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Mixed blessings

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy, until 17 August

Gallery II features another memorial display, a more modest one this time, devoted to the life of Sir Colin St John Wilson, architect of the controversial British Library, art collector and benefactor of Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. He’s represented by four of his own paintings from the 1940s, abstract and very much of the period but rather effective, and some drawings and prints of the British Library. Nearby is a big Basil Beattie oil, featuring heavily worked architectural imagery at the bottom of a brightly coloured diagonal like a ski-slope. Also in this room are such European ‘modern masters’ as Tàpies and Paladino, and the American Ed Ruscha, showing a group of text pictures, which seem now after so much repetition to have completely lost their point. This year the print room (Large Weston Room) has been hung by Stephen Chambers, himself a highly talented and innovative printmaker. More dramatic and clear in its effects, the hang reveals the work better, whether it’s Jim Dine’s sexy pink nude, Paula Rego’s drinking lithographs or the elegant hand-coloured drypoint by Matthew Tyson, Hetty Haxworth’s bold screen print, Sara Lee’s gentle ukiyo-e woodcut landscape, Craigie Aitchison’s Scottish lyricism, or the potent abstract visions of Clyde Hopkins and John McLean.

The Small Weston Room is hung in a very popular floor-to-ceiling jigsaw by Mick Rooney and was almost impenetrably jammed with people the day I visited. Peering between viewers’ legs or over their heads it was possible to discern such treasures as a pale yellow quince by Robert Dukes, a couple of robust yet minimal flower paintings by Jean Cooke, a pair of subtly coloured abstracts by Philippa Stjernsward, marvellous inky traceries by Leonard Rosoman, along with characteristic things by Mary Fedden and Quentin Blake. A deliciously sensitive Diana Armfield, ‘Sheep on the Llanberis Pass’, caught my eye as did the moody ‘Carbury Castle’ by Catherine Mann, and Adrian Berg’s long ink drawing of Kew Gardens, done with a reed pen.