Walk across Trafalgar Square in the spring sunshine of 17 April 2021. Pass by Heather Phillipson’s eye-catching giant sculpture, The End, a delicious swirl of whipped cream, cherry, fly and drone, and on to the RBA annual exhibition. In those few hundred yards you experience the full spectrum of contemporary British artistic endeavour, from ‘4th-plinth-ism’ to the equally finely crafted ‘framed’ work in the Mall Galleries. Behind the excellent portraits, landscapes, and still life paintings, the influences can be detected - or imagined - Lucian Freud, Stanley Spencer, the Dutch masters. Great credit to the RBA for promoting such skill and dedication. One quibble, and not the RBA’s fault. Uniformly, the prices are too low. This quality of work deserves more. Artists, you devalue yourselves.
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James Kelso
Author, author, I hear you cry. Well, here goes. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally… Hang on that’s not me, that’s Tennyson. Oops! Wrong copy, sorree. I’m James Kelso – and, actually, do you know what, I feel a tad awkward writing this sort of self-puffery. So, if it’s okay with you, can we leave it there? Thank you. I knew you’d understand. Browse on, McDuff. Archives
September 2021
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