Charles Moore reviews 'Bronze' at the Royal Academy

Sometimes, word of mouth becomes so clamorous that this column gives in to it, and reviews something late. So many people told me that Bronze was uniquely exciting that I went to Piccadilly to find out. They were right, and, if you haven’t already, you should hurry along there before it closes on December 9.

The word “bronze” carries its own aura of romance. Although it comes below gold and silver in the hierarchy of value, it has a strength they lack. The term is used to cover a wide range of copper alloys. “Copper Alloys” would not be much of a title for an exhibition. The 18th century used to call what we know as bronze, “brass”. That does not have the right ring, either. Where there’s muck, there’s brass. But, as this exhibition proves, where there’s art, there’s bronze.

David Ekserdjian, who conceived and, as you might say, performed this exhibition, explains that bronze was known to all civilisations, except to American and Oceanic ones before contact with the West. It is also ancient and modern (and medieval). The oldest exhibit in this show is a series of objects, including a mace head that looks like the pushmi-pullyu from Dr Dolittle, from what is now Israel. They date from 3700 BC. A work called Untitled by Anish Kapoor, a shiny circle in which you see your own distorted reflection, was completed this year.

Normally, exhibitions that follow chronological patterns are the best. They teach you more and maintain discipline about why you are looking at what. The whimsicality of “thematic” selection can be tiresome. But because of bronze’s universality in time and geography, this show breaks that rule triumphantly. If there had been one room devoted to the Far East, another to Greece and Rome, a third to the Renaissance, and so on, the thrill would have dissipated. This show is divided instead into categories – Figures, Heads, Groups, Gods, Animals, Objects, Reliefs – rather than by dates or places. As if invited by that opera singer in the ad, you can “go compare”.

When you enter the second room of the exhibition – Figures – you walk, like some dignitary inspecting troops, down a parade of human forms that includes a Roman grandee in his toga, a Nigerian bowman, a huge French peasant of 1904 and a spindly prisoner (The Cage) by Giacometti. How could an alien being not familiar with our race work out that they are all dealing with the same thing? Yet how could any human being not be exhilarated by their common subject, as well as their vast difference?

Nearby, to my particular pleasure, is a most curious object that amazed me when I saw it years ago in the museum of the small Tuscan town of Volterra. Sometimes called Evening Shadow, it is the elongated, stick-thin figure of a very young man with his arms hanging down to his thighs and a head and haircut that resemble someone playing Christopher Robin in the 1930s. It has a completely early-modern feel (which inspired Giacometti), yet it is Etruscan, second century BC.

In another room – Objects – two things that look like door knockers flank the entrance. One is the head of a snarling wolf, a Roman beam-end from the first century AD. The other is the lion-shaped, 12th-century Sanctuary Ring from Durham Cathedral, which sinners seeking safety had to bang to gain admittance. If you compare one with the other, you note the superior accuracy of the Roman piece, yet are perhaps even more impressed by the almost pagan strength of the English one. In the room called Animals, Picasso’s horrible yet brilliant Baboon and Young half-squats next to an ancient Egyptian seated cat of indescribable elegance.

Another benefit of Bronze is that it makes you pay attention to the material. (One of the odd things about most art exhibitions is that this aspect is taken for granted almost, even though artists themselves often think about little else.) There is a good side-room that illustrates the techniques, such as “direct lost-wax casting”. Because it has been treated by such different people in all ages, bronze displays its versatility. It can be monumental – Cellini’s Perseus and Andromeda – but it can also be small and delicate, like Alfred Gilbert’s St Elizabeth of Hungary. It can defy gravity, like Barthélemy Prieur’s Acrobat Performing a Handstand. It can be smooth and shiny, like Rodin’s The Age of Bronze, or rough all over, like Giambologna’s Turkey. It rarely puts on only a front, but can be seen to advantage from all angles. There really isn’t much it can’t do. This sense of the varied possibility of art, through time and across the globe, is perhaps the most inspiring thing about the exhibition.

If I had to compare the respective merits of the different periods on display, I would tend to say the older the better. Great though the masterpieces of the Renaissance are, they sometimes seem to have slightly too much manner, as if their truthfulness was sacrificed to their technical mastery. Some of the more modern work lacks delicacy, or strives too hard for effect.

The greatest revelations in the show come from the ancient world. The depictions of animals, in particular, suggest cultures that lived with beasts on terms of childlike intensity. A Mesopotamian foundation peg from the 14th century BC (these were deposited under the corners of temples for commemorative reasons) shows a greedy bull scoffing sprouting plants at head height. The Etruscan chimera of Arezzo comes roaring, hissing and bleating out of the past. Everything feels fresh and direct. As you enter the show, the Dancing Satyr (Greek, fourth century BC) leaps, as if from the springtime of the world.