In The Jackdaw ♯8 artist Doug Lowe asked if the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition was a genuine open or an Academicians’ closed shop. Has anyone ever worked out the total cost to artists of a big show like the RA Summer Exhibition in time, depreciation of vehicles, fuel, parking, framing, mounting, entrance etc.? It must run into millions… Not all […]

PLUS CA CHANGE: In The Jackdaw ♯10, over ten years ago, anonymous artist ‘Trimmer’ responded to the inclusion of guests of the young British artists who are now, coincidentally, themselves nearly all Royal Academicians: Effectively, a whole generation of painters has been erased from the art scene, precisely because they hold some principles and adhere to some form of expression […]

… Painter Patrick Cullen supplies damning evidence that the answer is ‘No!’ A detailed survey of 2011’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition reveals that the non-members’ work now represents only 29% of the total exhibition if measured by the amount of wall space it commands. This is in contrast to a figure of 78% estimated for the same show exactly one […]

Inspired by landscape painter Patrick Cullen, The Jackdaw Sept-Oct 2011 reprinted pieces about the Royal Academy that have appeared in The Jackdaw over the last eleven years. All deal with the genuine fears of artists that the Summer Exhibition is progressively a closed shop whilst being marketed as an ‘Open’. Patrick’s research succinctly reinforces previous claims made by artists that […]