Art Review: Bronze @ Royal Academy of Art

Kapala-Hevajra and Nairatmya

For their Bronze exhibition, the RA have pulled together an outstanding array of 150 fine bronzes from all over the world, covering many different styles and spanning a period of 5000 years. Naturally I was excited to see it so flew up the stairs of the gallery past the other visitors to get into the exhibition!

The very first artwork is the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo (Greece, c..200 BC), an amazingly refined study of musculature and movement, only rediscovered in 1998. I stayed staring at it for minutes, just fascinated by the play of light on the dancer’s outstretched arms and the brilliant sheen of his smooth skin: quite a sight. The Chimaera of Arezzo (c.400 BC) on loan from Florence is considered by scholars to be one of the true Etruscan masterpieces so I felt honoured just to share space with it. I think the exhibition’s lighting really shows off the shiny surface of the beast’s ribbed flanks and unnatural snake-head tail. The exhibition has impressive cultural breadth: the early Ming period statue of the gods Kapala-Hevajra and Nairatmya (c.1400) (pictured) has a beautiful metallic lustre and a gleaming array of arms. Considering its age this piece has retained its shine very well and the jewels set into its base have a mesmerising sparkle.

In general I enjoyed more the modern creations. Some of them, such as Auguste Rodin’s ‘The Age of Bronze’ (1877), are finished to a really high shine and I found them just dazzling. I could even see my reflection in Willem De Kooning’s ‘Clamdigger’ (1971) but I must say the curved surface made my head look really small!

If there’s one thing that ruffled my feathers, it was the Japanese Bhudda head (c. 1200 AD) in gilt bronze. Most of the gilt had worn away leave a disappointingly matt surface underneath. I think it could really have benefitted from a good buff.

That aside, during the whole exhibition I was so excited by each new treasure that my feet never touched the ground. I must admit that some of the bronzes are so radient that I felt a real urge for a more tactile experience, to pick them up and feel them, even to carry them away!

Check back next week: I’ll be reviewing Charlotte De Sylas’s jewellery exhibition at the V&A. And, yes, my wife and children are very well, thank you for asking.

So it’s a pointless review but I’m trying to make a point about subjectivity.  The magpie only values the art because it’s shiny rather than because it is beautiful, has cultural value or shows fine workmanship. In the same way, a work of art is different things to different people depending on their artistic values. Similarly I want to say something about the usefulness of reviews by art critics. If you don’t like the same things as the critic, you might as well be listening to a magpie. Lastly I just wanted to show that a bird can write a better art review than Brian Sewell.