Andreas Jaeggi:
"Summer Vacation, Family Camping"
Color Pencil on Paper
8" x 12"
ca. 1961

Drawing Done During Primary School

At some point during one's growing up comes the loss of "Innocence", a time when this effervescent fantasy without any rhyme or reason starts to fade. It is the beginning of the period of copying: I myself drew hundreds of Mickey Mouse heads and even more of Donald Duck. I could hardly break away from the curving lines of the beak and of those big saucer eyes. I was obsessed with getting a grip on these perfect lines myself (see The Mona Project: Mona Donald). Unfortunately, none of these early Disney copies have survived.

My second field of interest at this time was history. It goes without saying that the basis of my comprehension of the past was totally crooked and of fairytale-like sweetness, although the word "fairytale" is not completely correct here, as the brothers Grimm's classical tales are of a cruelty which almost surpasses reality if you read them carefully.

Since my very early childhood, I have regularly attended theater performances (my father Willy Jaeggi was a semi-professional theater critic and the publisher of the Swiss Theater Review for many years) as well as the yearly Basel Carnival, which brought me in contact with exciting forms of hightened reality. It is quite strange that neither as a child nor as an adolescent did I ever dream of becoming a professional in one of these areas myself.

I consider these school drawings to be very representative Swiss time documents.