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From: Blokey Ben
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 08 March 2001
I was on time, for once, but put off by the enormous queue (the same reason I missed the youngbrits), I loitered, only to get an angry message from my Friends-of-the-royal-academy-card-bearing accomplice on my mobile. So I jumped the queue, and skipped straight to lunch. You can really make a day of it at the Royal Academy! They really *curate* their shows these days - the armageddon exhibition had a cool theme of light-dark-light-dark, and you entered through a strange built-in basement - it was very good. They have been playing with the lights again, turning down the main lights and shining little spotlights on the paintings. I think this is to emphasise the luminescence, and it works very well at times - a Christ, viewed from a distance through two other rooms, is stunning. Hoever they are not shy of using this effect and situated similarly striking works there in recent exhibitions also. And after a while, the shininess makes it hard to look at the paintings, and the dimness makes your eyes ached. With constant streams of people, the effect on the peripheral vision of dimness with patches of brightness is disturbing. I tripped over a couple of kids busy filling a paper boat with drawings of bits of paintings. And the introduction to the exhibition is so hard to read, as it explains which pope patronised who and how the cheeky chappies all got together in Rome Strangely, its not individual paintings that I recollect, but when you have a whole room full of cheeky, gnarled gipsies ripping each other off with a nod and a wink to the spectator, it can be hard to differentiate. That's the thing about caravaggio exhibitions - one caravaggio is good for at least a dozen imitators! This stuff is good though, involving, and the characters have that historical lewdness that we can't participate in these days because distance only rubs off the filth and disgust and makes it attractive. Of course, by far the best place to see Caravaggio is Rome - the coffe's better - and several pieces are borrowed from the Massimo Massimi collection. They have rather packed things in here, and a little less with a little more space might be more enjoyable. Apparently, this is baroque art. I always thought that meant twiddly bits, and it has a simplicity of philosophy thats attractive and clean compared with this baroque age's grandiloquence. As we move through the markets to the greek myths (some fantastic sea paintings, one with the most amazing firey redness and scenes from mythology with lakes and small fantastical creatures that are like novels, with plenty of clever-clever riddles and implications to explore) to religious pieces, we see that these really were have-a-go-merchants, turning their hand to anything - post-modernists uncursed by irony but with an exciting disregard for set form. The final room is of altar-pieces, the crowning glory of an irreligious age. Each piece has been set on a plywood mock-altar. This reminds me irresistibly of the restaurant that serves nutella pizzas - and being told by an amusing friend in tones of awe 'they serve them on an altar' - and sure enough they did. Upstairs are some watercolours by some English bloke - and very nice they are too.
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