![Chris Orr RA, The discomfort of Charles Rennie Mackintosh Chris Orr RA, The discomfort of Charles Rennie Mackintosh](https://cloudinary.royalacademy.org.uk/royal-academy/image/upload/c_fill,cs_tinysrgb,dn_72,f_auto,fl_progressive.keep_iptc,w_1280,h_720,ar_16:9/suj4fbqpwz0rdllwop3s.jpg)
Chris Orr RA: The Miserable Lives of Fabulous Artists
Academicians in Focus
2 February - 9 August 2018
Belle Shenkman Room, The Keeper’s House
Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm Friday 10am – 10pm
If you are not a Friend, Patron or Corporate Member of the RA, simply ask staff at the Keeper’s House for access to see the Academicians in Focus exhibition before 4pm.
Free
Friends of the RA go free
Our ‘Academicians in Focus’ programme continues with a display presenting unique new works on paper by Chris Orr RA, from his series 'The Miserable Lives of Fabulous Artists'.
Chris Orr RA’s eclectic range of subjects comprises some of the great names from art history such as John Constable, Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso, all of which are represented using Orr’s characteristically humorous visual language. Each artist is portrayed in scenarios that combine truthful and mythical elements with extraordinary attention to detail.
“Artists have a lonely job and success is often elusive. Life in the studio is not all it is cracked up to be, but it is there that dross can be turned into gold. Each of my ‘miseries’ are subjected to the cliché and reputations that haunt them”. – Chris Orr RA
The display will be accompanied by a book of the same title, published by the RA, featuring the entire series of 30 works.
The works exhibited are available to buy online through Art Sales at the RA.
Louise Bourgeois was awfully fond of toast, 2016-17
Diego Rivera (A fry-up for Frida), 2016-17
Frida Kahlo (Diego's Dinner), 2016-17
The bits Constable left out, 2016-17
A case of zoomania involving Leonora Carrington, 2016-17
Angelica Kauffman is barred from the Royal Academy Life Room, 2016-17
Dame Laura Knight shoplifting in Harrods, 2016-17
An unfortunate incident in Barbara Hepworth's studio, 2016-17
Hieronymus Bosch, Time Traveller, 2016-17
Hokusai's troublesome umbrella, 2016-17
Munch on holiday, 2016-17
The discomfort of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 2016-17