“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.
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