The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition is the world's longest running annual display of contemporary art, and one of its largest. Ever since 1769 the Academy's exhibition rooms have been crowded for some two months each year with thousands of paintings and sculptures by many of Britain's leading artists. These spectacular displays have provided artists with crucial competition, inspiration and publicity, and captured the interest of millions of visitors. The Great Spectacle takes the reader on a fascinating journey to tell the story of these exhibitions. Many treasured works of British art were first shown on the walls of the RA: portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough, the mighty landscapes of Turner and Constable, and the Pre-Raphaelites, who caused such a critical and cultural furore. The chapter on the twentieth century will reveal the RA's relationship with British modernism, right up to the 2018 Summer Exhibition, which will be coordinated by Grayson Perry CBE RA. AUTHOR: Professor Mark Hallett is Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and author of Reynolds, Portraiture in Action (2014). Dr Sarah Victoria Turner is Assistant Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. SELLING POINTS: * A fascinating study of the longest-running annual exhibition of contemporary art, the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, illustrated with works by many of the great names of British art including Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, David Hockney, Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin * Accompanies an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts from 12 June to 19 August 2018 200 colour images

The sculptures of Conrad Shawcross RA explore subjects that lie on the borders of geometry and philosophy, physics and metaphysics. For the 2015 Summer Exhibition's Annenberg Courtyard installation, Shawcross created a large-scale, immersive work consisting of five cloud-like forms in steel. Made from thousands of tetrahedrons, these forms stand at over six metres high and weigh five tonnes each. Shawcross explains: "The Greeks considered the tetrahedron to represent the very essence of matter. In this huge work I have taken this form as my 'brick', growing these chaotic, diverging forms that will float above the heads of visitors." As well as photography of the works in situ, this publication contains working drawings, structural diagrams and a text by the architecture writer Patrick Sykes. AUTHOR: Patrick Sykes is an architecture writer and radio producer whose work is featured or forthcoming in The Times, Mas Context, Warscapes, Polis and on BBC Radio 4. SELLING POINTS: * Includes structural diagrams showing the construction of this dramatic work * Features an exclusive interview with the artist himself * Conrad Shawcross is the youngest living Royal Academician 80 colour