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Royal Academy prepares eye-opening summer show
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 05.06.07
Top talent: Chris Levine's Lightness of Being will be on show
New look: Michael Craig-Martin's take on Seurat's Bathers At Asnieres
Landscape: Photographs by artists such as Isaac Julien will be on display
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It has always been popular with the public, but the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has enjoyed a questionable reputation with many artists.
However, this year's line-up of the grand old men of the international art scene with a smattering of bright young things - at least young by Academy standards - may finally convince the sceptics of its value.
Important Americans including Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg and Chuck Close are joined by the collectable Germans Andreas Gursky and Anselm Kiefer for this year's show.
British artists who have submitted works include David Hockney, with the largest work the Summer Exhibition has shown.
Recently elected Royal Academicians Tracey Emin and Michael Craig-Martin - the artist who taught most of the Young British Artist generation - also present their first work as elected members.
As ever, all go on display among work chosen from more than 13,000 submissions from the general public. The works are selected and hung by a committee of Academicians.
Isaac Julien, the former Turner Prize nominee who is showing in the Summer Exhibition for the first time since he was a student in 1980, said the show had "completely changed" since then. "It's really international now and the fact that Gary Hume is an RA - and Fiona [Rae] and Michael [Craig-Martin] and Tracey [Emin] - makes it completely different," he said.
Edith Devaney, head of the Summer Exhibition, said: "When you explain the Summer Exhibition to people like Anselm Kiefer and Ed Ruscha, they just love it. There's nothing quite like it in the world. They like the fact that it's artists who decide how their work is going to be placed, not curators."
This year's co-ordinators took the theme of light as inspiration. That has prompted the inclusion of a whole gallery dedicated to photography for the first time.
Every elected member of the Royal Academy can submit works to the Summer Exhibition. Combined with the public entries, this can make it colourful but incoherent.
In 2001, Peter Blake led a shake-up of the event to improve the appearance and the range of artists. He invited younger artists to take part and the Academy also worked hard to attract interest from international heavyweights.
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