Andrew Lambirth

'Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions' and 'Metavisual Tachiste Abstract' I went with high hopes to the Cartoon Museum. Actually, I think the appellation ‘museum’ rather grand for a couple of rooms off a back street in Bloomsbury, particularly when the real thing — the British Museum — is just round the corner. Still, I can applaud the vision which wants to make a museum for cartoons, even if the reality needs working on. You enter via a cartoon bookshop, i.e., a shop selling funny books, not a funny drawing of a bookshop, and at once humour breaks over you like a wave. Here’s a Donald McGill pen and ink and watercolour drawing from the 1940s of a youngish man having shellfish trouble. The caption ditty begins, ‘I can’t get my winkle out...

Artists’ Self-Portraits from the Uffizi The Uffizi is to Florence what the National Gallery is to London, and part of its astonishing collection is devoted to a unique array of self-portraits, housed now in the Corridoio Vasariano. This long corridor, which links the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, was designed by Giorgio Vasari, artist, architect and grandfather of art history with his classic Lives of the Artists. The self-portrait collection was begun in the 17th century by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, and has been added to ever since, but its documentation has never been precise. Thus there are two self-portraits by Guercino in the collection, both disputed by scholars, but neither seems to be the one originally commissioned by the Cardinal.

There is a remarkable project of great enterprise and diligence in progress throughout the land — a plan to catalogue all the oil paintings (as well as those in acrylic or tempera) in national collections. This gigantic task is being undertaken by a charity called The Public Catalogue Foundation, which is publishing its findings in single volumes dedicated to different areas of the UK. The aim is to give a county-by-county account of pictures in museums and other public collections. As I write, I have in front of me half a dozen of the Foundation’s catalogues: West Yorkshire: Leeds; Cambridgeshire: Fitzwilliam Museum; East Sussex; North Yorkshire; Suffolk and Imperial War Museum.

The Royal Academy Summer Show boasts that it is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition, but this year it focuses on invited artists and distinguished foreign visitors. Thus it neglects both the Academicians, its real strength and raison d’être, and the until now faithful corps of British artists who submit year in, year out. As more and more non-RAs are rejected — or, possibly worse, are accepted but not hung — and while many of the RAs themselves are sidelined and crowded together, the nature of this exhibition is changing for the worse. It needs to be said from time to time that the Academy would not exist without its RAs.

I have been dipping into the Modern Sculpture Reader, edited by Jon Wood, David Hulks and Alex Potts, an invaluable compilation of texts produced by the Henry Moore Institute at £20. It’s a hefty paperback tome determined to give sculpture its rightful place in the anthology stakes — so often dominated by painting — and in doing so it tracks the nature and status of the art object in the modern world. It ranges from Adolf von Hildebrand writing in 1893 on the problem of form, to Susan Hiller in 2003 discussing the sculptural legacy of H. Moore himself. In between it stops at many stations from Rilke to Acconci, by way of Eric Gill, Michel Leiris, Tatlin, Gabo and Sartre.

Futurism was originally an Italian manifestation in art and literature, a cult of speed and movement, triumphantly urban and dynamic, a sort of souped-up Cubism, which lasted from 1909 until its deathblow in the first world war and final dissolution in the 1920s. It was pretty much invented by the poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti (1876–1944), who liked to call himself ‘the caffeine of Europe’, and was actor-manager and travelling salesman for the group. The first international agent provocateur of modern art, expert promoter and publicist, he was for ever on the road organising confrontational meetings masquerading as art and guaranteed to grab the headlines.

Sir Peter Blake is much in demand. A popular figure since he rose to fame with his unforgettable design for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album (1967), he has long been a spokesman for his generation and for the arts. His knighthood in 2002 brought a whole host of new requests and obligations, much of it figurehead stuff: his name on lists of patrons, or as the chairman of selection committees. To take these things seriously is time-consuming, and Blake has to be rigorous about preserving his hours in the studio, where typically he is busy on a number of projects at once. On the eve of a retrospective of his paintings at Tate Liverpool (29 June–23 September) I visited him in his west London studio, which is a treasure-house of objects and art.

With the Grain: Wood Sculpture by David Nash; Jeffery Camp — Rubicon In the foyer of Lewes Town Hall is a sculpture by David Nash called ‘Shrine’, made from American Redwood, a lapped and sheltering piece half-turned in on itself, as if in meditation. It’s placed here to welcome the visitor and to signpost the exhibition from the street — to suggest to anyone peering in at the door that something strange and different is afoot in these august public offices. And august they are, as you will see as you process up the impressive and intricately carved late Tudor staircase, into a long corridor hung with photographs of Nash at work.

Marylebone is the pleasant departure-point if you’re taking the train to Aylesbury from London, and what better way to spend a spring day than an outing to the gentle Buckinghamshire countryside to see a celebration of its merits by fine artists. Upstairs at the Bucking-hamshire County Museum, near St Mary’s Church, is an excellent small exhibition of pictures and sculptures by artists who lived and worked locally in the 1920s and 30s. The principal exhibitors are John and Paul Nash, Clare Leighton, Eric Gill and David Jones. Their work offers a richly textured display of art and craftsmanship, a deeply heartening affirmation of the still considerable glories of our countryside. Well worth seeing, in sunlight or in rain.

Since Sir Edward Poulton’s pioneering study The Colours of Animals was published in 1890, the importance of disguise in the natural world — and, by extension, in the human one — has been widely recognised and exploited. As technology changed the patterns and prospects of warfare, with aerial reconnaissance and long-range shelling becoming a nasty reality, so the need for discretion and subterfuge was more readily apparent. No longer were scarlet uniforms a good idea on soldiers; no longer should an army stand up and be counted. Concealment and dissimulation were the order of the day. Honour, chivalry and honesty may have suffered irrecoverable body blows, but who cared? Dishonesty won wars.

The treasures of the Royal Collection are usually dispersed among the various royal palaces and residences throughout Britain. For the first time in more than 40 years, the earlier Italian paintings and drawings have been brought together in a substantial exhibition which is rich in visual and historical delights. In what is really a tribute to the artistic taste and collecting enthusiasm particularly of the first Stuart kings, Charles I and Charles II, this exhibition maps the development of the Royal Collection as seen through the acquisition of a remarkable succession of Italian masterpieces.

Show time at the V&A: the latest in its series of survey exhibitions brings us Surrealism in all its faded glory and sempiternal intrigue — a gallery of the visually fickle and macabre, the once-disturbing and the lastingly chic. The exhibition starts well with a de Chirico stage set for Le Bal (1929), a couple of gorgeous drawings for it close at hand. Masson’s designs for the ballet Les Présages (1933) are not nearly so stunning, but with Miró we strike a return-to-form with a costumed figure actually pirouetting and film clips of Jeux d’enfants and the controversial Romeo and Juliet (designed with Ernst) showing nearby. In the second room, however, is the real justification for this exhibition — a collection of Surrealist objects.

Prunella Clough; Harry Thubron: Collages and Constructions 1972–1984 It was a privilege to be a member of the jury that gave Prunella Clough (1919–99) the Jerwood Prize for Painting in 1999. On the one hand, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that she was an immensely distinguished painter who had remained largely unknown and publicly unrewarded during a long career, and on the other we wished to recognise the high quality of her latest work, some of the finest she’d ever done. In many ways, Prunella was her own worst enemy, being of a modest and self-effacing temperament, much given to doubting her very real achievements.

Here are two of the big hitters of Impressionism, both represented by shows which only investigate very particular aspects of their work. Monet and Renoir are names guaranteed to provide good box-office returns, but will the public be satisfied by the choice of work attached to their brand labels? Of course the RA and NG need to generate income from exhibitions in these increasingly expensive times, though both have managed to secure sponsors to help defray the costs of their shows. The RA exhibition comes with a vast doorstop of a catalogue, stuffed full of worthy scholarship, making the art-historical case for the importance of Monet’s hitherto largely unknown pastels and drawings.

A courier staggered up the stairs to my flat bearing Gilbert & George: The Complete Pictures with an essay by Rudi Fuchs (Tate Publishing, 1,200 pages, 1,500 full-colour illustrations, £39.99). It’s a two-volume hardback which comes in its own carrying case, but I was glad not to have to bring it home myself as it weighs over a stone on the bathroom scales. It is the season of G&G overload, for that much-exhibited, much-publicised and over-played pair have been given the signal honour of a grand exhibition of 18 galleries at Tate Modern. A whole floor is devoted to their asininities, which is nothing short of a disgrace. Never have I been to so empty and arid a major exhibition, the most overweening display of narcissism ever to have been mounted.