Before getting down to a discussion of Wyndham Lewis and an exhibition I’ve been looking forward to for months, I want to register a protest about this year’s recipient of the Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This prestigious prize is worth £25,000 and thus ranks with the Turner Prize as a top art world award, and yet it receives very little publicity. Deserving past winners have included Robert Medley, John Hoyland and R.B. Kitaj, but this year it has gone to Jeff Koons. In my review of the summer show I pointed out that Koons should not be taking up space which could be more profitably used by others. This multimillionaire American was invited to exhibit at the RA (he’s not even an Honorary Academician), and has now been given the Wollaston Award, which is intended to celebrate the most distinguished exhibit in the Summer Exhibition. Koons’s high chromium stainless steel ‘Cracked Egg (Blue)’ is a pretty bauble, but hardly distinguished.
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