EXHIBITION: Half a Century of Miffy

The Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood's celebration of 50 years of Miffy is no doubt cute, but does it stand up to artistic analysis? Jane Fulcher finds out.

TRYING to find a suitable balance between appealing to children and putting on a viable retrospective is difficult. It is especially hard when the subject of your exhibition is 50 years of Miffy, the cartoon rabbit created by Dick Bruna.

To be fair to the Victoria and Albert children’s museum, they seem to have put real effort into entertaining both children and their parents or teachers. Next to a puppet theatre and dressing up box are framed pieces of Bruna’s more abstract, deco design work and detailed information on his inspirations and working process.

It is difficult, and a little ridiculous, to try to reconcile pictures of a line-drawn rabbit holding a kite with quotations such as “every shape captures the imagination, that is the strength of simplicity, the art of omission”.

Their analytical approach becomes more ridiculous when dealing with Bruna’s influences, which include everything from Matisse to the de Stijl movement of early twentieth century Holland. He also claims that Picasso once commented on his work, saying his drawings had a beautiful shape. “I went round with my head in the clouds for the next year,” he said. As well you might.

Attempts to draw any serious comparisons with artists such as Mondrian set the wrong tone for this exhibition. I can’t imagine Quentin Blake comparing himself to Velazquez.

Miffy is all about simplicity: children get it and that is what’s important. There are activities for kids, such as writing postcards, and a table at which to sing Happy Birthday and peek holes to look through. But in trying to make the retrospective more about Bruna and less about Miffy and her friends, the exhibition fails.

According to the museum blurb, Miffy is all about “plain direct emotion” but the show entirely misses this. Instead of talking to children directly and making the process of creation interesting, it just fobs them off with a big, plastic birthday cake.