Summer Exhibition 2009

'What a load of tat!' grumbled an old curmudgeon a little too loudly.
On display, of course, was the usual mixed bag of works: some witty, some serious; some cheery, some bleak; some executed with great skill and panache, and others, well, less evidently so. If there is one thing about the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, it's that it caters to every taste!

Here are my top three favourites from this year's exhibition, in reverse order:

3.  Bird 2 (photograph)
     Elizabeth Zeschin

Zeschin's work is a sepia photograph of a dead sparrow, head convulsed to one side, little claws curled, and wings half-splayed. Its feathers are beautiful still, their fine, intricate structure clearly visible - a small but potent reminder that there is sometimes a strange and solemn sweetness in death.

2.  Sunday Morning (oil on board)
     Marion Pritchard

Pritchard's 'Sunday Morning' is a quiet, intimate picture of two men on a sofa in a simple living room, heads buried in the paper (one reading the main news section of the Observer, and the other the sports). There is a delightful domesticity about the scene. The two are casually dressed, and the sunlight that spills in from the window conveys a sense of warmth and laziness. Who are they? Were they brothers? Lovers? Father and son? There are no clues - it doesn't matter. Nor is there any sense of what else the day might bring. All that matters is that moment of shared repose. Two men reading silently in the morning sunshine - a small, mundane moment rendered sublime by the artist.

1.  Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain (silver)
     Damien Hirst

The highlight and undisputed masterpiece of this year's exhibition, for me, was Hirst's gleaming silver statue of St Bartholomew, scalpel upraised in triumph and flayed skin draped like a trophy over his right arm. In his left hand is a large and fearsome pair of scissors, and at his feet lie an array of surgical implements. Macabre yet compelling, the almost life-sized sculpture (in the words of the display note) 'exposes the full anatomical complexity of the figure's muscular structure'.

Honourable mention to Meg Dutton for her etching and watercolour, 'Mosques', a vibrant jumble of domes and arches and latticed windows strongly evocative of the exotic east; and to Natalia Calvocoressi for her untitled photograph of a child in a red dress in a muted room scattered with dead leaves, staring up with intriguing intensity at the photographer.