Bronze, Royal Academy of Arts, review

Bronze at the Royal Academy of Arts is a grand exhibition of epic conception and sweep that will leave people exhilarated, writes Alastair Sooke.

Adriaen de Vries, Vulcan's Forge, 1611, from the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Photo: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Walter Haberland Bronze, the autumn blockbuster at the Royal Academy, is a big blast of a show — a grand exhibition of epic conception and sweep that will leave people exhilarated by the stunning quality of the works on display. There isn’t much narrative development or art-historical argument — indeed, you could say that there isn’t any argument at all — but that’s fine: while it won’t tax the mind, it will ravish the eye. Here is a show to make you feel, not think. The concept is simple. Professor David Ekserdjian, the exhibition’s curator, has brought together more than 150 bronze sculptures from all over the world. They span aeons and continents, but have one thing in common: they all demonstrate the versatility and quasi-magical properties of a medium that has bewitched artists since at least the fourth millennium BC. Bronze — an alloy in which copper is usually mixed with tin — is both durable and ductile, meaning that artists can achieve gravity-defying sculptural effects that would be impossible in stone. In addition, artists working in bronze can create supple surfaces alive with exquisite detail, thanks to the so-called “lost-wax technique”. First used by the ancients, this complex process essentially allows artists to replicate perfectly a wax model in bronze. (It and its variants are explained in crystal-clear fashion using step-by-step guides in a subsidiary room within the exhibition.) Grasping something of the time, technique and expense behind casting bronze sculpture is as cerebral as this exhibition gets. Mostly, we are invited to marvel and gawp. The exhibition is divided into themes (figures, gods, animals, heads, reliefs, and so on), and Ekserdjian and his team have pulled off the delicate diplomatic coup of persuading museums to part temporarily with some of their most prized possessions. I was thrilled, for instance, to see the Chimaera of Arezzo, an Etruscan masterpiece on loan from Florence. With a serpent for a tail, and a goat’s head grafted onto a lion’s back, this snarling, fire-breathing monster appears like a genetically modified freak from a dystopian future. It could so easily look absurd, yet the Etruscan sculptor who made it around 400 BC has created something ferocious and believable. In places, such as the rib cage, arched back, and flanks, the modelling is tremendously subtle. The Chimaera inaugurates a delightful couple of galleries devoted to sculptures of animals. We see a surprisingly modern-looking mottled turkey by Giambologna, as well as Il Porcellino, or “little piglet”, a 17th-century bronze replica of an ancient marble statue of a wild boar. For centuries, it adorned a popular fountain in Florence — its bulbous snout still shines from having been petted and stroked by passers-by. A malignant, upright praying mantis by the 20th-century French sculptor Germaine Richier looks like it has stalked off the set of a dark film by Tim Burton. It lurks opposite a sinister spider, mounted above head height on a wall, by Louise Bourgeois. In the same room, Picasso’s Baboon and Young (1951), for which the artist cast a combination of two of his son Claude’s toy cars to create the ape’s head, is a cheeky reminder of the transformative potential of art. There is no doubt that bronze sculpture reached a high point in classical antiquity: just witness the powerful portrait head of a glowering Hellenistic king discovered in Bulgaria in 2004, or the Dancing Satyr from the fourth century BC that opens the show and seemingly flies through mid-air, convulsed in ecstatic abandon. But there are many stupendous works of art from beyond the Western canon, too, including several beautiful sculptures from Nigeria that were made in the 14th and 15th centuries, and a host of intricate Chinese vessels, one memorably cast in the shape of an elephant. Among the out-and-out highlights is the Chariot of the Sun, which was discovered in a Danish peat bog in 1902, and probably dates to the 14th century before Christ. An ethereal horse supported by four wheels pulls a disc decorated with gold leaf, representing the sun. It is a beacon of sophistication from a benighted period of history. One of the chief joys of the show lies in discovering parallels between different works of art. The Evening Shadow, an extraordinary Etruscan statuette of an elongated figure that’s really just a sinuous sliver of metal, a skinny will-o’-the-wisp, has been placed near The Cage by the 20th-century sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whom it influenced. An impressive and rare full-length portrait of a Roman aristocrat stands opposite Ghiberti’s St Stephen, another large figure energised by dynamic folds of drapery. The juxtaposition speaks of the interest in antiquity that surfaced during the Renaissance, even if the Roman statue, which was discovered at Herculaneum in 1743, couldn’t possibly have influenced Ghiberti’s work, which dates from the 1420s. Not everything is of the highest calibre. For instance, Georg Petel’s portrait bust of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden has an overinflated melon-head that looks like a balloon about to burst. A couple of early 15th-century statuettes of satyrs courting or coupling appear awkward rather than racy. Moreover, I didn’t quite see the logic of presenting bronze copies of sculptures originally carved in marble, such as Michelangelo’s tipsy Bacchus, or Bernini’s scintillating Damned Soul. (Though you could argue that Francois Girardon’s 17th-century copy of the Laocoön offers a vision of the bronze original upon which the famous ancient marble group in the Vatican was probably based.) And while the Lisson Gallery, who are listed among the exhibition’s supporters, should be applauded for helping to facilitate such a magnificent show, the inclusion in the latter rooms of several artists on their books (Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, and Richard Deacon) seems close to self-promotion. But wandering among these sculptures is ultimately a thrilling and invigorating business. As I looked up at Rustici’s monumental figures of St John the Baptist preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee, or at a 19th-century cast of Cellini’s famous Perseus and Medusa, I felt as though I had entered a timeless and enchanted realm inhabited by superhumans and gods. The exhibition isn’t for scholars who enjoy splitting hairs over minutiae of style or chronology. But sometimes it is a relief as well as a pleasure to visit a show that simply delivers straightforward aesthetic delight. From Sept 15 until Dec 9. Information: 020 7300 8000