Tony Hart quits art at 83
Tony Hart, the host of children’s art programmes such as Vision On and Take Hart, has lost the use of his hands due to stroke. This news brings both an amazing sense of nostalgia, and some amount of sadness.
No one I know remembers ever seeing these programmes, but Vision On and Take Hart have an unusual place in my childhood. These were some of the first English television programmes that I regularly watched. That was when the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation imported shows from the UK, rather than America, for its English language children programming. That means I probably saw Vision On before I did Sesame Street.
I remember quite a few things, if not the shows themselves (until now, that is): the silly animated T-Rex, the claymation character Morph, created by the folks now known collectively as Aardman Studios; and the Gallery segment that featured some of the most amazing pieces of children’s art I’ve never seen in real life, set to music such as Left Bank Two and John William’s Cavatina.
Watching the above video from Take Hart brings back incredible memories. Of my fascination with Tony Hart’s skill with all sorts of materials; the fantasies of having my own art and crafts workshop, complete with an infinite supply of paper, paint and various materials; memories of wishing my father could teach me some of the cool things I knew he could do with art materials, but somehow never got around to.
I could be letting nostalgia get to my head, but Take Hart is a possible explanation for my experiences with art over the years. Such as the suspicion I often experience when walking in the galleries at SAM: I swear I’ve seen some of this before, under a more… juvenile context. It could also explain my dissatisfaction with art education all through my first ten years in school, after which I gave it up. It was never this good. It was just never this fun.
