Children and Art

“Tell me about your picture.” This is the way the teachers at the Early Childhood Center and (progressive) teachers of young children express interest in and appreciation of a child’s artistic composition and the effort they have put into creating it. To ask for a description of the picture includes an implicit appreciation of the complex labor the child undertook to create this picture. More importantly, it respects the child’s developmental stage by letting their picture be what it is to them and thus refusing to impose the confining and potentially destructive limits of adult expectation or “realistic representation.” In short, it honors the ongoing developmental processes Arnheim describes in his chapter on “Growth” and thus falls directly in line with the educational pedagogy he describes as well.

            This is a wonderful outlook because it respects experience. Arnheim’s assertion that an artist has the ability to articulate experience as opposed to the limited ability to express only “himself” “rang true” to me. In the realm of art, this is felt in how off-putting and limited patently self-indulgent artistic expression feels. In the realm of childhood, this serves as the best possible explanation for both the compelling quality of children’s “primitive” art and their own, often very clear satisfaction with their work. The notion of children’s art as being “incomplete” or “incorrect” falls apart in the face of their apparent satisfaction or seeming disregard for the lack of realistic accuracy in their work. Of course they may grow frustrated but this can be explained by their progressing development and thus their growing sense of differentiation—not merely the inherently “low quality” of their work. Children love to pant and draw. The undertake such work with focus and purpose and more often then not are pleased with the results. Think of how often they decide to present their work as a wonderful gift to a beloved family member or friend. Such work is an “impressive achievement,” the result of “laborious experimentation” to meet what their developmental level of perception allows them to see (Arnheim 168).

            Arnheim alludes to linguistic development in this chapter to emphasize how a sense of general structure enables the child finds his or her way to the specificity of differentiation. The similarities between visual/perceptual development and linguistic development are striking. Children learn and grow through experience; they first perceive the “effect” or general structure of experience and then strive to find the particularities and complexities of structural elements. While I believe this course of development is accurate, useful, and observable, I’m impressed by the fact that it’s not necessarily intuitive. To “see” in this way requires rigorous study and reflection. I’m left wondering is this is the dark side of human’s psychological tendency to seek the simplest form. It’s much simpler to think of children’s artwork as incomplete or incorrect. It’s simpler to think of primitive work as primitive. But neither view is accurate or productive when confronted with the lived, sensory experience of perception and creation.