Summer Exhibition, Caulfield, Hume, Lowry and MoLo

Time to catch up on some exhibitions. Lets start at the Royal Academy.

Always difficult to review Summer Exhibitions which is why any reviews you see are so crap. Problem is that       there is always lots of variety so it is impossible to generalise. The only generalisation I will make is that it seemed even more varied than normal. Some paintings I really liked, some were very clever and some bits I wouldn't give house room to. But the nice bit is that it reflects what artists are doing, which is all sorts, rather than the "experimental" stuff one tends to see in "modern" art exhibitions. Lots of "modern" art is representational and displays enormous technical ability. Not everything new has to look weird. That might be the criteria for a modern art gallery curator but doesn't reflect what's happening any more than some Gaultier ball-gown reflects High Street fashion.

On to Tate Britain. They have a triple bill of exhibitions at the moment. Lets start in reverse order. The Gary Hume exhibition is just very dull.He is described as having an "innovative approach to colour and composition". The reality is he paints pretty simple shapes in gloss paint on aluminium. If the art career went downhill I guess he could eke out a job as a painter and decorator. It would not be a loss to the art world.

This is a portrait of Angela Merkel. Apparently

Next is Patrick Caulfield. One might also say he paints simple shapes, but not AS simple as Hume, and therefore not as dull. Rather the opposite, like much Pop Art, it is easy on the eye. He goes for simple flat areas of colour, sometimes with just one feature in realistic depth and detail. As I say, easy on the eye, but not dull, so actually this would be my pick of the exhibitions.

Lowry should be the star attraction, and indeed it was by far the busiest, even on a Monday afternoon. Now first a general whinge. When I see an exhibition of a single artist, I like to see a chronological hang. Start with his early works and go the the latest. It allows one to see development. Sometimes there may be reasons to depart from  this, eg when one wants to make a direct comparison between a couple of works, or maybe because you  need to put all the big canvasses in one big space. But this exhibition doesn't do that at all. It sort of tries a thematic approach, but with an artist who only really had one theme. Most annoyingly there is a caption by one painting of a sports crowd scene which suggests comparing it two other sporting scenes in two other different rooms. Well that's no good as you won't remember the details from one room to the next! And you don't get a feel for any progression as an artist, but actually in Lowry that might be because he didn't progress much.

But lets cut to the chase. The main problem with Lowry is he wasn't very good at painting. Any one painting has lots of detail and so on its own is interesting. But one dismal industrial landscape after another with endless poorly drawn figures of varying size just leaves one yawning. With Lowry, less is definitely more.

I also popped into the Museum of London for no better reason than it was raining and it was near the office. It is a pretty static collection, although I did have  nice feeling of nostalgia looking at the one small display on the 2012 Olympics. And I also like d the new display on Michael Caine - a real Londoner of the modern age.