{"id":13641,"date":"2013-05-30T10:56:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T09:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=13641"},"modified":"2013-05-30T10:59:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T09:59:46","slug":"quentin-blake-drawn-by-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2013\/05\/30\/quentin-blake-drawn-by-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Quentin Blake: Drawn By Hand at the Fitzwilliam Museum, or Markgraf Is A Terrible Date"},"content":{"rendered":"
It was at once a brilliant and thoroughly embarrassing afternoon.<\/p>\n
I came home exhausted and tearful, clutching a new book and my partner’s sleeve.\u00a0 “But I can’t write about that!” I protested.\u00a0 “What would I draw for it?”<\/p>\n
Hello, BadRep readers.\u00a0 I’m here to tell you about the time I embarrassed myself in a museum.<\/p>\n
Image: Kirsty Connell (credit link at end of article)<\/p><\/div>\n
I live in Cambridge, which is a nice place, and contains the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is also nice.\u00a0 Startlingly nice, in fact.\u00a0 Long warrens of gold-framed paintings, glass cabinets full of glittering treasures, and ancient wooden tables polished to a mirror sheen with little toblerone notices on them telling you to keep your paws off, thank you.<\/ul>\n
There’s marble busts that I could look at for years and never get old, myriad hoards of coins, terrible thorny ranks of daggers and swords, medieval Christian bling and a glorious rotating selection of temporary exhibitions.<\/p>\n
Their temporary exhibitions are spectacular.\u00a0 They recently had one on Chinese tomb treasures that I saw posters for when I was visiting London.\u00a0 “I’ve been to that!” I exclaimed, pointing at a poster on the Tube.\u00a0 But no-one was impressed, for they were cultured London types with the British Museum on their doorstep, and I am a scruffy Cambridge yokel with orange hair and visible underpants.<\/p>\n
The most recent standout exhibit – which was so busy they had
to implement a timed ticket system – was the Quentin Blake: Drawn By Hand<\/strong><\/a> exhibition.<\/p>\n
You all know who
Quentin Blake<\/strong> is, of course.\u00a0 He illustrated
all of
Roald Dahl’s<\/strong> books for children and many
other things besides.\u00a0 I wasn’t very familiar
with his “many other things besides”, though,
and that was what this exhibit showed me.<\/p>\n
I didn’t know, for example, that he has done public
paintings for hospitals.\u00a0 There were many of his
maternity-unit paintings, all involving cheerful mothers
having fun in a variety of scenes (some are underwater for a water-birthing
unit<\/a>) and all very sweet and soothing to look
at.<\/p>\n
And there was this one that made me lose my shit
comprehensively.<\/p>\n
I was already on delicate emotional footing because I have
a lot of feelings about Quentin Blake, and then I came
across this painting he’d done for the Vincent
Square eating disorder treatment unit in London.<\/p>\n
The painting, titled
Ordinary Life No. 8<\/strong>, is of a young woman in her hospital room in
a gown<\/a>, feeding birds on her windowsill through the
open sash window.\u00a0 She looks happy, and all the
birds are eating seeds.<\/p>\n
This just in: I have just started crying writing that
paragraph.<\/p>\n
I am at work.<\/p>\n
She’s in her room, where she has to stay until
she’s better, but the birds can go where they
please; she is happy to feed the birds, and the birds
are happy to be fed.\u00a0 Oh my god, there are so
many things in that piece that kind of punched me in
the heart until I burst into a fire hydrant of noisy
tears in the middle of the reflective silence of the
exhibit.<\/p>\n
Some very well-behaved children turned around and
scowled at me.\u00a0 My partner ushered me on.\u00a0
The next piece was from the lithograph series
Girls and Dogs<\/strong><\/a>, of a young girl in a
red dress, happily showing a gigantic pitch-black
terrifying-looking wolf monster a painting
she’d done.\u00a0 The tears came again, only
worse.<\/p>\n
And then, at the end, there was an illustration
for The Boy In The Dress<\/strong><\/a> (a
children’s novel by
David Walliams<\/strong>, of all people) and
it was all too much and I had to leave.<\/p>\n
“Mummy,” said a small child with
crisp, angelic gold ringlets bearing aloft a
blue ribbon, “That man is
crying”.<\/p>\n
Blake’s paintings, with their
characteristic loose, expressive style
– fluid washes of watercolour and ink
contained by haphazard spidery cages of
scratchy black ink somehow conspiring to be
more life-accurate than anything
photorealism could ever offer –
capture and reflect simple happiness and
freedom.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to use words like
“innocence”, because I
don’t like its implications of
fetishising a lack of knowledge.\u00a0
Blake’s paintings are very canny;
their veneer of simplicity disguising a
great depth of self-awareness and knowledge
of the subject.<\/p>\n
The young girl showing the big wolf her
painting isn’t afraid of the big
wolf.\u00a0 The big wolf likes her painting,
and looms in front of her with giant,
masonry-nail fangs bared in an appreciative
grin.\u00a0 She has nothing to fear from her
playmate, however, because she is brave and
has made friends with something that others
would find terrifying and avoid.<\/p>\n
The young woman in her hospital room is
finding joy in feeding the birds.\u00a0 The
birds don’t know why she’s in
hospital, or of her own difficulties with
food; they just like seeds and she’s
put some out for them.<\/p>\n
I bought a copy of
The Boy In The Dress<\/strong> on the way
home.\u00a0 An entire exhibition of mostly
women, magic and birds and I end up with a
book about a boy who likes to wear
dresses.\u00a0 That’s top marketing,
that.<\/p>\n
I’ll let you know how it
is.<\/p>\n
The
Quentin Blake: Drawn By Hand<\/strong>
exhibition closed in mid-May, but you
can still check out the
following:<\/p>\n
Image of the museum banner
by Kirsty
Connell on
Flickr<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n