, snowman and other items: RA Summer Exhibition 2002

Allen Jones has been fancied as a future president of the Royal Academy. A meticulous artist and long-term explicit admirer of femininity, he has moved forwards again from woman-as-coffee-table to woman-as-refrigerator. The ancient Greeks employed sculptured female figures (caryatides) to support building elements, so Allen Jones was following an interesting historical precedent, although the Greek ladies did not actually squat as Jones’ figures happily did. Initially, in the 1960s, Jones says that his figures looked like functional objects. With the present work, which will be included in this year’s RA Summer Exhibition, he makes physical objects that look like women. The contributions to this year’s show provided by the academicians themselves, apart from a large snowman by Gary Hume, the concept artist, generally unfreeze the viewers, raising the temperature to compensate for such cool.