Kids...'Walk Through British Art'

'Walk Through British Art' is a series of galleries at Tate Britain which in their words is, "...a walk through time", through their collection from 1545 to the present. "There are no designated themes or movements; instead, you can see a range of art made at any one moment in an open conversational manner."

Fuelled by lunch, having seen the Barbara Hepworth exhibition, which you can read about here, we headed into the permanent galleries. I watched and chatted to my kids, intrigued to see how the Tate's 'open conversational manner' approach to displaying art worked itself out in our conversation.

What made them tick in the Tate?

Materials

Quite often it was the materials and the questions surrounding their use that drew in the kids, especially my youngest son and his friend.

Such as bread.

"Bread people".

"Do you think he bought sliced bread?" 

"How did he cut the bread to make room for the body shape? Did he cut round someone or use a mould of a person?"

"Bet it smells."

"I want to climb on them." Fortunately at 12 years old, he knew better.

Puzzles

Sometimes it was the challenge of a piece of art that captured the kids' imagination. Especially if the work presented itself as a bit of a puzzle.

Art in corners.

"I really can't tell if those shapes are printed on the wall or hanging there."

This was one of those pieces of work in a gallery that make you go and get your mum.

"Can I show you something really cool?"

"That's mad."

"That's not a hole is it? There's no way that's a hole."

We were so close, yet couldn't tell. Clever!

"Mum look, 3D or not 3D." He was pleased with himself for the pun.

Familiarity

We all like the work that reminded us of something, something within our experience.

"Do you remember seeing that Gilbert & George exhibition in Exeter?"

"That looks like Britain overcoming the Nazis in the Second World War. They start to break up, then at the end they are shattered apart."

We look at the label and find out that this was in fact made in the seventies. It is though, a comment on racism.

"Racism is breaking down. Good."

"I've seen this before. I like the colours, the splash." Says a teenager unafraid of colour.

"What even those greys?"

"Grey's not a horrible colour. You wear a lot of grey." True.

"I recognised that from the airport. I saw a security camera and the inside of a suitcase looked liked that."

Kids seem to want a work of art to be about something.

"What's this meant to be?"

"It's meant to be art."

"But what's it all about?"

So when no "about" is mentioned, they start to decide for themselves, more often than not applying concrete rather than abstract concepts.

"It looks like a ship."

"They look like singing worms."

"Friendly creatures."

"What is it about them that makes them look friendly?"

Hard Work

Hard work is acknowledged and respected.

"Those words must have taken a long time to do, especially if they did it manually", says a child from a digital age.

What they didn't get.

"How is that a work of art, it just looks like a messy room."

"That is not someone with a good life because they have mess all over their bed, things you don't really need. If they had a good life, they'd have a bedside light and loads of books."

The comments of two boys, not yet teenagers, on a comment made by the artist on her own life.

" Do you think Tracy Emin has bedside light nowadays?"

Having a bedside light obviously says a lot about a person.

At this point, two delighted boys find and show us the smallest spider web, connecting her bedside table to her mattress. The Tate has a squatter, do they know? Does Tracy Emin know?

"What's the point? It's not saying anything important."

"It's a wire sculpture. Like a wire drawing. Sometimes when you draw, you make more than one line don't you. I think it's beautiful, a gentle, soft, wire drawing."

This was our conversation, Whether or not our responses were what the artists or Tate imagined, it's what we talked about. We would have liked a bit more "about" conversation with the Tate. When you're nine and twelve years old, it's important that galleries answer some of your questions. I reckon the Tate could have joined in a little more with the conversation, information was sparse.

As you can see, kids do get on with it, get engaged, make comments and stop themselves climbing on some very tempting pieces of sculpture, but at times things can come to a dead end.

"I don't know what it's supposed to be."

Tate Britain, Walk Through British Art galleries is free, open every day. What's stopping you visiting?

Unless you're scared of spiders.

Details on their website here.

Just in case you were wondering. It was a hole. I can't tell you how we found out, but I promise we did not touch the artwork.

UPDATE: To answer my son's questions about how Anthony Gormley cut the bread for the body shape in the sculpture above, We have since found out (from the telly) that he ate all the bread required to to make a 3D outline of himself. 

Museo Piaggio

Vespa Scooters are not technically my thing. I don't know much about tinkering with engines, and oil changes. I can appreciate cool though. And cool is what we got we got visiting Museo Piaggio in Pontedera, Italy.

We got cool, as in this, the Vespa Scooter,

...and cool, as we entered the air conditioned museum when it was forty degrees outside.

It's not all cylinder heads, top speeds and spark plugs. The Museo Piaggio knows how to appeal to many audiences.

Those who like a touch of Hollywood glamour.

Those who like colour.

Those who like the thrill of speed. Racing Vespas.

Those who like a bit of history.

Designed to be used in France in the Second World War, as far as I can remember.

And those who like to know how it all started.

The Vespa, designed Corradino d'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer who who was not fond of 'uncomfortable and bulky' motorbikes, so set out to improve on them, designing the first in 1946.  

Since 1946 Vespas have been mass produced,

proving so popular that in the first ten years they sold one million,

and four years later, they had sold their two millionth Vespa.

The Vespa has also been subject to much customisation influenced by...

...helicopters

...aerodynamics

...TV programmes

 ..and meat.

Museo Piaggio is housed in an old Piaggio factory,

which was damaged by bombing in the Second World War.

Three years after the end of the second World War, and two years after the two wheeled Vespa scooter was designed, in the same year Italy became a republic, Piaggio launched the Ape, a three wheeled van. It has proved to be Italy's most popular goods vehicle, selling 200,000 in ten years.

  

As with the Vespa they soon moved on from post-war military paint colours.

To red, for fire engines,

and designs from Sicily.

The Ape has been tested to extremes with several round the world expeditions.

Including a six month, 25,000 kilometre, journey from Spain to China across twenty countries to celebrate the Ape's fiftieth anniversary.

If you fancy customising your own Vespa, you have the chance in the kids area.

My kids weren't really young enough but enjoyed the opportunity anyway.

The Vespa, so called because "sembra una vespa!", "it looks likes a wasp!".

Old and new, has it changed that much in sixty-nine years?

Museo Piaggio is air-conditioned and open Tuesday to Saturday and the occassional Sunday.

Check their website, here, before you visit as you might just turn up at 1pm on a Saturday when they're closed for an hour for lunch. Just time enough to pop into town for an ice cream.

Museo Benozzo Gozzoli

We have recently returned from a family holiday in Tuscany, Italy. We went with extended family and hit all the popular tourist spots like the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell'Accademia which houses Michelangelo's David, in Florence. These big celebrity museums, although amazing, are quite hard going. Guidebooks recommend three to four hours for the Uffizi Gallery and you get to see more Renaissance art than you can possibly take on board and in our case possibly understand. With so much to look at, we soon reached saturation point with Renaissance art.

We could see how beautiful the paintings were but it was difficult to understand the context in which these paintings were originally made and hung. We didn't always "get it", and sadly it seemed that for many museums, their priority was to get people through the doors, along the visitor route, and safely out the other end without communicating the whys, whats and wherefores of the art works to your everyday visitor.

Apart from... the Museo Benozzo Gozzoli, a small local museum in the town where we were staying. For me, this museum "got it", understood how to talk to visitors, even English ones. It was a museum where we "got it" too, and made sense of all the other frescoes we had seen.

 The Museo Benozzo Gozzoli houses the frescoes from two 15th century chapels painted by a local man, Benozzo Gozzoli.

Benozzo Gozzoli

The two chapels being the Tabernacle of the Visitation,

  

...and the Tabernacle of the Madonna of the Cough.

Sounds a little like a Monty Python title, but this chapel was where mothers brought their sick children who were more often than not afflicted with whooping cough, rife in Tuscany.

Initially the frescoes in these two chapels had been rescued from further deterioration and displayed in a local library. The library wasn't up to the job, so locals rallied round and got a purpose-built museum built to house them. The paintings were restored and remounted as they would have originally been, on specially built full-size models. 

Which can be viewed from the ground,

...or from higher up.

You may be wondering why so much of the lower part of the frescoes are missing. This is due to the regular flooding of the River Elsa washing the paintings away. One of the reasons the frescoes were removed.

Models of the chapels helped us understand scale.

And if you were wondering what these chapels originally looked like and where they stood, there are photos.

In 1965 the removal of the frescoes from these chapels was deemed necessary and during the removal which involved strips of cotton, animal glue and hot water the original drawings under the paintings were revealed.

These drawings were done in a red earth pigment, the final part of the preparation before the painting began.

Underneath a fresco are many layers, stages of preparation. Firstly the stone walls are rendered with plaster made from water, lime and sand. Then outlines are drawn with charcoal. When the artist is happy with it, red pigment is applied and all the details filled out. Then the charcoal lines are brushed away with feathers. After that a new thin layer of plaster is applied to the drawing, only enough to cover the expected area to be worked on that day, as the surface to be painted needed to be damp. 

This explains why the Museo Benozzo Gozzoli contains paintings and the original drawings, originally separated from each other by 2mm of plaster.

There was a smaller scale model on display.

Decorated by kids, their version of the original.

We loved the Museo Benozzo Gozzoli. The passion that it had for saving, restoring and remounting the paintings was evident in the way they told their story. Rightly proud of their local heritage, showing it off and explaining it to visitors, drawing us in and helping us understand. 

The Museo Benozzo Gozzoli may be a little far for most readers of this blog to visit, but if you're ever in the area, we highly recommend it over all the big city, as my daughter would say "fancy pants", museums in the guidebooks.

Details on their website here.