Smash hit

First-timers included Peter Prins, a Dutchman whose late wife had repeatedly urged him to enter. “This is a homage to her,” he said yesterday, as he unpacked a couple of imposing landscapes.

The Summer Exhibition accepted photography for the first time last year. Alwyn Coates, a photographer, struggled to carry a couple of gigantic photographs that he had attached to sheets of aluminium and Perspex. Carrying them into the building on his back, he joked that “they are the weight of ten elephants” before removing the wrapping and revealing vast images of elephants in Sri Lanka.

Paul Coldwell, professor of fine art at the University of the Arts, said that he had been accepted five times in the past: “It’s the chance of selling work. I’m an exhibiting artist. I don’t see it \[the exhibition\] as great acclaim because it’s such a mishmash. There’s no rhyme or reason \[in the way selections are made\].”

The works will be paraded this week before a committee of Royal Academicians, the painters, sculptors, print-makers or architects who govern the Royal Academy. They will begin their session by sipping beef tea fortified with sherry, a ritual followed for as long as anyone can remember.

The judges are not told an artist’s identity when making their choice with metal wands, one surmounted by a letter “D”, the other by a brutal letter “X”, that have survived from the Academy’s earliest days.

A work which receives the vote of three or more Academicians is awarded a “D” for “Doubtful” and goes through to the next round of selection. Works which get the “X” - straight reject - are returned to the store to be collected by the artist.

Each year, the event divides the critics. Last year, Brian Sewell wrote in <CF70>the London <CF71>Evening Standard</CF>: “At the Royal Academy, it must be said, merit does not matter any more.”

But Rachel Campbell Johnston, Visual Art Critic of <CF71>The Times</CF>, wrote: “There are plenty of images to challenge even the most accommodating decorator. It also concerns itself with offering a broader picture of the contemporary art world.”

The event is quite a money-spinner for the Academy. Apart from the £25 entry fee, they also take 30 per cent in commission from sales made at the exhibition, and charge £7 at the box office. The show drew more than 150,000 visitors last year.

The 2008 Summer Exhibition will be at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, from June 9 until August 17.

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