Angelica Kauffmann gave us strong heroines and a female take on history 200 years early

The run up to International Women’s Day is a poignant time for the Royal Academy to unveil its Angelika Kauffmann show. While the global day of celebration naturally focuses on the rights and achievements of contemporary women, it also tends to prompt the re-discovery of those whose achievements have been forgotten, or severely downplayed, in a history mostly written by men. 

Kauffmann is a perfect example. 

In her lifetime, she was a superstar of the art world. The great and the good sought her out for their portraits. Her epic history paintings graced the finest buildings. She was a founding member of the Royal Academy in London, and her studio in Rome became an essential stop for aristocrats on the grand tour. In her time, her name would have been regularly grouped with Gainsborough and Reynolds. These days, most people know them … but not her. This show aims to redress that balance.

It is a luscious exhibition full of people and landscapes that are easy on the eye. If you are someone who loves Bridgerton for feel-good entertainment that wraps you in a cosy bubble of rich, attractive people, you will be very happy in these galleries. Everyone sports a flawless complexion, pale as cream except for delicate pink blushes and rosy lips. Gorgeous clothes fold, cascade and drape around fit bodies. Most critically, eyes sparkle. Kauffmann doesn’t quite come up to the mastery of the smile that made last year’s Frans Hals show such a joy, but she is world class at painting eyes that radiate merriment, intelligence and jollity. Look at the scandalous but exquisite Emma Hamilton (above), or the charismatic thespian David Garrick (below). These are rooms full of people you’d follow on Instagram and pay dearly to party with.

Serious pundits of the art world will take my Bridgerton reference as a criticism. It’s not. In fact, it’s why Kauffmann represents her age so well.

In many ways, we are closer to the Georgians than to the buttoned-up, etiquette-obsessed Victorians and Edwardians who are nearer to us in time. Georgian London was an age of celebrity, often criticised for style over substance. Women were a long way from even, but there were famous female names in the arts, politics, and literature. Sexual mores were loser than they were to become. Artists searching for their truth didn’t typically plunge into disturbing depths, but rather looked for a composite of positives to give us a person’s best self, a landscape’s ideal look or a building’s most perfect iteration. Think social media airbrushing apps for an earlier age.

This isn’t just all about beautiful people, however. In her time, Kauffmann was particularly famous … and deeply unusual … for being a woman who embraced epic history painting. These, not portraits or landscapes, were considered the highest form of art by the Georgians. By their nature they were exclusive and male-oriented. They often focused on battles or warriors, generally full of thrusting, semi-naked men who it wouldn’t be considered appropriate for women to paint. More significantly, history paintings tended to explore nuances of ancient civilisations or classical myth that you had to be extremely well-educated to grasp. 

Your average shopkeeper was unlikely to look at a scene and instantly understand “those must be the Horatii boys taking their oath,” much less discuss the relevance of the story to modern politics over their port.  Women ... even rich ones ... tended not to get the educations that opened that world to them either. Nor were they allowed in to life drawing classes to master capturing male form. Emphasising that point is a fascinating group portrait in the show depicting all the founding members of the Royal Academy. It’s set in a life drawing classroom, which Kauffmann and her fellow female founder Mary Moser couldn’t enter, so they’re included as portraits on the wall. 

Kauffmann worked around that reality. The Swiss-born daughter of an established painter drank in both history and art at his knee and was quickly acclaimed a child prodigy. So it’s not surprising she took on history painting. But she did it with a difference. She gives us the great stories from a woman’s point of view. It’s still history, but an inversion of the familiar. My favourite in the show gives us the young Edward III on crusade before he became king. You can imagine the battlefield fun the men would have had with this. All that blood! All those exotic arms and armour! Kauffmann chooses instead a tale of the soon-to-be-queen Eleanor saving her husband’s life by sucking poison out of the cut of an assassin’s blade. 

Eleanor and Edward were one of the monarchy’s greatest love stories. London’s Charing Cross is the last of a series of memorials a heartbroken Edward built to commemorate every place her coffin rested en route from her death to her funeral and internment in Westminster Abbey. Here, they are young lovers. Kauffman’s feminine perspective still gives us bravery and nobility, those staples of history painting, but we get a quiet moment of tender intimacy, Eleanor’s lips pressed gently to her husband’s arm. Eleanor looks calm and determined, the maids behind her impressed, the future king awestruck by this demonstration of love. 

Think of the trend in Hollywood over the past 20 years to give us stories with stronger heroines, or to rework familiar tales from the woman’s perspective, and you’ll grasp what Kauffmann was doing 250 years ago. There are only a handful of her history paintings here. I would have liked more.  

In fact, I would have liked to have seen more of everything. Three galleries in the attic doesn’t seem enough to me for a woman of such significance, who left behind an enormous body of work. That includes contributions to architecture they could have shown off with models or projections. We do get the panels she painted for the ceilings of the new Royal Academy, but there’s nothing else of the contributions she made to Palladian country houses. She was a favourite of Robert Adam, and spent some time working in houses in Ireland that were following his style. I first encountered her work as a series of decorative pendants in the crumbling but still-magnificent Castletown House. 

I would also have liked more on her life, relationships and opinions. She was both phenomenally talented and exceptionally shrewd at business. An early self-portrait shows her torn between the muses of art and music. As a young woman she was as talented a singer as she was an artist, but the family priest warned her of the moral dangers of going down the operatic route.

Her travels with her father, the way she built her brand before she arrived in England so she stepped into a market ready to embrace her, an intriguing first marriage to a fraudster who pretended aristocracy and was presumably after her money, her role in the RA, her eventual establishment in Rome. It’s all here, but in brief. This show gives us a pencil sketch, and I wanted a fully realised history painting. 

Don’t let that put you off from going, however. In a world of art history dominated by men and masculine stories, Kauffmann provides a refreshing counterpoint and reminds us that there were a lot more women doing interesting things in 18th century Europe than we tend to remember.

Angelica Kauffmann is in the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, until 30 June 2024.

RA Summer Exhibition and Hampton Court: Shared theme, very different moods

 Gardeners are instinctive optimists. The act of planting a tiny seed in March in hope of abundance six months later is annual proof. Artists are inspired by nature, too, but this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, themed on climate, shows the artists on the pessimistic end of the spectrum.

About 40 percent of the work on display seethed with anger, while an equal number projected a deep melancholy. This being Great Britain, much of the negativity was infused with black humour, but it was still all a bit grim. A small, remaining percentage of the work celebrated the joy of what the climate brings us, and inspired change to protect it. 

Meanwhile, 14 miles west, another staple of the London season was far more cheerful. The Hampton Court Garden Festival celebrated urban micro-gardens, water saving, compost and bug houses, thronged with crowds who clearly believe their personal actions can make a difference … even if the blazing heat causing the gardens to droop was punishing proof of climate change.

I was fortunate to attend both in the same week, and enjoyed the contrast. In addition to sharing a theme this year, both are essentially big market places: new art in Piccadilly, plants and garden kit at the palace. But you have to be a lot richer to do any buying at the Royal Academy.

Had money been no object, my choice at the Exhibition would have been Jess de Wahls’ Nevertheless, she persisted, a work of embroidery roughly a metre square. At the top, an idyllic world lives under a golden dome of honeycomb, patrolled by protective bees. But at the mid point, one of their number struggles, and below him is a world of death. (Or is it her? The she of the title being the queen bee struggling to survive?) The contrast and vivid detail reminded me of those scenes that contrast heaven and hell with such drama in medieval Italian churches, and the sheer skill of the embroidery was masterful. In concept and execution, I can see (just about) spending £85,000 to take this one home, should I be the type of person to have that kind of cash.

One of the great delights of the Exhibition, of course, is wandering the galleries pretending you have untold millions to invest in art. What would you buy? There’s a lot of conceptual stuff here that falls into my  “you’re pulling my leg” category. Such as a page from a digital notepad, with some signatures on it, blown up to enormous size and called They came out of nowhere pointing to nowhere he said / Visitor book painting. Creator Ryan Gander (I can’t bring myself to award him the adjective artist) has the chutzpah to put a £90,000 price tag on this one.

Equally perplexing, though at least more attractive to have on a wall, was an oversized canvas of vegetables rendered in blocks of solid, bold colours. A quick hour on the computer for the corporate designers I work with, but Sir Michael Craig-Martin, a fully-accredited Royal Academician, is charging £69,500 for Untitled (with 2 carrots). To each his own.

While there’s plenty of this kind of thing to puzzle over (a bear sculpted of black fibre mauling Pinocchio, a child’s drawing of a football ground, four heads hanging from a triangular flood sign graffitied to say blood), there are bits and pieces of beauty throughout to captivate even the most passionate critic of modern art. A pair of masterful, large watercolours of the Grand Canyon with soil samples set in glass tubes within the mount to demonstrate the exact colours of reality, and how perfectly artist Tony Foster got to them, seemed excellent value for millionaire’s money at £72,500. (Should you be in the market, it’s called Hot and Dry / Hot and Wet - Grand Canyon rim to river/ 18 days)

I was intrigued by the old-meets-new conjunction of Rob and Nick Carter’s Transforming flowers in a vase. At first glance, in frame, subject matter and style it’s an old Dutch master still life of a vase of spring flowers. Only on close inspection do you realise it’s a photographic image. Even closer inspection tells you it’s not a  photo, but a film. The flowers slowly wither and die over the course of the 70-minute film, only to be regenerated to fresh perfection on a loop. This seemed a bargain at £30,000, and one I suspect many of those attending the Hampton Court Garden Festival would happily snap up if they had the cash.

But while Hampton Court is indeed a festival of shopping, an attendee would be hard pressed to spend £30,000 on anything. Maybe a posh conservatory or an enormous metal sculpted tree that’s also a fountain. But pleasures are more humble here. My most extravagant purchase was £30 on a single plant. Hosta Liberty is a new introduction with long stems, large leaves and a colour palette that turns from golden yellow to ivory cream as it matures. Not quite as much of a transformation as the Carters’ video, but at one thousandth of the price, how could I resist? It’s already planted out into my hosta bed (the tallest one in the centre) and will no doubt be its crowning glory.

Regular readers may remember that the Festival (re-branded from the Hampton Court Flower Show in 2019) has been an annual outing for me and the same two friends since 2010, and over that time our priorities have shifted more to the annual catch up than to display gardens. Which is a good thing, since there are a lot less of them here than there used to be.

I don’t know whether it’s a planned shift, or the lack of corporate sponsorship post pandemic, but the show gardens were so small and sparse to be mostly forgettable. The notable exception was a Ukrainian garden, where grasses and plants were starting to come back around the burned shell of a Ukrainian house. Another parallel to the Summer Exhibition here: powerful messaging but nothing I was planning to take home.

Corporate sponsors seem to have disappeared almost completely to be replaced by charities, whose gardens tend to concentrate more on getting a message across (like this year’s Alzheimer’s garden with a fibrous, menacing web of black stuff hanging over its paths) than innovative planting schemes, new plants or the latest trends in colour. We simply weren’t interested enough to give much of our attention to any. Admittedly, the fact that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky nor a hint of breeze and the temperature was pushing 30C discouraged us, as well.

We found the greatest interest, and creativity, in a series of allotment gardens. One devoted to menopause education, planted with herbs that support women’s health, was popular with we three women of a certain age. But our favourite was a veg plot that integrated hand-knitted elements for a bit of fun.

The greatest salvo of optimism … a huge counter to the gloom of the Summer Exhibition … was the schools section. Each year children are set a theme and various schools enter displays. This year was bug hotels, and the creativity was both smile-inducing and impressive. You could hear their “architectural” offerings provoking comments across visitors, who inevitably were sharing stories with each other about how much these simple little items improve the whole ecosystem of their gardens. Spending the day with thousands of people who are each making little improvements to help fight climate change left me feeling a good deal more cheerful than I had been a few nights before on Piccadilly.

As usual, we spent most of our time, and money, in the great plant marquee where all the specialist nurseries gather to show off new introductions along with the best of their existing plants. Despite three of us with mature gardens, we each managed some treasures. (In my case, along with the Liberty, two other hostas, three dahlias and a scented geranium, most of which are destined for pots.)

The music programme continues to expand since the Festival re-naming, and in different weather we might have lingered much more at the various stages. Instead we spent a hefty chunk of time in shady areas relaxing with cool drinks. If climate change makes this an average July, they’re going to have to consider shading more of the entertainment spots.

They’ll also need more food options. While much else has changed, the food trucks are still a long way from the dazzling profusion you might find at London hot spots like Borough Market. 

Both are something I suspect will be on planning lists, as the transformation continues. The direction is most obvious in this year’s introduction of a Flowers After Hours party on Friday night, with admission from 4-10, all the floral activities continuing and an uptick in the music. There’s even a silent disco. The fact that the RHS is charging almost £20 more for this event than the just under £39 members pay to go for the whole day says a lot.

The jury is out on whether or not our trio will ever convert to night time attendees and invite the boys along. I rather doubt it. We have our priorities. Whatever the changes, Hampton Court will remain an anchor in our social diaries.

Hockney’s Norman spring is pure joy for the soul

Anyone who has helped older relatives come to grips with mobile devices and apps will approach David Hockney’s new exhibition with a sense of wonder before they even see the paintings. The 84-year-old artist produced everything in his new show, The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 on an iPad, working at speed.

To be fair, the British-born artist is a long way from your average octogenarian. He is probably the world’s best-known modern painter, producing steadily since the 1960s, and holds the record for the most expensive work ever sold by a living artist. He’s had an interest in innovative tools and technology his whole career, from the high-tech acrylics he used in his early works to initial explorations of the drawing power of computers in the mid ‘80s. His iPad has been a favourite canvas for at least a decade now, and he has become so associated with it that app developers work with him to create new brush styles and functionality.

This show is special not because of the technology but because of its circumstances. Hockney was visiting a house he owns in Normandy early in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Europe. He ended up locked in there. While most of us binge-watched Netflix and overindulged on comfort food and alcohol, Hockney saw a chance to do something special with his art. He created a new painting every day in his garden, returning to subjects as the world progressed from stark winter to glorious spring.

He’s taken a page out of Monet’s book, fitting since the impressionist painter’s famous garden is not far from Hockney‘s Norman place. Looking at 2020’s progressions of an apple tree, the sunrise over distant hills or the same stand of poplars, you’ll immediately think of Monet’s repetition of haystacks or water lilies, and have the same joys of comparing and contrasting. Also in common with the Impressionists is the way these paintings look radically different from up close and far away. In close proximity, you will marvel at the composition, the brushstrokes, and the way simple, repetitive techniques coalesce to create an object. Look back from across the room and all the detail fades into a spectacularly beautiful picture.

Most of all, however, these paintings will just make you happy. Hockney‘s colour palette is as joyous as the season he is representing. The three exhibition rooms are bright, cheerful, and full of hope. As every gardener knows instinctively, spring is a time of unbridled joy and possibility, when everything bursts fresh from the ground and all the colours seem more intense after the gloom of winter. The 116 paintings hung here capture that perfectly, starting with bare branches in a stark landscape and taking us through the to full, lush greenery of early summer. Trees blossom. Buds pop. Daffodils dance. Leaves creep over a treehouse. Gentle spring rain makes fairy circles on the pond.  

These paintings are deceptive. At first glance, many of them seem remarkably simple; large blocks of colour, single trees, basic shapes. You might dismiss them as graphic design or illustration. But the longer you look, the more complex they become. In fact, there are no solid colours. The green of a lawn is layers of subtly different brushstrokes and colours to give that sense of life and variety between blades of grass. A spill of white blossom is a careful construction of minute dots and dashes of whites, pinks and greens. Skies are a fabulous riot of much more than blue.

Hockney is a master of light. From the watery, weak sun glimmering through bare branches, to the sharp, crisp light of a spring morning to the low spotlights of late afternoon falling across bushes, you can feel the earth moving the sun ever higher. When fog dispels that light, he blurs every edge and surface to create such a perfect atmosphere you can almost feel gentle mist on your skin. Night skies perfectly capture the reflections of a bright moon against drifting clouds

The show is hung in chronological order, allowing you to walk through the developing season. You will then want to go back to find the repetition of the different subjects and compare and contrast. The catalogue, reasonably priced (as exhibition catalogues go) at £25 focuses more on the objects painted as a series. I snapped it up, not just for the smile it will put on my face every time I flip through it, but to study his techniques in colour and layering as I try to get better at drawing and painting. 

As all really good art exhibitions do, the Hockney show sparked all sorts of great conversational topics afterwards. Though these were different than the usual. How does intellectual property work when your art is digital, and therefore easily reproduced? Does the artist dictate the size of the reproduction? What difference does printing technology make? Certainly the colours of ink must vary and threaten the artist’s vision. If digital art can be easily reproduced, is there any point in seeing it in a gallery? Can’t you just look at a book or browse it online?

I can answer this last one. You still need to see it in person. It is a matter of size. Most of these paintings are quite large… they would overwhelm any room in a typical family home. Seeing them at this size drives home the magic of the variation between up close and the long view. Being surrounded by a dense hang of them is like being enveloped in colour and delight. My body might have been in the Royal Academy in late August, but my soul was in Normandy in the spring.

It’s a delicious irony that art created by a forced incarceration has allowed all who look at it to travel in time and distance. And in a time when the word is so full of worry, it’s a potent and much-needed medicine to see something that inspires such pure joy. 

The Arrival of Spring is on at the Royal Academy until 26 September. At posting, there was limited availability, mostly on weekdays, with Sunday the 19th and 26th the only weekend dates left. 

Reunion of Charles I's collection is a once-in-a-lifetime wonder

Art and monarchy haven't been happy bedfellows in England. Quite the opposite. Our greatest royal
patrons have often come to sticky ends.

Richard II brought the courtly majesty of the international gothic style to England, pouring money into buildings, art and jewellery while setting fashions that would last centuries. Little is left beyond Westminster Hall and the exquisite Wilton Diptych in the National Gallery. Richard himself died in captivity after alienating everyone and triggering a palace coup. George IV literally defined the Regency era, stamping his architectural style across London, restoring palaces to give us most of the interiors we know today and leaving the wonder of Brighton's Royal Pavilion. He was widely reviled at his death. But no monarch pushed the extremes harder than Charles I. The cause of a bloody civil war, branded a traitor and beheaded by his own parliament, he was also the single greatest connoisseur of art ever to sit on this nation's throne.

The Royal Academy's special exhibition is now proving that point with jaw-dropping exuberance. For the first time since 1649, when the culture-hating Roundheads established the Protectorate and flogged off the collection, 140 masterpieces from Charles' precious collection are hanging again under one roof. It is a lavish Old Masters collection that rivals many major museums. It also tells some fascinating stories.

First, that Charles was a revolutionary. England at the time was an artistic backwater. The iconoclasts of Edward VIs reign had whitewashed the churches and destroyed a rich legacy of religious art. In the years that followed, the English displayed a notable talent for wood carving, plasterwork and floral-patterned fabrics, but painting was mostly limited to portraits of stiff nobles in heavy costumes. Into this world Charles brought the second century life-sized Roman statue of the crouching Venus, actually drawing attention to her lush naked curves with her coy attempts to cover herself. Behind her at this show hangs Rubens' larger-than-life painting "Minerva protects Pax from Mars".  More lush, exposed flesh, in a scene of movement and dynamism: armour glints, silks and satins billow, putti prance and a leopard gambols. It's safe to say that people who hadn't left England (which would have been most) would never have seen anything like it. And that anyone who'd been influenced by the buttoned-up conservatism of the Puritans would have been deeply shocked. Charles didn't evolve artistic taste, he dropped a whole new tradition into alien territory.

Second, that Charles had astonishing taste and bought well. If only he could have run his country with the same savvy. As a young man he travelled to Spain to woo a Habsburg bride. He was unsuccessful in love, but the Spanish royal family's art collection inspired him to shop. The gallery filled with his early acquisitions, including some notable Titians, shows off a sure eye for masterpieces from the start. Later, he capitalised on the decline of the noble Italian Gonzaga family, buying as a whole a collection they'd amassed over generations. He looked beyond the continental fashion for the Italians, however, seeing quiet beauty in Bruegel and Rembrandt, and beefing up the family's existing collection of Holbeins. He commissioned new works from Rubens and Van Dyck. He supported the Mortlake Tapestry works in their (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to become an English rival to Savonnieres or Gobelin.

One of Charles' early bargains, when still prince of Wales, had been to pick up Raphael's true-size working drawings for the tapestries then hanging in the Sistine Chapel. Charles then loaned them to Mortlake to create English-produced versions. The results (four from a set of 10) hang here, liberated from storage in the Louvre. Any visitor to the V&A has probably walked by Raphael's drawings, which are undeniably impressive. But the finished products here are awe-inspiring. They take a bit of imagination, given that their gold and silver threads have faded and tarnished, but other colours are still remarkably bright. The movement within the scenes (all taken from the lives of the St. Peter), the life in the faces and the lavish details woven into the borders are all remarkable. It's a real treat to see these, and one of the highlights of the show.

Another is to see three of Van Dyck's monumental portraits of the king in one place. This is a story of rigorous image management; Van Dyck is arguably one of the world's first great PR men. His work transforms Charles from a slight, weak, tentative man into a heroic military leader on horseback (one from Buckingham Palace, one from the National Gallery) and a thoughtful romantic hero captured while hunting (from the Louvre). It's the Louvre's version I like best, and it's a delight to see it here. The adjoining gallery is filled with more family portraiture. Here the Stuarts are a dreamily-gorgeous family in lavish settings, wearing sumptuous clothes, accompanied by majestic horses and adorable dogs. If Hello Magazine had been available to get these images to the wider populous, it might have saved them.

The tale of commerce and dispersal is another fascinating theme to follow. The Parliamentarians might have been artistic Philistines, but they were keen record keepers. They had decided to flog off all of Charles' possessions within two days of taking over. They appraised and catalogued over 5000 items, from art to dog collars and chamber pots, then recorded sale prices. (To be fair, nearly a decade of Civil War had beggared the country; liquidating the royal loot was a way to recoup some losses.) Today's curators have put those sale prices on labels throughout the show. It's great fun to go shopping, compare values and consider changes in taste. Portraiture from Northern artists was a bargain, for example: you could have had 20 for the price of that one crouching Venus. It's also fascinating to see where things went. Loans from the Louvre, the Prado and the Vatican demonstrate that the misfortune of one ruling family aided the collections of others. Around 60% of the items come from our own Royal Collection, testimony to the fact that successive generations worked hard to recover what was lost. Or to re-create. One of the Van Dyck portraits here recorded the crown jewels before Parliament melted them down, becoming a critical guide when they had to be recreated.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are 140 works here (mind-bogglingly, that's still just a bit more than 10% of the works of art that Parliament sold off), and they all deserve contemplation. Other favourites of mine included the famous triple portrait of Charles displayed with a copy of the marble bust for which it was the source material (the Bernini original was destroyed in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698); Mantegna's enormous series of paintings showing the Triumph of Caesar (usually in its own gallery at Hampton Court, which many visitors miss); an astonishing oversized Roman cameo of the emperor Claudius, displayed so you can look at it side-on and see how the layers of stone have been cut away to create multiple colours; Italian Renaissance bronzes and some exquisitely detailed Nicholas Hilliard miniatures of the Tudors.

The size of the show is, frankly, overwhelming. We had 90 minutes before the gallery closed and felt rushed. I'd recommend a two-hour minimum or, if you can manage it, two visits. That's what I'll be trying to arrange, if I can work it into the diary before the exhibition closes on 15 April.

And if you want to continue the story, you can buy a combined ticket for the Queen's Gallery to see the show there that explores how Charles II started bringing his father's collection back together and used the power of art to restore the monarchy. I reviewed the show here.

RA's Abstract Expressionism show leaves me confused, but reflective

I had a Damascene moment of revelation at the Royal Academy's Abstract Expressionists show. I suddenly understood, and had complete empathy for, the anti-establishment frustration of the "heartland" Trump voter.

Here I was, working hard to appreciate a show full of canvasses from a tiny, exclusive group of New Yorkers. I was there because, as a supporter of the arts and a lover of London's museums, I thought I should be. I knew that Abstract Expressionism was considered one of the United States' greatest contributions to the history of art. But the rooms of acknowledged masterpieces left me unimpressed. This little circle of urban bohemians seemed completely engrossed in themselves, and completely unconcerned about the preferences and desires of their audience. 

There was an audio guide with commentary from worthy intellectuals spinning lots of erudite interpretations in a faintly condescending tone that implied that if I didn't "get" this stuff, I was either uneducated, a country bumpkin or a cultural philistine. (I am none of those.) An example: "Clyfford Still wanted his viewers to have a direct experience with the work, without being encumbered by illustration or storytelling." Guess what, Miss Establishment, I LIKE being told a story! In fact, it's one of the primary things I look to art to do. And by stripping it out, you've destroyed the art that I love.

Kick these bums out! Let's go back to the good old days! MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN! I won't push the politics any further, but you get the point.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy elements of this show. There are beautiful things here. Many succeed in the stated objective of the movement: they got me to feel emotion (that's the expression part) without resorting to the depiction of recognisable figures (that's the abstract). The audio guide helped me to understand the skill and craftsmanship behind the canvasses. No, Jackson Pollock did NOT just fling paint around. There's an exquisite method to his madness. There were even several things in this show I'd happily live with, most notably Lee Krasner's Untitled 1948 (above) and De Kooning's cheerful blocks of blue, yellow and green in Villa Borghese. Although the problem with most of these canvasses is that, unless you live in a massive home with vast stretches of stark walls, they're impractical. This is art meant for vast white galleries, not homes.

As wandered through the show I became increasingly perplexed as to where the line was between great art, graphic design and interior decoration. Jackson Pollack's mural (above), commissioned for Peggy Guggenheim's entrance hall in 1948, is a vast and beautiful thing with beguiling colours that seem to dance across the canvas. Rothko's big, fuzzy squares of floating colour do indeed bring on the "serene sense of calm and balance" described on the audio guide. I actually found the abstract sculpture, inserted into the middle of most galleries almost as an afterthought, to be my favourite part of the show and wished the guide would have spent more time on them. Barnett Newman's tall bronze poles with their irregular surfaces made a dramatic statement, for example, in front of his tall canvases with blocks of colour.

They all worked for me as design. They triggered fond memories of the bright plastic modernism of my youth (seen in a very different context earlier this year at Las Vegas' Neon Museum), and reminded me just how good the Mad Men producers were at set dressing. If someone hired me to create a striking public space in a modern hotel lobby, or to do a memorable lobby in a corporate office, this would be "go to" stuff. Striking scene setting, but memorable on its own as art? I am still skeptical. Intellectually, I probably would have been much happier with this show at the Victoria and Albert, where they would have explored the wider design movement.

Not everything struck a pleasant chord. The problem with abstraction is that, if it doesn't provoke emotion, it can be spectacularly boring. I walked past a lot of stuff that I just couldn't summon enough interest in for thoughtful contemplation. Frustrating in a show that costs a whopping £17 to enter. And not all of those expressive emotions are pleasant. With the exception of the aforementioned Villa Borghese and one other, similar canvas, De Kooning's paintings are like angry, paranoid mental disorders trapped in a frame. There's the kernel of a frightening Doctor Who episode here. There was plenty more rage at the establishment throughout. And then there's just the preposterous. I am never going to see Ad Reinhardt's all black paintings as anything but the beginning of the triumph of marketing spin over skill in the world of art.

For me, the real value of going to this show was a personal one. My mother was at Washington University studying art ... specialising in graphic design ... from 1958 to 1962. Abstract Expressionism would have been the dominant trend at that time. This show injected me inside my mother's university experience. I suddenly understood her earlier work, all the stuff that had never made sense to me. I understood why she ... passionate about watercolour, landscapes and the classics ... really didn't care much for art school. And why she was never really happy as an artist until she rejected what she learned and went back to watercolouring the peaceful, figurative scenes she loved. So even though I'm never going to get hugely excited about the abstract expressionists, it was worth going to the show just to get that additional insight into my mother's world.

Painting the Modern Garden: Sweet, soothing, but not enough

Confession time: I'm lukewarm on the Impressionists.

I understand their transformative influence on modern art. I appreciate the brushwork, the connection to nature, the capturing of a moment, the fascination with light. And yet I stand in a room of Monets and think: "All very pleasant. Would be fabulous as wallpaper, fabric or a mural in a garden room. But is it Great Art?"

I know, of course, that I am in a tiny minority. And I knew, the moment I saw it publicised, that the Royal Academy was on to a winner with Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. Everyone's favourite artistic movement, combined with one of the Brits' greatest passions? A sell-out proposition. Indeed, getting tickets to this exhibit required serious advanced planning, despite the RA extending its hours. We slipped in just five days before the exhibition's close.

Yes, I enjoyed it. How could I not? I love gardens, and here were 10 galleries packed with gorgeous examples. While few canvases provoked rapt fascination, every painting was a thing of beauty and ... as spring brings my own garden to life ... a celebration of the new season.

Monet was the obvious star, dominating several galleries from start to finish. Already familiar with him as an artist, I was most intrigued by the chance to see how he developed as a gardener, from his "starter garden" at Argenteuil to the Giverny we all know. My favourites from his works were large, blue-tinted canvases painted at the end of his career when his eyesight was going. The undeniable climax for most viewers, however, would have been the display of three massive, watery canvases known as the Agapanthus Tryptich. Much was made of the RA bringing these together for the first time ever in Britain, though they've pulled it off several times in my home town of St. Louis. That's where the middle canvas lives ... the others coming from Kansas City and Cleveland.

All very soul-soothing and gorgeous. But I found other artists more captivating. My revelation was three Spaniards I'd never heard of: Santiago Rusinol, Joaquin Sorolla and Joaquin Mir y Trinxet.

All three moved far beyond pretty floral visions, drawing us in to magical gardens with mysterious lighting. I wanted to leap through the frames to explore. The best picture in the exhibition for me was Rusinol's Jardines de Monforte. You're standing in a classical garden room enclosed by walls of clipped evergreens. It's obviously approaching dusk on a summer's day; beyond the hedges the sun is still blazing, but here you can feel the cool relief of the growing shadows. You can practically hear the evening crickets begin to chirp. Nearby, Sorolla's depiction of his gardens in Madrid sent me searching for more when I got home. (Yes, still there. Open to public. Now on bucket list.) And Mir y Trinxet's Catalan gardens, flaming red in the setting sun, were beguiling visions of a fantasy world rather than our own.

Given the topic, the curators took a noble stab at making this show as much about gardening as about art. They explained that revolution was sweeping horticulture and painting, and that major movements like Arts and Crafts influenced both disciplines. Some of the paintings are displayed side-by-side with seed catalogues and gardening implements, and there's an entertaining room 2/3rds of the way through where you could sit down on teak garden furniture to watch films of Monet wandering around at Giverny and look at photos of the featured artists planting, pruning and watering.

But as someone really interested in gardening, they didn't go far enough. Broadway was mentioned briefly, as a favourite venue for John Singer Sargent. (His bold poppies, at left, were another favourite of mine. I could have done with more of him and less Monet.) Yet despite the Cotswolds reference, no paintings featured nearby Hidcote ... one of the most influential gardens of the 20th century. Nor Sissinghurst, or any of the other world-shaping gardens in this country. Almost everything depicted in the show was continental, with the majority in France.  Understandable if you're focusing on the most famous garden painters, but if you're linking art to horticulture ... for a show in London ... the absence of the great English gardens of the early 20th century is inexcusable. I also wanted to know how the artists might have influenced plant choice or colour schemes. We got a bit of a sense that the artists helped make dahlias and irises all the rage, but I wanted more. (There might have been more detail in the audio guide or the catalogue, but I explored without their help.)

Overall, it was an enjoyable show and I'm delighted I went. But for me, they tried to accomplish too much. I would have enjoyed a smaller exhibition, with less emphasis on Monet, that dug much deeper into connections with garden design. But that wouldn't have brought in the same crowds. On the basis of ticket sales alone, I suspect this is one of the most successful exhibitions the Royal Academy has put on in years.