Understanding Junior

When Junior impressionistically draws a horse in bright reds, Mother will chide: "Everybody knows that horses aren't red, dear. Why don't you paint brown horses?" That attitude is all wrong, thinks William McGonagle, of the Detroit Institute of Arts, who runs art workshops for children. Before he could really teach the youngsters, McGonagle decided two years ago, he would have to educate their par-"ents: he invited mothers and fathers to come along and study art with the kids. This week, completing his third "Family Workshop," in which parents painted, drew and sculpted alongside their grade-schoo'-age children, Teacher McGonagle was more than ever convinced that children are both far more productive and far less hamstrung by realism than their parents. Said he flatly: "All the children's work is better than the parents." He added: "The adults are just afraid to let themselves go."

In the postwar years, children's pictures all over Europe and Asia showed two common themes: food and ruins. Last week an art contest, sponsored by a French magazine and UNESCO, bringing forth children's work from 34 countries, showed that the specters of hunger and war have somewhat receded. Regional moods could be detected. Scandinavian pictures were dark and brooding, Italian entries sunny and gay. One youngster from the Cameroons painted a fearsome witchdoctor, a Hungarian contestant did a festival scene with a hammer & sickle. Worldwide winner: Tulip Fields, an imaginative, untroubled pastoral by The Netherlands' Hans Evendik, 13. On the whole, the junior painters were far more refreshing than the current crop of older artists. Paris art critics were moved by what Les Nouvelles Litteraires called the youngsters' "just plain human generosity."

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