Over the week-end one of my sons and his family have been staying with us. One of the delights of these visits is the fact that my nine-year-old grandson really enjoys art. At some point during every visit he will ask if he can do some painting or drawing with me in the studio. He is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs, so we sat each side of the table and each drew a creature. Suddenly, he looked up at the pin-board and asked in a puzzled voice? “Is that PG?” I had to do a double-take to realise what he meant.
Every week when I come back from the life-drawing class I put some example of the week’s work up on the wall, so that I can reflect on the different techniques or approaches we have been exploring in that particular week. Sure enough, his eye had lighted on a drawing of a female nude! If you are not British possibly you don’t realise the significance of his question. Broadcast material is classified so that parents can judge its likely suitability for their children. The label “PG” stands for “parental guidance”, which means that a judgement about its suitability is left to parents, but they might like to be advised that some might consider that the material in question is not what they would wish their children to see. Nudity would be one of the features which might be flagged up for parental guidance.
Two things interested me about my grandson’s reaction to the experience. First of all, I was slightly surprised to hear that he was aware of this formal classification, and thought it appropriate to ask about it. More noteworthy, I think, was his total matter-of-factness about the nude image. A simple drawing in chalk on black paper, it was in no way salacious. He bestowed on it no particular attention, and once I had explained about the life-drawing class he was content to return his attention fully to his dinosaur.
The conversation turned briefly to the question of what is a “life-drawing class”, and I explained that the human figure is remarkably complicated, but because we can look at the human body in a great variety of situations it presents us with an almost endless range of challenges. Of course, on reflection, I had to accept that drawing a dinosaur could be equally challenging and perhaps equally interesting. The problem is, of course, that dinosaurs are rather hard to come by.