After the success of our visit to the Leonora Carrington exhibition, I became slightly overconfident.
This is always dangerous in parenting.
This time, I took G to a large retrospective on Metaphysical Art — the Italian movement associated above all with Giorgio de Chirico, but also with a much broader visual world of empty piazzas, long shadows, silent statues, strange buildings, mannequins, trains, and that very particular atmosphere of suspended unease.
I have always loved that mood. It feels cold, intellectual, theatrical, and slightly disturbing. It also has obvious connections with later visual culture: cinema, architecture, surrealism, design, and all sorts of carefully arranged modern unease.
So, naturally, I assumed G might respond to it too.
This was not entirely wrong. She did enjoy the exhibition. She was curious, she looked carefully, she asked questions, and she followed the rooms with real attention. There was no boredom, no complaint, no resistance.
But enjoyment and enchantment are not the same thing.
When we came out, I asked her what she thought. Her verdict was:
“So-so. Some things I liked, some less.”
I have to admit: as art criticism goes, that is hard to improve. No performance, no jargon, no false enthusiasm, no attempt to please the adult who clearly wanted the exhibition to land.
Just a clean, balanced review.
What I found fascinating — the silence, the chill, the intellectual distance — may simply have remained cold for her. And perhaps that is the point. Children can be wonderfully open, but they are not blank screens onto which we get to project our own tastes.
Sometimes we are not introducing them to art.
We are introducing our taste to reality.
Transcript
I took G to an exhibition about Metaphysical Art, which is already a risky sentence.
Empty squares, long shadows, silent statues, strange buildings, mysterious trains.
The kind of art that later sneaks into cinema, architecture, and half the visual language of unease.
I love that atmosphere: cold, intellectual, silent, slightly disturbing.
So naturally, as a parent, I assumed my taste was contagious.
She did enjoy the exhibition.
She looked carefully, asked questions, and moved through it with real curiosity.
Then I asked: “So, what did you think?”
She said: “So-so. Some things I liked, some less.”
Honestly, that may be the most reasonable review I’ve ever heard.
The mysterious silence that fascinates me just left her… silent.
Which is why I took G to an exhibition about Metaphysical Art.