Rae is one of only two artists purchased by Saatchi in the last decade who is getting better The other is Gary Hume. But although he is now more interesting and competent, Hume cannot escape the cool stance with which he began his career: that of the painter who cares nothing about painting, so he’ll pretend to be an amateur and let’s see what comes out. That kind of coolness is a trap.The room that’s barred to children contains mannequins of children. They have been devised (though not made) by the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman. Some of the noses of these little figures, which are all female, have been replaced by penises. In another piece, this one in the public rooms, similar toy girls act out routines derived from advertising and pornography.
The Chapmans have borrowed their act from the American artist Jeff Koons. A lot of the art in “Sensation” comes from imitating Americans. Harvey gets his picture from Close, Patterson abjectly follows Rauschenberg, Gavin Turk is also a follower of Koons, Peter Davies gives us a swot’s version of Basquiat and Damien Hirst’s tanks are a late rerun of American minimalism Startling a few years ago, they now look tired. Hirst’s paintings are simply wretched.The more satisfying pieces in a thin exhibition are Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost, a sensitive painting by Simon Callery and photographs of a working-class household by Richard Billingham Much other work is foolish or trivial It’s by artists who are wasting their time and our time. If the RA had wished to put on a decent exhibition of new British art in the last 15 years, they would have borrowed from other people besides Saatchi Then we might have had a more responsible survey.
“Sensation” is cheating its audience and it leaves some nasty experiences in the eye.Royal Academy, W1 (0171 300 8000), to 28 Dec. A correction: in the `Sunday Review’ of 31 Aug, we said that the artists Langlands & Bell were represented by the Victoria Miro Gallery In fact, they are independent.. Four women today, none quite what she seems. First on the catwalk is Miss America 1958: let’s hear it for her! Eighty million people watch, awestruck, as this blue-eyed blonde is crowned.
From now on, the compere proclaims, her address will be Main Street USA. But this girl, Marilyn Van Derbur, is Not Just a Pretty Face (R4); oh no, she has a beauty that makes all the other girls seem drab – so let’s see the rest of her wholesome family. On come her three lovely sisters, her proud momma gushing about this coronation being every mother’s dream, her father saying she’s bin a lovely gal all her life … And then suddenly it’s 1991 and Marilyn is giving a public lecture (besides being the most popular Miss America of all time and gaining straight As throughout college, she has also become a TV presenter and the most successful female lecturer ever, in the entire history of the continent), and she is telling the world that she was routinely and regularly raped by her father between the ages of five and 18.
It is a shocking moment – indeed it is a shocking story – and it ought to leave us brimming over with grief and sympathy Somehow it doesn’t.
It may be something to do with all those superlatives, or the many, detailed descriptions of the sobs that eventually accompanied her acknowledgement of the trauma (heaving, terrible, gut-wrenching); or the therapies she tried In Recovery (dance-therapy, art-therapy, um, self-defence-therapy?); or the unswerving adulation of her husband, her devoted “youth-leader” and her profoundly understanding daughter. But I think the moment she lost me was when she said “For this reason I came on earth,” ie that other incest-survivors might see her, touch her, gain strength from her … is this auto-apotheosis?Which takes us to La Divina, an R2 Arts Programme about Maria Callas. It took a few chuckling minutes to get used to the idea of Simon Callow’s rich coloratura baritone describing, in every colour and shade of the vocal spectrum, “the woman who searched for love, lived for her art and died, alone and lonely, 20 years ago, almost a recluse, in her Paris apartment”.