Artists love a good revolution. The social upheaval, the bubbling up of new ideas and the breaking down of old ones, attracts them like flies to fly paper. The Mexican revolution was no exception. During the years 1910-1940, Mexico attracted large numbers of international intellectuals and artists, seduced by the political maelstrom and apparent freedoms that beckoned in this culturally diverse and varied land.

One can immediately see the influence of Manet and Whistler, especially Whistler, the fellow American who spent most of his life in Paris and London. George Bellows, the first quintessentially American artist of the 20^th century, made famous in his native country painting the heaving masses of New York City and the unrestrained violence in its unlicensed boxing clubs, looked first to his European antecedents, though he never left his native shores. 

While any Manet survey, however compromised by a lack of significant loans, must be considered "an event", this is not quite the exhibition one might have hoped to see of a great artist. Taking up one vast floor of the Royal Academy with just over 50 paintings (and some not very good pastels), many of which are unfinished and must have been judged unsatisfactory by the artist himself, it is far too thinly spread to be the touted blockbuster it seeks to sell itself as.

The Royal Academy’s spacious white galleries at Burlington Gardens are flooded with mystic light and filled with New Age baubles. You are bathed in a trippy purple haze as you enter one gallery which contains a giant glowing pod. The translucent pod is meant to resemble an ancient monolith but instead looks more like an oversized Ikea lamp. The work derives its title, Tom Na H-iu II, from the Celtic “Tom na h-iubhraich” – a site of “spiritual transmigration”.

Since becoming Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts almost exactly five years ago, I have become increasingly interested in why it was established. In particular, I almost inevitably got interested in the so-called Laws which govern its operation as a binding constitution.  

A Dancing Satyr leaps into the air, his head thrown back in ecstasy. His alabaster eyes appear like two pinpoints of illumination in the dimly lit gallery. The bronze figure, which is the first work you encounter in an exhibition spanning 5,000 years of bronze sculpture, is believed to be the work of the famous Greek sculptor Praxiteles, who was active in the second half of the fourth century BC.

As the clouds continue and the rain pours down, the Sackler Gallery at the Royal Academy is filled with sun-dappled scenes from France. The anthology is a potpourri of paintings culled from the remarkable collections put together by the millionaire race horse breeder and art obsessed Sterling Clark – the fortune inherited from his grandfather’s involvement with the Singer Sewing Machine company - and his French actress wife Francine.

Middle-class family angst is this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre. And, in his new play about sex and intimacy, which opened last night, playwright Nick Payne puts the lust in Wanderlust and creates a contemporary tale of wandering hands and wandering affections. We are in a nice suburban part of England, and the mix of pain and pleasure will be all too familiar to most audiences, whether they are teenagers who can squirm at the antics of the youngsters, or middle-aged couples who might find the more mature characters shockingly recognisable.