no hands

"Pre-Raphaelites is closing this weekend and advance tickets have now sold out. There are a limited number of tickets available for purchase in person in the gallery every day this week – we advise you to arrive early to avoid disappointment if you would like to purchase any of these tickets."

This is the message I found on Tate Britain's website this morning. I had toyed with the idea of seeing the Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde exhibition before it closes but was deterred by two equally unpleasant possibilities: being turned away because tickets were gone or having to cue and then body-check my way though overcrowded galleries after paying fourteen pounds for an exhibition that years earlier, thanks to my membership (which, in a bout of optimism about leaving London, I canceled at the end of 2011) would have been free.

One of the first exhibitions I saw thanks to said membership was, in late 2007, a John Everett Millais retrospective. Millais is a revered figure in British painting, on par with JMW Turner and second to none. Before the show at Tate Britain, I had not heard of him. I hadn't even noticed his statue, grand and bronze but not exactly prominent, out of the way on a bit of open space behind the museum.

Millais took my breath away. He was the most masterful painter of hands, and he manages to tell the stories in his paintings through the hands alone. One fine example, The Order of Release is available on the Tate website. Notice how every hand is essential for the narrative: holding the keys, handing over and receiving the eponymous order of release, tenderly touching after long separation, holding wife and sleeping kid, carrying a little welcome flower, hanging limply in sleep.

Once I had identified the first talking hands, I saw them in many more paintings and amused myself by mentally reducing them to the essentials, cropping to around the hands to distill each painting's essence. It was a masterclass in composition. It was also a masterclass in the anatomically correct drawing of hands, a skill that is in short supply these days, as a visit to the Saatchi makes abundantly clear.

The Saatchi Gallery is a vanity project of staggering proportions. Charles Saatchi, its owner, came to fortune with an advertisement agency co-run with his brother and then to fame with early art acquisitions that turned into gold. He launched Damian Hirst's career into utterly unjustified stratospheric heights and earned healthy millions in the process. In 2008, his gallery moved into a stunning space near Sloane Square that rivals any national gallery. Sadly, the architecture will forever outshine the art, which appears haphazard, randomly assembled, scattered about. Each show gives the impression that a few dozen failed art students had called their schoolmates-acting-as-agent to present them with their latest creations. "Look at this awesome piece", the inept artists proudly demand. "Where can I exhibit?" There's a lot of embarrassed scratching of heads, furtive suggestions to bin the lot and start all over and then the last resort: "We could always try the Saatchi." And so the new exhibition slowly takes shape.

Maybe I exaggerate, but probably not by much. I've been to all the shows at the Saatchi since 2008. The artistic quality of many pieces and the level of skill evident in them are rather poor. Hands are never painted well. Abstract works don't invite the same kind of targeted criticism, but bafflement is more often my spontaneous reaction than admiration. And yet, I return. If nothing else, what I am shown is unusual and unexpected, it makes me think (Can it really be that bad?), and usually there are a few good pieces among the rubbish.

At Tate Britain I know what I get. There are very few surprises. Maybe I should have gone to see the Pre-Raphaelites after all. But Millais was a founding member of this group. What's the point of going back to a thing you know? If art ain't new, it's just old hats.