On Sunday I went with my son to the exhibition „Dalí, Magritte, Miró – Surrealism in Paris“ of the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. My Son is five years old and has a clear opinion regarding the individual artists. He likes René Magritte, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí very much. Pablo Picasso however does not mean much to him.

To motivate a child for visual arts and a quiet walk through an exhibition is not an easy undertaking. He does like looking at the paintings, however if I would like to look at all works calmly and with enough time, I need to come up with something special. I explain every picture to him and think of a story. That’s pretty simple with surrealists. I’m not an art historian and I am only to a limited extent interested why someone painted a certain picture. So I just let the pictures sink in. Some pictures I am attracted to, some I look at for a long time, others put me off and others I just look at for seconds.

We walked through the exhibition and I tell my son stories in Czech about bad witches and magicians, about magic powers and about not sleeping kings. He listened intently and we had lots of fun. The exhibition was very full. We were in the last room which was dedicated to Dalí. We were standing in front of the picture “The Temptation of St. Anthony” and I told him that it is an island where elephants with spider legs live, which in fact are powerful magicians and turned all human beings to stones. He wanted to know whether the horse on the picture was also a magician and I said no, that is only a servant, also a human being also bewitched by the elephants.

Next to us an elderly man had stopped, with almost white hair and a chequered jacket. When I finished my explanations he turned to me and said in Czech: “Your story sounds fine but it’s absolutely not true. You are just leading the boy astray.” I was speechless. But he did not expect an answer as he was already moving on to the next picture. 

Well, one has to be careful with languages. At every corner of the world there may be someone, who by chance speaks the language, in which one is railing, for example. However I don’t think that my stories about art influence my son in a negative way.

After the exhibition my son wanted to have a fried sausage. And as it was lunch time, I promised him one. In front of the museum, one could buy several things. Champagne, Prosecco, tarte flambee, oysters or lentils soup. Fried sausages probably did not fit in with surrealism, they did not have any. My son was pretty sad and I suggested going to the old town of Basel. We walked through the old town searching for a fried sausage. We encountered about 6 chestnut stands, could buy pizza or hamburgers. But he wanted a fried sausage. Finally we bought a roll and a Lyoner sausage at Coop. He was happy with it.

Dear people from Basel: there is a market niche in your town! Someone should open a stand with cervelat and fried sausages. Or do people from Basel not eat sausages?