Richard Dorment describes this year’s annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition as “the largest festival of bad art in Europe.” The quality of chosen work is mediocre this year after a couple of good years. “Let me start with the amateurs. By sheer chance, I happen to know four people – none is a professional artist – who regularly attend a weekly painting class run by Maggi Hambling. Any single one of them is a better painter than most of the artists chosen from the open submissions this year.”