About child art: an examination of the historical identity of an influential art educational practice

About child art: an examination of the historical identity of an influential art educational practice

Author: Ourania Kouvou

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, 7-10 September 2005

Summary

Abstract: This paper presents an historical survey of the most representative views of educators, psychologists and artists about the notion of child art.

The urgency for such an examination stems from the fact that this particular view and its corresponding educational practices have not ceased to dominate art education for more than a century. ,

Although in a latent way, the claim that children�s work incorporates an innate aesthetic/artistic appeal and that adult interference will consequently hinder the child�s spontaneous creative processes is encountered even in contemporary art textbooks and children literature itself.

The rationale of this paper is that in order to embark in a critical understanding of the premises and philosophical underpinnings of an educational model of such magnitude and pervasive power one needs to undertake an examination of its origins and historical identity.

For more than a century, the practices of art education have been based on the notion that children�s creations have artistic/aesthetic claims and can therefore justifiably be described as child art. Although children are creative in ways different from those of adults, they are said to enjoy inherent artistic potential, which parallels that of the most celebrated modern artists, mainly of Western tradition.

The basic assumptions of child art are that the child is a natural artist who needs only encouragement and not formal instruction.

Since children�s art comes from individual and innate sources, adult influence is understood as disrupting the natural flowering of their artistic creative expression.

 

1. The Cult of Childhood

The origins of the child art notion are to be found in the "cult of childhood", the most important exponent of which is of course J.J.Rousseau. Towards the end of the Enlightenment, in the 18th century and especially with his novel "Emile", Rousseau ascribes all forms of evil to social influences and claims that culture corrupts the intrinsically good nature of the child. He understands the child�s mind, as a natural self-evident source of truth and goodness, free of social corruption.

In its time, Emile was read as a pedagogical treatise. It functioned as the catalyst for a series of educational reforms based upon learning through the senses that would culminate in the work of Pestalozzi and Froebel in the century to come. Progressive educators like Dewey also drew strength from Rousseau and, in effect, his influence on educational practice lasted more than 200 years.

Rousseau does not seem to attach yet any intrinsic value to the child�s first attempts at drawing. Rather he would like to focus art instruction completely on the empirical and the factual encouraging the child to draw what it sees and understands. For the purposes of our examination, it is important to mention that although for Rousseau the teacher does not dominate the learning process, a degree of adult guidance is nevertheless considered necessary.

In the 19th century it became fashionable to contrast nature and culture, the innate goodness of children and the enforced enculturation that ignored the natural stages of their development. The image of childhood was equated with a period of creative inspiration, rich in imagination, with an unspoiled perception of truth and beauty.

This conception of the child is also informed by the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, which attributes to art creation moral values. The young creator therefore, transcends the external aspect of reality, the illusion of everyday experience and approaches the divine and spiritual.

This process frees the child�s innate intuition and cultivates its ability to perceive the morally just. The emphasis therefore shifts from mere imitation of nature or objects to the expression of the pupil�s inner life through his/her art.

These views however were not limited to educators or thinkers, but can also be found in the writings of poets and artists. Indeed this vision of childhood found expression in the work of the Romantic poets of the 19th century, who extolled the child�s innocence as a mark of "genius".

They believed in the artist�s personal unique expression freed from the burden of civilization�s constraints. The romantic poets then saw in the child a model of artistic creation and preached a return to the more natural state of childhood and of the origins of humankind.

As early as 1883, the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro was urging his son Lucien to pay particular attention to the Italians because they were "naïve but knowing". For Pissarro, naiveté was a necessary component of artistic vision and a requisite for experiencing nature truly. Following the Romantic tradition, he understood naiveté as the creation of a personal style whose simplicity will make evident the artist�s sincerity. Traces of this conviction can be found today in the flourishing for the so-called "Art brut".

In 1848 something quite extraordinary occurred. A Swiss pedagogue and graphic narrator Rudolph Topffer published a book, which contained two chapters devoted to child art. Topffer was a teacher, caricaturist and illustrator of children�s stories. Perhaps due to this background, he had a more informed and sensitive perception of children�s graphic configurations. In this book, Topffer makes the astonishing statement concerning childhood creativity: there is less difference between Michelangelo-the-immortal and Michelangelo-the-untutored-child than between Michelangelo-the-immortal and Michelangelo-the-apprentice. To Topffer, the child�s spontaneous graphic inventions were seen as closer to the creative expressions of great artists than were the works of artists whose drawings displayed mere conventional skill.

 

2. In 1890 in his "Principles of Psychology" William James tells us about artistic education that just as the child learns to behave like an adult, the adult artist, no longer a child, must learn to perceive like one. Following Topffer�s claim, James argues that artistic vision is a childlike vision where the artist disentangles from practical life and attends to the world as a collection of patches of color bounded by lines.

In Milan, in the winter of 1884 and while taking refuge from a sudden shower under a portico, the Italian poet and philosopher Corrado Ricci observed the drawings that children had scrawled spontaneously on the walls. He found the drawings by older children high on the wall crude, those lowest, and presumably by the youngest, least technical and logical. He could not however avoid noticing their great decency and originality. The experience was sufficiently moving to lead him write the book "L� Arte dei Bambini" published in 1887, the first entire book devoted to child art.

2. So far however, little attention is given to what children actually drew. We can say that there is still a gap between an idealized version of childhood and the behavior of real children. It is only towards the end of 19th century, that we observe a shift from a purely abstract concern with "childhood" to a study of actual children and their physical and mental development.

Interestingly enough, the first time an adult noticed the intrinsic qualities of actual children�s drawings was on the walls in the form of graffiti. In Milan, in the winter of 1884 and while taking refuge from a sudden shower under a portico, the Italian poet and philosopher Corrado Ricci observed the drawings that children had scrawled spontaneously on the walls. He found the drawings by older children high on the wall crude, those lowest, and presumably by the youngest, least technical and logical. He could not however avoid noticing their great decency and originality. The experience was sufficiently moving to lead him write the book "L� Arte dei Bambini" published in 1887, the first entire book devoted to child art.

 

3. Art of Child in Educational System

In the space of a dozen years before the turn of the century, and affected by the spirit of the time, psychologists, philosophers, educators and art educators had published an enormous amount of important studies on child art.

 

4.Art of Child and modern art in 20 century

The charm of child art as a model for avant-garde art in the early twentieth century had two reasons:

A) Expand the attention and interest in child art throughout the 19th century throughout Europe

B) Return to foundations in all artistic arenas

Of course the appeal to child art for modern artists was encouraged by of the theory of formalism and especially by Roger Fry�s "Essay in Aesthetics" of 1909. Formalists who were the theoretical proponents of modern art believed that the aesthetic sense was an innate human faculty, not a product of rarefied, elitist culture. Sensitivity to form was entirely natural and it was furthermore characteristic of children � inborn. Accordingly, children�s drawings are examples of "imaginative life" as opposed to the "actual life� of practical interests adults live by.

Summary and translation: Irandokht Salehi

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