The Daily Telegraph - Features
Quentin Blake reveals a deliciously dark side
Exhibition
Quentin Blake: Now
Cromwell Place, London SW7 ★★★★★
A Quentin Blake drawing is unmistakable. With their trademark interrupted lines, scratchy black pen, and washes of watercolour, his figures are distinctively his – regardless of whether his subject is lankily sloping across the page or rather more rotund and spotty. From angular faces to pot bellies, there’s an insight that marks them out; a wittiness, and an accuracy at capturing human expressions. Since 1978, Blake’s figures have been synonymous with something else: the characters from Roald Dahl’s children’s’ books. From Matilda to The Twits, Blake, now 91, drew the scenes of no fewer than 18 of Dahl’s works.
Yet, in his first commercial exhibition in decades, Blake has stepped away from his work for children. The walls at Cromwell Place in South Kensington are covered with drawings that were produced only “in recent months” and which, the curators are keen to point out, have a more “adult feel” than his most famous work.
All these new works are available to buy, with prices starting at £500 for “off-cut” drawings – small figures, with inky fingerprints still visible – to £7,000 for a large crayon study of a head.
One sequence of greyscale watercolour-and-ink drawings takes its name from the French love of a vélo tout-terrain (that is, an all-terrain bike). Pedalling across craggy landscapes are Blake’s versions of “mamils”: middle-aged men-in-Lycra aboard unicycles with weather vanes attached, or two-tier bikes with space for book-stands. There’s a non-childishness here – the monotone colour palette and cliff-ridden backdrop nod towards a post-apocalyptic scene – but the overall effect is still one of fantasy; of eccentric whimsy.
Blake’s gloomier imaginations also run wild on the other side of the gallery. More than a dozen pen-and-ink drawings of different sizes – this time with coloured watercolour washes – form Blake’s “High Places & Lofty Structures” section. Cloaked figures, each holding a staff, stand alone or in groups on scaffolds. In his commentary, Blake calls these his “bearded sages”, but there are hints of something else too: for every figure that looks like a benevolent Gandalf (including one exclaiming from his book) is one that looks uncomfortably close to the grim reaper. Even a seemingly charming detail – a hunched figure walking a dog – seems almost menacing. For all the scene’s amusement, it still looks as if the dog is about to pull the man off the platform and into the airy wash below.
It should be no surprise that Blake’s art has a dark side. His illustrations for children’s books have always had a capacity to be nastily funny; the type of caricature that so amuses children. What is a surprise, though, is just how effective this sombreness is. In contrast, the most traditionally “Children’s Laureate Blake” part of the exhibition – scenes of swimming in ponds, or reading in hammocks – is the least remarkable.
It is where quirkiness and murkiness collide that this exhibition gets interesting. So late in his career, Blake is showing us a previously hidden side to his work.
Until Feb 18. Tickets: 020 8057 1800; cromwellplace.com