Summer Exhibition 2009

The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, that venerable exercise in a certain sort of rather refined openness and equality, is a survival from an earlier time. The jury-selected salon-cum-salesroom was once the established norm. Now it is something of an exception, and in this case a fêted one, with its renowned mixture of the amateur with the professional and its policy of numbering rather than attributing the works, a feature which always makes a refreshing change from the usual gallery game of names, reputations, and received ideas.

As usual, there is some exceptional work and some dismal work. Among the welter of paintings, prints and sculptures, John Hoyland's bright galaxies of paint are a treat, Michael Kidner's beautiful geometric drawings are precise and touching and the witty eroticism of Peter Olaya's 'No Glove, No Love' is a high point.

Overall the quality is very high, and it seems rather old hat to sneer at the 'Summer Exhibition', or treat it as a light-hearted date for the calendar, for as a show it provides the perfect illustration of the fact that liking art is not about liking all art. Liking everything is a roundabout way of liking nothing, and to be able to make independent judgements about personal preference is to have one's own taste. It follows that one is not partial to everything, and most visitors will find plenty of stuff they dislike or feel indifferent to. But if art matters, then all of it matters, whether you like it or not, and the Summer Exhibition always gives an inkling of the vast multitudes of artists who are committed to their trade, come fair weather or foul. Even if there were not so much good work here this year, that fact alone ought to recommend it, on principle.