasonably, that the Glasgow Boys, capitalised, is a reference to a collection of Scottish blokes who hang about in pubs drinking pints of heavy and subsist mostly on a diet of scotch pies, Irn Bru and chips. Not so.

The Glasgow Boys were instead a school of painters that worked around the turn of the century, who shared a couple of characteristics. The first was that the art establishment of the time would not accept them, leading them to establish their own school, the second was that they congregated in a city in Scotland that, without wishing to give too much away, wasn't Edinburgh.


Looking round the recent exhibition at the Royal Academy, there's precious little to suggest that they actually spent much time in Glasgow. This is fair enough, it's not a city known for it's rolling vistas and dazzling available light. This is why many of the paintings were done in the highlands or, that favourite location of many a Scotsman, abroad.

The audio guide was at great pains to point out that the Glasgow Boys were not impressionists (impressionists in this context meaning a school of painters working at the turn of the last century rather than folk who can do a passable Cary Grant impersonation). Right. So. Just to check, they are painting at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, were influenced by the Japanese woodcuts that were available in Europe for the first time, romanticising the rural poor, doing portraits of ordinary people rather than commissions of wealthy worthies and capturing the emergence of the middle class. But they are not impressionists, despite producing more images of gardens than you find in a lawnmower catalog? Sorry, but they were clearly impressionists, or at least shared 99% of their DNA with impressionists. You don't have to be French to be an impressionist, although it plainly helps.


There were some extraordinary works on show. 'A Highland funeral' depicts a collection of dour looking Scottish agricultural labourers huddled round the front door of a cottage in the gloaming, the only daylight a brilliant slash of golden sunset high in the sky. Then you notice the wee coffin supported by a couple of kitchen chairs and your next breath catches in your throat. Of all the works on display this was the one that seemed to provoke the strongest reaction, the little crowd that was always in front of it a reflection of the grim little gathering depicted. Intrusion into private grief is something that newspapers have made commonplace, long lens shots of funerals of celebrities or the victims of tragedy or malice being the sad staple of the tabloids, but this is not an image to be glanced at before you turn over to be confronted by an ad for sat navs, the painting was huge and daunting and, like grief, filled the room.

Although hugely impressive, the exhibition was about an awful lot more than dead bairns and weeping celts. There was a fabulous wee portrait called 'Hard at it' depicting the artist on the beach, shaded by an umbrella and labouring at his easel. There were also many pictures of Scottish landscapes, sharing the common characteristic of sporting a coo somewhere in the landscape. Scottish folk love a coo in their landscapes and if you were to have even a chance of selling your depiction of hills or fields or streams or trees, it better have a coo somewhere in it.

Like every successful Scot, the key decision in attaining that success was to get the hell out of Scotland. Hence there are dazzling pictures of Europe and of the Mediterranean. These excursions must have had the Boys sending out for fresh paint, light blue not previously having been a colour they had any call to use.

The boys tackled what are now traditional subjects on the familiar curve of moving from challenging the establishment to become the establishment. Influenced by French painters, they painted farm labourers. Now of course galleries are full of folk in smocks passing round the scrumpy, pulling up sprouts and shaking the sod from their boots, but back then it was avaunt guard to paint a portrait of anyone that wasn't paying you good money to do so.

As well as folk toiling in fields, the Boys painted folk toiling in their gardens, both sweating over shovels and, more importantly, sweating over a service as they played tennis matches. The painting of the tennis match is astonishing, and not just because watching a woman play tennis in what is, essentially, a ball gown is fascinating. Suffused with light (it depicts a garden in France, not Govan), it shows a young woman and a bloke having a knock up while the rest of the gather party sit idly by and watch. You can almost smell the wine and cheese. Best of all the ball boy, dressed in a suit and sporting some rather fetching knickerbockers, is smoking. Now that I'd like to see at Wimbledon.

One minor annoyance was that the catalog had sold out. Luckily, the Kelvinhall Galleries in Scotland, where the exhibition had originated, still had some of theirs left so thanks to the wonders of mail order, I have my catalog. In this case, it was more important than usual to get one, as it is about the only way that you'll get time to enjoy an uninstructed view of the paintings. The gallery was packed to the rafters, it made the Summer Exhibition look depopulated. There were no incidents of gallery rage that I could see (gallery rage being when somebody is so upset that they tut audibly), but I was affected by that precursor to a tut; unkind thoughts about the raincoat of the chap who had just obscured my view.

Finally, the last gallery is worth a mention. The entire room was painted gold. I'm not sure whose idea it was to decorate a gallery like a hip hop superstar's toilet, but the effect was amazing, the whole room looked like one enormous gilded frame. Fantastic idea.