Painting with two fingers

In too many places around the world we see odious, corrupt, thuggish, hypocritical, criminal regimes holding on to positions of absolute power - evidently for the primary purposes of personal greed and self-preservation. Sickos and their henchpersons who want a controlled reality to stay the same for ever, regardless of the fate of millions or the wellbeing of the planet. Luckily we are relatively free from that kind of thing here. In the UK, though our politicians routinely ignore the wishes of the common people, though – if you read ‘Private Eye’ – corruption is endemic, though so often our news is a saga of incompetence, betrayal and hypocrisy, and though voting changes nothing, we are fortunate that we can – if necessary via the medium of paint – stick two fingers up to the lot of them, without fear of arrest … or worse. 

Therefore it is particularly gratifying that this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the 250th, and overseen by the wonderful Grayson Perry, includes a great deal of two-fingered content. Much of it is funny, makes a point, might even be seen as subversive. Well, I hope so. The spectrum of material ranges from visual puns and absurdities, bling poodles and carpeted bears, via parodies of famous paintings and a standard yellow ‘new development’ direction sign reading “Unaffordable Housing”, to the Korean Kims studying a Duchamp-esque urinal, and a POTUS strategically placed against a spread-legged Miss Mexico.

Protest against the freaks and monsters who run our world is always healthy, and it is good that art can be harnessed in this way – as it always has been. Art, protest, humour, propaganda, subversion, and resistance have a long, intimate, and worthy history. Art as fun, art as protest. Totalitarians and obsessives of all sorts have a phobia of fun, for that is invariably their Achilles heel, and – anatomically improbably – their blindspot too. They never see how unintentionally and absurdly funny they and their strutting little empires are. 

So far so good. There’s nothing quite like humour for getting one on side. Piss-taking can be irresistible, especially when there are brightly decorated rooms full of it. However, expressing a political opinion or being disrespectful are not the sole purpose of art, nor is being hilarious, as it so often is at this show. This exhibition is brilliant as a one-off, but I hope it doesn’t become too much of a habit. Equally I hope there won’t be a return to the years of accommodating the endless dreary fixations of elderly academicians (there’s only a handful of that sort of thing this year), views of smug studios with window views of south-west London or overpriced (and also smug) excursions to European art cities, or a return to the shock-horror of the shock-horror merchants, or to the studiedly difficult genre of the deeply meaningful daub that only clever people ‘get’, a world where any old rubbish can be said to be Angst No. 93 or Dalston Junction or made into a neon sign. Let’s have art that is enjoyable, understandable, and well made.

As ever, the Summer Exhibition this year is eclectic, and there is far more to it than I have suggested so far. Besides the humour and the schoolboy smirking, there is great painting as well. There’s imaginative and technically accomplished design, as well as the usual contingent of the dire and the WTF. I’m not even sure what Hockney is trying to achieve this time, and the Anish Kapoor contraption in the courtyard is only slightly less meaningless than his oversized red twisted paperclip thingy at Stratford East. But I bet the Japanese visitors like it.

Overall, though, I found the exhibition hugely enjoyable, as did, very evidently, others who were there at the same time, on Saturday. Most of them grinning, some laughing their heads off. More than anything, as I emerged afterwards into a blisteringly hot Piccadilly, it made me want to get out my paints again.