The Shape Game
Art is for everyone
When Anthony Browne was an illustrator-in-residence at Tate Britain in London, he created a book called The Shape Game. It’s a story about a mother with two sons who asks to go to the museum for her birthday. This is not a family that frequents museums. Brother George is bored, and Dad is a bit of a tool, making daft comments, showing off in front of his boys, and telling painfully unfunny jokes.
This family set up is familiar if you know Browne’s work. In Piggybook, for instance, there is a large and vivid father and two boys, and a mother in the background who is faceless and constantly being called on to hurry up with breakfast or supper.
Piggybook was not the book that turned me into a fan of this prolific illustrator. I bought it ‘for the children’ after I’d already collected several of his books featuring a boy/monkey called Willy. But an underlying sentiment about the way men and women take up space differently in the home in this book confirmed something for me about the author’s attunement, and made me like him all the more.
At the end of the story of The Shape Game, the family walks out through the gift shop.
On the way home in the train, the mother teaches the children the shape game. You draw a shape, and then the next person has to turn it into something.
This past weekend, we were away with the family. Two of my nieces were sitting at the low table in the living room drawing. One was drawing animals sporting something ‘human’ — a hat, a bowtie — and asked what she should draw next. One thing led to another and I taught them the shape game.
We filled pages with shapes and interpretations. The next day, they taught another cousin. I took a photograph to send my children who weren’t there.
‘The Shape Game lives on,’ I wrote to them.
I’d thought perhaps my children and I had simply loved playing this because it was ‘our thing’.
Clearly though, the simplicity of the game, and its agelessness and openness, means it is a broad and welcoming church.
Which is the point Browne is making in the book about the family that goes to the museum: art is for everyone: even fathers who fancy themselves comedians when no one else does.
With love,
as always,
K.
PS: You can have a look at Anthony Browne’s books on his website. He is also on Instagram.