Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When the artist Rebecca Salter greets me at the entrance to her studio in a former industrial building in north London, the first thing that strikes me is her workwear: not a billowing smock or jumper and jeans that have seen better days but a trim white lab coat, with thin stripes of grey paint over the lower half. She looks, in a way, like one of her paintings, precise pale fields of flecks and dabs in shades from the white-black spectrum.Not that she has too much time for painting these days. As president of the Royal Academy of Arts (the first woman in the role), she spends most of her time leading the 256-year-old institution, whose governing body is composed of artists and architects known as Royal Academicians. (The RA does not just put on exhibitions but is also home to an art school, which Salter previously ran as \u201ckeeper\u201d.) Nevertheless, this autumn she will be having her first solo commercial show in eight years, at Huxley-Parlour gallery in London.\u201cI made a decision,\u201d she says once we are settled into her studio\u2019s sunlight with some tea, \u201cthat I would completely forget about the fact that I don\u2019t have much time in the studio and if I just do two big paintings a year, that would be fine\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I do a bit more than that but I really didn\u2019t want to end up with a load of postage stamps at the end of it.\u201dCertainly none of the works on the walls, meant for her show, suggest that she is thinking small; they are ambitious, enterprising paintings involving techniques, such as folding in half, and materials, like heavy-duty ink-nuggets for Japanese calligraphy, newer to Salter\u2019s practice. \u201cAM14\u201d (her works all bear these technical labels) looks like a cloud passing over a fine white mesh, or static playing across a grey screen, while \u201cJF05\u201d has the ambiguous qualities of a Rorschach test, painting as mirror for both artist and viewer. (Prices range from around \u00a35,000 to \u00a345,000.)Despite the works\u2019 calm surfaces, \u201cthere\u2019s a huge amount of serendipity because I like just sometimes pouring water all over and seeing what happens. I\u2019m quite happy with that level of disruption,\u201d she says brightly.The Japanese ink is not just a method for Salter but an active memory. In 1979-81, she was a research student at Kyoto City University of Arts, and then she lived in Japan for four years afterwards. While she had intended to study ceramics at first, the studios proved uncomfortably conservative (\u201cI arrived and discovered that it was the duty of the women to make the tea\u201d) and she switched to \u201cpainting\u201d. The inverted commas are hers, gestured as she speaks, because she sees her work differently: \u201cI think they\u2019re more objects, really, because the back of them and the side of them are very important.\u201d Fibrous Japanese paper allows thin paint applied on both sides to soak through, giving her work several layers and only one at the same time.This depth\/no-depth paradox was influenced by Salter\u2019s study of Japanese aesthetics and architecture, where the play of surfaces and space can be ambiguous and compels you to question your perceptions of the world. \u201cThe biggest shock was when I came back and for a long time, maybe even now, I found going to the National Gallery and seeing oil painting really difficult\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009You come back here and you look at a western painting with the varnish on it and it feels very \u2014 excluding.\u201d Instead, it is the \u201csoftness and ambiguity\u201d of Japanese surfaces which appeal.As trains occasionally whip along the tracks outside her studio window, we turn to the tricky business of leading a British arts institution in the post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-inflation world. The RA does not receive any government money, so cuts to public funding have not affected it; instead it is reliant on corporate sponsorship and its Friends scheme.The latter skews heavily elder, so \u201cone of the most important pieces of work is how we change the demographics of that.\u201d It has required some rejigging: \u201cYou used to be considered a Young Friend up to the age of 25, but nowadays if you\u2019re 25\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009you can probably barely afford to rent a room in London, let alone be a Friend. So now you\u2019re young until 35 at the Royal Academy.\u201dIt means rethinking the exhibition programme too. \u201cBefore you just knew if you put \u2018Impressionists\u2019 over the door, it was as simple as that, and it\u2019s not that simple any more.\u201d Shows such as Entangled Pasts, on art and colonialism, have helped to diversify those coming through the door.The Brexit factor has been an especial challenge: the RA Schools, where tuition is free for all three years, can now only take British citizens and those with right to remain, settled status or special talent visas. \u201cWhen I was first elected keeper [in 2017], we looked at Brexit and thought, \u2018This is going to be a disaster, we\u2019re going to turn into a little English art school\u2019\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009And the worst has happened: we can only take students from this country.\u201dFor the first time in our conversation, Salter fizzes a little with annoyance. \u201cOf the 30 founding Academicians, at least a third if not more were from Germany, France, Switzerland. At the very beginning we were international and we\u2019re really miffed, frankly. We have to try our hardest to keep that international mix.\u201d It is certainly true in its programme \u2014 shows about Ukrainian and Brazilian Modernism are upcoming \u2014 and in the president\u2019s practice, where Japan is never far from the surface.Rebecca Salter\u2019s show at Huxley-Parlour, London, runs September 19-October 26, huxleyparlour.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When the artist Rebecca Salter greets me at the entrance to her studio in a former industrial building in north London, the first thing that strikes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-135867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135868,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135867\/revisions\/135868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}