Roundabout
Art
EVERYONE
looked hunted to start with.
Scoured and buttoned into cascades of frills or into crisp white shirts with Bavarian braces, they wondered why they had come.
Was this Art? And if so, was it worth it? Nobody among the exhibitors to the National Exhibition of Children's Art knew anybody else. Nobody spoke.
Well, at least there was the food. Jellies shone like jewels on the tables, meringues foamed lusciously, ices and cakes and fruit drinks sirened the palate. And there squiring it over all was the Editor of the Sunday Pictorial, full-fed on the delights of patronage. The obvious thing for guests to do was to concentrate on the food and ignore everyone else. Including the fatherly press cameraman who played a kind of `off-ground he' on chairs round the walls hoping to catch someone unrolling a Swiss roll or being otherwise naive.
For twenty minutes the children munched coldly away, not speaking except when the Pic- torial staff crept Heepishly from table to table begging them to have more food. Then inex- plicably a wave of giggles swept along one table and rippled backwards and forwards across the room. An explosion of noise broke out as if a muzzle had been taken off a large and voluble animal. Little boys began knotting themselves to their chairs and little girls to splash fruit salad on their starched-white paunches. While the slow eaters plodding anxiously on, the more aggressive guests began to wonder audibly whether they might get down and where the lavatory was.
Tea finished, the mothers shot irrepressibly out of an adjoining room longing to supervise. The lavatory door began to bang like a machine-gun. Pride fought with honesty in the mothers' con- versation.
`I think the judges must have been a bit cracked, really. I mean what does it look like? Yes, she did it at school in an art lesson. Funny. Never known her touch a paint-brush at home. Of course, art's in the family. Her Auntie Edna used to do some lovely water-colours.'
The children were equally mystified.
`Teacher said do anything you like. But every- one seemed to be doing trees. So I did a tree. That's it. It's not very good, is it? Is it? Teacher said I could have done better. Why did I paint it all in spots? I just thought I would. No. I'm not coming to the Private View because Mummy's got to go to work tomorrow. But Mummy and Daddy and Brian and I are coming on Saturday, and p'raps Granma. If she's well enough, that is. Yes, I want to get in this exhibition neat year because it's such a nice tea. It's my birthday on the seventh.'
Cauldrons of colour boiled and bubbled on the walls. Energy bounced from picture to picture as Jonah, Wyatt Earp, Jesus and Robin Hood lived out the passionate drama of being alive. A shock- haired lion in 'Billy Smart's Circus coming to Woodhouse Moor' beamed fatuously. Brian Car- ter's 'Portrait of Sir' stared revealingly at the spectators like a message in code from a clever captive.
One of the cameramen found an exquisite child in lace with long fair hair and persuaded her to suck her thumb as she stared consideringly at a picture. A group of children in a corner were urged by another photographer to play a singing game and self-consciously broke into 'The Farmer Wants a Wife.' The Mirror reporter tore her hair. 'God knows what I'm to say. There's no policy ruling on this.' The door of the lavatory continued to bang.
Previous page
