IT WILL REMAIN IN THE FAMILY. Children´s interventions in works of their parents-artists (and vice versa)

Milan Bočkay and his son Marcel – Erik Binder and his sons Max and Alex – Gabika Binderová and her sons Max and Alex – Ladislav Čarný and his son Juraj – Anton Čierny and his daughter Johana – Pavlína Fichta Čierna and her daughter Johana – Rudolf Fila and his sons Vít, Marek and his grandson Lukáš – Dorota Filová and her son Marek – Daniel Fischer and his son Filip and daughter Ela – Květa Fulierová and her daughter Miriam – Jozef Jankovič and his daughter Sabina – Michal Kern and his son Michal – Martin Knut and his son Leo – Július Koller and his grandson Michal Hrapko – Vladimír Kordoš and his son Samuel – Stano Masár and his son Filip – Juraj Meliš and his son Juraj – Eva Cisárová-Mináriková and her sons Matúš and Lukáš – Roman Ondák and his son Adam – Vladimír Popovič and his grandson Maximilián – Peter Rónai and his grandson Samuel Kotásek – Veronika Rónaiová and her son Peter and daughter Barbara – Rudolf Sikora and his son Michal – Dana Sochorová and her daughter Katarína – Ľubo Stacho and his son Ondrej and daughter Pavlína – Dezider Tóth (Monogramista T.D) and his son Šimon – Emöke Vargová and her daughter Laura

Today the glory days of the initial discovery of children´s works as a new source of inspiration are a distant memory. Children´s creativity is perceived as a legitimate and natural source of inspiration for professional art, but it is reflected rather by art pedagogy than art theory. Art theorists register it only marginally, mostly in a category including other forms of untrained art. Though maybe only inconspicuously, children´s creativity is still present in the world of “high art”. In the art production of artists of all generations, even those not reflecting children´s creativity, one can find works created in a specific cooperation with children as a natural result of the relationship between a parent and a child, or a grandparent and a grandchild. In the beginning, the aim of the survey was to find artists whose work includes children´s works. But it soon became apparent that a more difficult task would have been to find an artist lacking this kind of work in hi production. That´s the reason why the exhibition It will remain in the family represents a selective, not a comprehensive overview of works by artists integrating creativity of their own children into their works of art. The aim is not to analyse the development stages of children´s creativity belonging rather to the area of developmental psychology or art pedagogy, but to seek children´s participation in the work of their parents or grandparents and the meeting point, which is the surface of a picture or the space in front of a camera.

In the Little Prince Antoine de Saint Exupéry described his child´s experience of misunderstanding when he drew a boa constrictor digesting an elephant, but the grown-ups identified it as a hat. “The grown-ups then advised me to give up my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and to devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic... Thus it was that I gave up a magnificent career as a painter at the age of six.” In many aspects, the evaluation of children´s drawing is subject to conventions and schematism. Yet, visual artists´ children are happy to have parents realising the strength and value of children´s creativity in individual development stages and taking it seriously. The ways of their cooperation with children are based on the uniqueness of mutual relations and have different forms, such as direct cooperation, mutual intervention, inspiration, interpretation, or appropriation of child´s work by the parent (and vice versa). The exhibition presenting works by 27 visual artists of different generations can offer us new interpretations of artists´ works directly through the “sources of inspiration”, i.e. artists´ own children.

Daniela Čarná