Anthony Gormley at the Royal Academy

Finally got round to seeing the Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts - it's big and it's bold and it's great fun. Gormley is someone I've grown to appreciate slowly over the years and, for me at least, his most famous work is the Angel of the North that stands alone on a hillside in Gateshead that you can see from the train going up to Newcastle. The Angel is even better up close (get the number 21 bus from Newcastle).

The exhibition is spread out over the whole first floor exhibition space, room after room full of metalwork, drawings, sketchbooks, giant conkers hanging from the ceiling, tunnels and naked gentlemen dancing on the ceiling. You never know what you might see next.

It starts off gently enough with a sleeping man-shape in a lightly toasted bread duvet hanging on the wall. I've no idea what that is about but it made me smile. Next door is room full of thick strands of industrial sized bent metal wire, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, that you need to walk round the edges of the room, sometimes ducking to get under it and sometimes stepping over it and into the art itself to walk past. Weird and wonderful at the same time. It was fun hearing a 'clang' sound every now and then as someone mis-stepped and caught the thick metal wires as they stepped into it. I wonder how long it took to construct this work to fit the room?

Further along was a room full of sketches and drawings and cabinets full of Gormley's small sketchbooks. Most were A6 size or smaller, with drawings in pencil, pen and ink of all sorts of things, random ideas he was thinking about at the time. On the walls hung all sorts of works in various media including a couple drawn in his own blood. I dread to think what other body fluids might've been used in other drawings.

There's a room with two giant conkers suspended on sturdy ropes from the ceiling (or rather, something holding them beyond the ceiling) that were swaying slightly. They were metal and probably very heavy. This is part of the joy of the exhibition, not knowing what you might see next and then coming face to face with something you never expected or imagined. And then you find Gormley dancing on the ceiling.

This, I think, was my favourite room with a couple of dozen statues dotted about the place, standing on the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling - I've got no idea how they're suspected from the ceiling and I don't want to know since that'll spoil the magic. I think they're based on casts of Gormley himself and they're about six feet tall so they're pretty solid. What do you do with them? Why are they standing in those specific positions? Are we supposed to interact with them? Hold a conversation? Who knows? I wonder how many people accidentally bump into a statue not expecting it to keep standing there as the crowd moves and shuffles around?

It was very crowded when we visited and I suspect that room feels very different when it's empty, just you surrounded on all sides by these silent statues. Or maybe they're whispering amongst themselves?

The next big thing was an installation that filled another room and you walked through it in pitch blackness apart from a section in the middle with a few shards of light. It was a tunnel that most people had to lean over a bit to get in. I didn't go into that but walked round the outside. I'm a coward like that.

The following room was full of drawings and sketches and paintings and it was nice to see some of art that can hang on an ordinary wall - even my walls can take a nail and hang a painting but they wouldn't survive having one of his statues on them. I really liked some of the drawings and it would be interesting to see what sort of drawings or paintings he'd make if he spent a year doing nothing but paint. That would be an exhibition worth seeing.

All in all it's a great exhibition, lots of works to please everyone, lots of weirdness and lots to make you smile and think. I'm pleased I saw it.

'Dali/Duchamp' at the Royal Academy

The new exhibition at the Royal Academy is about Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp, possibly best known for melting clocks and urinals. I've seen quite a few Dali paintings over the years (most recently at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid) but, despite knowing his name and knowing of his art, I don't recall seeing any works by Duchamp at all. I must have seen some of his work, of course, since it's in many museums I've visited, but it hasn't registered with me. So it's time to put that right and start learning.

Dali and Duchamp were friends throughout their careers and this exhibition pulls together a variety of their works including some correspondence and gifts, photographs by themselves and of them by Man Ray, reconstructed sculptures and some really interesting paintings by Duchamp. It's not a big exhibition but it kept me intrigued.

The painting that greets you as you walk into the exhibition is a large one by Duchamp, 'The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes'. There's not a nude in sight and the royalty refers to chess pieces. The 'nudes' are referred to in the notes as electrons. If you say so. I wasn't particularly bothered, I just liked the shapes and the interactions between them. To the right of this painting is another one of two chess players in a similar style by Duchamp and, to the left, are portraits of Dali and Duchamp's dads by the respective artists, painted about ten years apart. I thought Duchamp's was the better of the two and it's such a shame that he effectively gave up on painting shortly afterwards.

One thing I wasn't expecting to see were photographs by Man Ray of Duchamp's alter ego as Rrose Selavy. There's nothing to explain why Duchamp felt he had a female alter ego but why should there be? If he wanted to explore another side of his personality then that's okay. There are a few photos of Rrose and, apparently, he sometimes signed work documents using that name.

One of my favourites of his 'readymades' was a small white birdcage filled with what looked like sugar cubes with a mirror underneath reflecting the words 'Why not sneeze Rose Selavy?'. It was so unexpected and such fun, something you wouldn't see if you stand too close to it since the mirror is underneath the cage and hidden form view. It takes some real thinking to come up with that.

What I liked was the large glass case that included a lot of 'readymades' and other creations by both artists, including the white cage. Pride of place is, of course, given over to 'Fountain', the urinal Duchamp submitted to an exhibition and which was hidden behind a screen. Beside it was Dali's lobster telephone. There's also a bicycle wheel on a stool and a garden shovel hanging downwards. I have to admit that some of these items were more curiosities than artworks but I'm not sure that that matters in context really. I enjoyed seeing them and puzzling over them.

Another photograph by Man Ray that I liked was of Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter as Adam and Eve. It's such an odd photo to come across - I don't know why I found it odd but I did. It's hung beside Duchamp's drawing of Lucas Cranach's 'Adam & Eve' and the pose in the photo tries to replicate this. It sort of succeeds in replicating the painting but what isn't clear is why? Was it just a bit of fun, a poke at the artistic audience to say 'anybody can do this if they want' or is it meant as another statement. Who knows, but I like that and its irreverence.

I'm more of a paintings man really so it was the Dali works that I spent most time looking at. Leaving aside the subject matter and his love of self-promotion (of which he was very good), he's actually a very good painter. Most of the works on show were small and I hadn't seen any of them before.

Dali has to have his joke with us and that comes out with his 'Couple With Their Heads Full Of Clouds' in which the frames are of two heads and shoulders with the painting contained within those shapes. Although these could be front or back views I see them from the back so we're seeing what they're looking at. That's a dessert scene with a giraffe on fire (for some reason). It's great fun and a very delicate painting.

I was also really taken by 'Exploding Raphaelesque Head' in the same room. It does have a hint of a Raphael Madonna about it but what really grabbed me were the panels in the crown of the head and the circular hole at the top that refers to the ceiling of the Pantheon in Rome in which Raphael was buried. Other than the imagery there's no hint of that in the painting but, once you know that, it shouts out to you. I suspect there's more in that painting than I've seen so far, but it kept my attention.

The exit from the exhibition is through/under a reproduction of Duchamp's piece 'Twelve Hundred Coal Sacks Suspended from the Ceiling Over a Stove'' from 1938. I loved it. Wondering what on earth was this thing and was anything going to fall on me? It's the experience that matters.

It's a relatively small exhibition for the Royal Academy but I found it to be really fascinating with so much to see and wonder about. These artists are so much more than urinals and meting clocks, they continue the grand tradition of the evolution of art who simply took us up a slightly different path of their own inventing. Where would we be - not just in art but more widely - without them?

I think I need to go back to see this exhibition again. I've got no doubt I'll see something very differently.

'Rubens & His Legacy' at the Royal Academy of Arts

The big exhibition at the Royal Academy at the moment is about Rubens and his influence on other artists at the time and over the years down to Picasso. This is always an interesting idea for exhibitions - show someone with a big name and then hang paintings by other artists near the relevant master to show his or her influence. I saw a great exhibition a few years ago on this theme at Tate Britain about the influence of Picasso on British artists and that exhibition introduced me to some new artists I hadn't really looked at before. Its all about balance.

The exhibition was split into different themes for each room based around one of Rubens' paintings. We see a Rubens landscape and then a Turner or Constable or someone else illustrating the influence of Rubens from a similar composition or use of colours or brush strokes. Some careful thinking has obviously gone into this exhibition.

One of the first paintings that got me looking closely was 'Christ on the Straw', a triptych of Virgin and Child, Christ taken down from the cross and John the Baptist. The thing that really attracted my attention was the simple leaden nature of Christ's arms, the sheer dead weigh of the arms hanging uncomfortably and the body in an unnatural position. The other two panels and the people around Christ don't really interest me, it's the body of Christ and the leaden weigh of it, the embodiment of death. I even waited for a couple to move on so I could get a closer look.

One of the 'big' paintings of the exhibition was 'Tiger, Lion and Leopard Hunt' from 1617. It's a large painting (taller than me) and was surrounded by slightly smaller paintings of hunt scenes, some of which looked a little too gory for me.

I'm definitely with the tiger in this one - savage him! The painting tells a compelling narrative of a hunt in which the animals fight back. The lion is being killed, the leopard is already dead but the tiger fights back to protect his family - momma tiger is protecting her cubs and has one in her mouth while her mate tries to give her the time to escape the barbarous hunters. I stared at this painting for a while, grabbing a seat opposite the painting ad just looking at it. All the violence, the careful composition and colour palette, the movement and, bottom right, the stillness. It's a great painting but I didn't really look at any of the other hunting paintings.

Another great painting was the far smaller 'Pan and Syrinx' painted with Jan Brueghel. I spent some time in front of this puzzling over how it was painted by Rubens and Brueghel - which one did which bits? It's nice and bright in oils which keep the colour and it looks fab.

One of the great things about exhibitions of this kind is that they introduce you to paintings and artists you might not otherwise come across. There were lots n this exhibition. There was a lovely self-portrait by Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun, several Delacroix and Watteau paintings as well as Cezanne and Picassos.

A painting I'd never come across before but fell in love with was 'Drunken Silenus Supported by Satyrs' by Van Dyck. This is such great fun with a fat old Silenus obviously out of his head on a Friday night and getting into bad company with the satyrs. I hope he got home okay.

It's a good exhibition and well worth seeing for the range of artists and styles on display. I can't help but feel it would have been better if there were more works by Rubens on display - his is the name over the door, after all. Some of the links with other paintings also seemed a bit tenuous but that's possibly a bit churlish of me. I enjoyed it and learned from it and that's the main thing.