Page 19 - Studio International - January 1967

What kind of Royal Academy?

In December Mr W. T. Monnington was elected President of the Royal Academy. In this
conversation William Townsend discusses with him the function of an academy today.
William Townsend is a friend and teaching colleague of Mr Monnington's but, as a painter, has
always remained independent of the Royal Academy.

W. T. Monnington, born in
1903, was elected R.A. in
1938-the youngest election
since Millais. Since 1949 he
has taught at the Slade
School of Art. He has
fulfilled a number of major
commissions for mural
decorations, notably for
St Stephen's Hall at
Westminster, the Bank of
England, and Exeter
University.

Many artists have a sense that the Royal Academy lives on its for the winter exhibitions. It maintains the schools, which
accumulated social prestige and historical authority and does too are entirely free. If the R.A. is to play a useful part in the
little in the contemporary art situation to justify these. What is art situation as it exists, ideally it would be in discriminat-
the role of the Royal Academy today? As you know, I regard it as ing and co-ordinating contemporary thought about art
largely irrelevant, but you, by accepting the Presidency, must feel and the arts in general. There is a great deal of experi-
that it has a function more important than that of being a good ment being carried out at the present time which springs
sales window for some kinds of art? from ideas which any artist of judgement should be able
One must think a little historically. When the Royal to draw upon for his own purposes of creating new form.
Academy was founded, in 1768, there were no schools The Academy might do for the arts what Newton did for
and there was no provision for painters who wished to the sciences of his time; he saw the connexion between
exhibit. Gradually the situation has changed—and con- the parts, in the thought and achievement of his time, and
siderably. With regard to schools, there are schools all from them made a working whole. A man can do this. An
over the country and, with regard to exhibiting work, Academy might form a background from which to work.
there is a number of galleries where it is possible to
exhibit in mixed shows. However, many distinguished Your own development as a painter has followed a course that is
artists today prefer not to exhibit in mixed shows at all, perhaps the most characteristic of the artists whom we think of as
but in one-man shows with dealers; therefore the original typical twentieth-century artists; that is to say you started your
and essential purpose of the foundation no longer exists career as a figurative painter whose style was formed by the Euro-
in the same way. Nevertheless an interesting fact remains. pean Renaissance tradition and you are now an abstract painter.
Whereas all other societies of artists seem to have been The Royal Academy exhibitions have not convincingly presented
comparatively short-lived, after a period of initial success, the major developments of modern art to the British public but
the Royal Academy has maintained some vitality. have left this to other institutions. If it has been resisting such
developments what has it been defending?
What does the R.A. set out to do nowadays? The past is the past and the future is the future. As to
It has a mixed summer exhibition and it uses its galleries abstract art, this has been shown in the summer exhibi-