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University Microfilms International 300 N. ZEEB ROAD. ANN ARBOR. Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND 8100272
Va r n e y, Viv ia n A n n
A STUDY OF ART APPRECIATION AND ART HISTORY LITERATURE FOR THE YOUNGER READER: HOW THE LITERATURE RELATES TO EDUCATIONAL GOALS AND CONSIDERATIONS
The Ohio State University PH.D. 1980
University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Copyright 1980 by Varney, Vivian Ann All Rights Reserved A STUDY OF AFT APPRECIATION AND ART HISTORY
LITERATURE FOR THE YOUNGER READER:
HOW THE LITERATURE RELATES TO EDUCATIONAL GOALS
AND CONSIDERATIONS
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Vivian Ann Varney, B.A., M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University
1980
Reading Committee: Approve^ By
Kenneth Marantz
Martha King Klviser Charlotte Huck Department of Art Education To Amanda
My unlisted reference ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writer wishes to thank her advisor, Dr. Kenneth Marantz, for his encouragement, support, and advice in her work with art and the book.
She also wishes to thank Professor Emeritus Jane Stewart,
Dr. Martha King, and Dr. Charlotte Huck for their excellent courses which opened up new and exciting worlds to an art historian. She also appreciates their friendship and encouragement in relating the child, art, and literature. VITA
September 1, 1935...... B o m - Lynn, Massachusetts
1957 ...... B.A., Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
1965 ...... M.A., New York University Institute of Fine Arts, New York, New York
1965-1976...... Teaching of art history, art apprecia tion, and art studio at Illinois State University (1965-68), University of Rochester (1968-69), Temple University (1969-72), University of New Mexico (1971-72), St. Mary's College of Mary land (1972-73), and Wilkes College (1973-76)
1977-1979...... Teaching Associate, Department of Art Education, The Ohio State University
1979-1980...... Education Department, The Columbus Museum of Art, Coordinator of Docents
PUBLICATIONS
Design in Nature, Davis Publications, 1970.
The Photographer as Designer, Davis Publications, 1977.
Catalogue, George Catlin, Painter of the Indians of the Americas, Opening Exhibition, Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes College, Wilkes- Barre, Pa., 1973. FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Art Education. Kenneth Marantz
Minor Area: Early and Middle Childhood Education
Reading and Language. Martha King
Children's Literature. Charlotte Huck
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii
VITA...... iv
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION...... 1
II. THE NATURE OF ART APPRECIATION...... 15
A Definition of Art Appreciation...... 15 The Experience and Knowledge "Of" and the Experience and Knowledge "About"...... 17 Emotion and Intellect in Aesthetic Experience...... 24
III. DEVELOPMENT IN ART APPRECIATION...... 33
Children and Art Appreciation...... 35 Three Stages in the Development of Art Appreciation...... 39 Stage I: Introductory Stage...... 42 Stage II: Period of Training...... 71 Stage III: Stage of Mature Appreciation. .. . 82
IV. PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF ART HISTORY/APPRECIATION BOOKS FOR THE YOUNGER READER...... 89
V. AN EVALUATION OF ART HISTORY/APPRECIATION BOOKS FOR THE YOUNGER READER...... 131
I. General Art Appreciation Books...... 132 II. Art History B o o k s ...... 146 III. Art Biography...... 171 IV. Picture B o o k s ...... 189
VI. CONCLUSION...... 196
vi Page
Concluding Remarks and Recommendations...... 196 Suggestions for Further Study ...... 201
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 203
vii CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This dissertation addresses itself to one area in the growth of
art-related phenomena which has in the main been neglected by those
concerned with education in the visual arts. That area is books
designed for the younger reader or art novice which aim to increase
his understanding of and sensibility to the visual arts. There are a
number of such books currently available, and each year more appear on
the market. To date there has been no attempt to look at them as a
group in light of the many criteria which one concerned with art
appreciation must consider.
Books are one way which has been traditionally used to increase
one's understanding in an area and many art books are bought by those
wishing to enhance their own art appreciation. There are several
types of such books from the limited editions and large and often
expensive coffee table variety to textbooks and simplified art aware
ness type books designed for younger readers and often richly illus
trated with little or no accompanying text. There are books which are
informational such as those which treat the art of a period or a particular theme in art. There are biographies and histories and
fictionalized biographies and historical fiction. There is also
fiction which tries in a variety of ways to present the artist or 2
perceptive individual so that the reader may feel or experience how
he lives, works, sees, and acts.
How does one evaluate this literature? How do those books
addressed to the younger reader or art novice meet his needs of a
growing appreciation of art? Art educators have not yet looked at
this literature in any systematic way to determine the relative role
certain books can play in enhancing aesthetic awareness or art ap
preciation. In view of the growing availability of such literature,
this writer felt that a study which would look at it in the light of a
potential contribution it could make to art appreciation would serve
a number of educational concerns.
I. THE PROBLEM
Statement of the problem. The purpose of this study is to
establish a set of criteria to which one can refer in assessing whether
a book has value and should be considered for use with young people
in effecting art appreciation.
Books which attempt to increase the young reader's or art
novice's understanding of and sensibilities to the visual arts are
to be found today in many public and school libraries. Many art edu
cation texts provide bibliographies of books designed for this pur pose. Each year publishing houses put out a new group of such books.
Yet reviews of these books in the standard reviewing organs and
selection guides are characteristically superficial and are rarely written by those directly involved in or with knowledge of the problems
of growth in art appreciation. There is a wealth of information available on ways the young person grows in art appreciation, but it has not been brought to bear on the large corpus of books in the field. No one, to this writer's knowledge, has to date looked at the books available in light of a set of criteria growing out of what is known about how one grows in art appreciation. Nor has anyone looked at art books for the younger reader in relation to what is known about the child's experience with books— what qualities in the book as well as in the child make for a meaningful relationship or are con ducive to desirable learning experiences.
The present study was conceived out of the conviction that such a study needed to be undertaken. If a teacher, librarian, or parent is to select such literature for children, he should be cognizant of what needs these books serve, and if indeed they do or can do what they set out to do. This writer hopes to make those concerned with children's art appreciation more aware of what should be looked for in such literature and why, that they may make more enlightened choices.
Significance of the problem. In view of the increasing interest in the visual arts manifest in a variety of ways— by the phenomenal growth of new museums and galleries as well as by the expansion of the older established ones, by the establishment of the National Endow ments for the Arts and Humanities, the Arts Alliance, and more recently the Alliance for Arts in Education, by the growing support for the arts by numerous institutions and foundations, by the expansion of art appreciation, studio, and history offerings at the college and univer sity levels, by the growth of state and local arts councils, and by the continuing growth in the amount of leisure time— it seems incum
bent upon educators of children in elementary and secondary schools to
look at what they are doing to train or educate the future artists,
art audiences, performers, and critics. From a wider perspective,
the problem of criteria to be used in judging art history/apprecia
tion books (this term will be used throughout this dissertation to
refer to the books under consideration) bears on the nature of educa
tion in general, and more specifically on the nature of education in
the arts. The seeming paradoxes in our society which while increasing
support to professional artists cuts back on funding for arts in the
schools, is disturbing. This is more so in light of the many studies
which point to the need for the arts in education.^ It must be
stated clearly that if the art history/appreciation books treated in
this dissertation are to serve a purpose, they need an arena in which
to function, an arena where appreciation is encouraged. It has been
widely acknowledged that any vital experience with a book is possible
and meaningful only if it strikes some responsive chord in the
reader. In what way are these chords nourished? Such literature
cannot be limited to children of parents who have an interest in the
visual arts or to those whose interest is sparked by a talent they or
another encouraged.
■'•See Coming to our Senses, the Significance of the Arts for American Education, The Arts, Education and Americans Panel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977) and Art Education XXXI, (Jan. 1978) for discussions of funding for the arts and the current situation of the teaching of art in the public schools. In recent years art educators in pursuing their curriculum goals have added awareness of the cultural and social dimensions of art as well as cultivation of the skills of art criticism to the skills of art production. A number of educators, psychologists, philosophers, and artists have appealed to the public to include the arts in the school curriculum along with the traditional "basics," on the grounds that the arts are also "basic." Some educators have sought to establish a more theoretical basis for including the arts in the cur riculum. Some do so by observing that art also belongs in the realm of the "cognitive," that the arts are "ways of knowing" no less valid than the traditional scientific ways of knowing. If such curriculum goals are to be realized, it would appear that art history/apprecia tion literature has a role to play.
It seems to this author then even more imperative that a study of the nature proposed here should be undertaken. Not only would it help teachers, parents, and other interested parties in the selection process, but it should be an aid to authors desiring to write such literature. The problems involved in children's art appreciation as well as in a child's relationship to the book are often complex, and awareness of them on the part of prospective authors should help guide their thinking and writing.
A number of studies have established that for one to arrive at a stage of art appreciation development marked by "discriminating apprehension," he must follow some definite course of instruction.
This study shows how books can play an important part in the foundation of such apprehension. Inversely, it tries to point out some of the problems and dangers of introducing certain types of books to children
before they are developmentally ready. Those responsible for helping
to develop children's art awareness must be wary of rushing the
developmental process. The result may not be increased understanding
of art and may interfere with a variety of enjoyments a child may
experience both in art and in literature. It is too often a tempta
tion of ambitious and "culture-conscious" parents and teachers to see
value in over-exposing a child, in immersing him in material that they
deem essential to the child's enrichment and aesthetic growth. The
child may be unable to digest the material, or may be turned away from
it because he feels that what is being thrust upon him arises out of
adult interests and motives and not out of his own. Many adults have
developed a psychology of admiration for the past and for well-known or "famous" names in the arts and yet often fail to understand why a
child cannot share their enthusiasm or their biases on this basis.
This study will point out how and when a child may find meaning in books which treat an artist's life or an historical period.
This author undertook this study because of a belief in the sig nificance it could make in encouraging the use of art-related liter ature, literature which will help one grow in art appreciation, in the life of the school-age child. Literature chosen with an understanding of how the child grows in art awareness and what he responds to in his reading, can result in a wise selection of books which may develop the potential for aesthetic sensitivity, a heightened delight in dis covery, a deepened capacity to wonder, and ultimately a richer life.
It is a study which is directed at those interested in children's literature as well as those involved in children's art appreciation.
This study not only points out the important role books either explicitly or implicitly can play in the development of art apprecia tion, but it also calls attention to areas of which those responsible for selection should be aware. For example, one must be aware of such things as the potential an author's perspective and values in art hold at certain stages for determining or influencing a child's growth in and responses to the art object. Also, an author's aesthetic values as well as his social, moral, and cultural values are often reinforced in art history/appreciation books by the persuasiveness of the author's use of literary form. A good critic of this type of literature for children must be aware of this and assess the implica tions for a child's developing art awareness. His ultimate goal of course should be to help the child develop so he too will see the personal values the author has expressed and the bases upon which they were made.
Art learning is a complex of different learnings which come to bear on "discriminating apprehension" of works of art. In this study those different types of learnings are laid out, for a single book is unlikely to address all, and must be evaluated on the basis of what it does do, or attempts to do. A young person in his education in art may stray from one to another book in art appreciation, from one treating art history, to ond illustrating techniques, to one looking at design and formal analysis, to an artist's biography, all of which relate to his growth in art appreciation, all adding to the storehouse upon which discriminating apprehension is based. Because it has been found that children's attitudes, their emo tional and intellectual development may be influenced and shaped by what he absorbs through fictional literature, by story as well as by the informational books or those which take a more theoretical or analytical stance, this study will look at certain works of fiction where the reader in some way is invited to participate in the experi ence of the characters, to comprehend their motivations, attitudes, and aspirations as they may relate to the sensibilities involved in experiences with art. Through experiences with literature as well as in life a child accumulates a storehouse of learning experiences which form the basis of his implicit or tacit knowledge. Books can be extremely powerful, impressing themselves on a child's thinking, affecting his attitudes and behavior. Those involved in the art appreciation of children cannot neglect in their program for chil dren's art appreciation literature which implicitly affects the child.
Because of the effect they can have on a reader, the teacher or critic must be attentive to the emotional overtones an author gives to certain individuals and experiences in literature. The literary experience is an intensely personal one and its effect on a young person is often more powerful than that of a teacher attempting to reach similar ends in a more didactic way. The significance of the wealth of literature which implicitly or tacitly may affect a child's appreciation of art is important as one considers the possibility of learning in the visual arts.
This writer regards a child's contact with books, whether they be fiction or non-fiction, story or informational books, as a series of possible experiences which involve an intimate relationship with
form as well as with content. A book needs to be selected on the
basis not of subject matter alone, apart from the form of presenta
tion, but because of a combination of the two. It is this unity of
form and content which is the book and it is the totality with which
the child comes in contact. Too often "suggested lists" are based on
an isolation of content or subject matter and not on the all-important
totality, the book, which itself is an art form. This study attempts
to point out the dangers in an isolated perspective. Although a younger child may be unable to define why or why not he likes or dis
likes a book, the mode of presentation, the language and approach an
author uses, his literary style, and the implied attitudes and values are important and inseparable parts of the book as a totality. It is
to this totality that the child responds.
Another area which this study explores and which it is hoped that those concerned with children's art appreciation will note is the relationship of the verbal, the word, to the visual as it bears upon a child's growth in art appreciation. Just what role can language play and what are the dangers and limitations in the visual-verbal relationships for growth in visual arts appreciation?
II. PERTINENT RESEARCH IN THE FIELD
Although there has been much research in the area of a child's growth in art appreciation and in a child's relationship with the book, some of which is treated in the course of the dissertation in an effort to discover how they relate to the problem of the study, 10 this writer has identified no study of the nature undertaken here.
There have been many critical studies made of children's literature in general and of the different genres of that literature, but none which isolates the problem of how the literature may relate to a child's growth in art appreciation. A number of critical criteria for books and children's books in general certainly apply to many of the books where art appreciation is explicitly or implicitly the aim.
The ideas of a number of authors and writers of literary criticism have been referred to in the study. This writer has found one author, 2 Constantine Georgiou, who has broken down children's books by subject and established a category called "Fine Arts Books," but all the cri teria established relate to the book's picture quality and its rela tionship to the audience. He does not attempt to define content specific to books of this nature and present special criteria for evaluation based on their ability to aid in a child's development in art appreciation.
III. METHODS AND INSTRUMENTS OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to establish a set of criteria to which one can refer in assessing whether a book has value and should be considered for use with young people in effecting art appreciation.
The data for establishment of the criteria for book evaluation and consideration were derived from a number of areas and by a variety of methods:
2 Constantine, Georgiou, Children and their Literature, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1969), p. 426. (1) By a careful examination of the nature of art apprecia
tion in general and the art appreciation of children more
specifically.
Chapter two of the study is devoted to an examination of
the nature of art appreciation. A definition is established
and various ways to know and experience art are discussed.
(2) By an investigation of the literature pertaining to the
child and the nature of his development, and particularly
of his development in art appreciation.
Chapter three is devoted to a summary of the findings.
On this basis this writer has set up a three-stage model
for development in art appreciation: Stage I, Introductory
Stage; Stage II, Period of Training; and Stage III, Stage
of Mature Appreciation.
(3) By an examination of pedagogical considerations and methods
appropriate at various stages in a child's development.
Chapter four looks at the thinking of various educators
with regard to appropriate teaching methods for a child at
various stages in his personal development as well as in
his development in art appreciation. It also looks at what
educators, authors, and others have discovered pertaining
to a child's relationship with literature.
(4) By an examination of critical criteria established for both
general and children's literature by experts and practi
tioners in the field. In chapter four and again in chapter five where four dif
ferent categories of art history/appreciation books are
evaluated, a number of experts both in the field of adult
as well as children's literature have been cited. They
provided insights into many of the bases on which good
literature is founded.
(5) By this writer's synthesis of material derived from the
above areas and her own experience in the fields of art
appreciation, children's literature, and education.
In chapter five this author takes books from the four
categories set up in the study and evaluates them on the
basis of the criteria established in chapter four. These
evaluations are meant to provide an example of the kind of
thinking which one involved in children's art history/
appreciation book selection should contemplate.
IV. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Although realizing that many types of books may help effect art appreciation in some way, this author limited her evaluation to books in four categories:
(1) General Art Appreciation Books
These are general "how to see" books which treat the
language of art, an art form(s), design, and/or the process
of experiencing or understanding works of art. 13
(2) Art History Books
These are books which treat art form and content in or
from an historical perspective.
(3) Art Biography
These are books which present some view of an artist's
(or artists') work, life, thinking and/or role in history.
(4) Picture Books
These are books which strive, often implicitly, to effect
awareness of some aspect of the visual world, art, the
artist, the creative process, and/or the art experience.
No attempt was made to look at other art-related books such as the how-to book, that treating one or more art processes, although this writer believes these too can and do play a role in developing art appreciation.
A limitation of any study involving art appreciation will always result due to the very personal and individual nature of the art experience. Although the study traces a general outline of how art appreciation development takes place, within each stage there are a number of ways different children can and do exhibit the qualities outlined. It should also be stressed that use of literature is only one way to further art appreciation development. Even within the field of literature, individual interests and responses to different books are important factors to consider.
Another limitation related to the personal nature of the art experience centers around the question of whether art appreciation and art awareness can be "taught." Many art instructors experience a 14 similar dilemma. Can books "about" art and even books which them selves are literary art and which "present" for experiencing art- related feelings and attitudes ensure that the reader will grasp their meaning? It may also be asked whether literary art should be looked at or certainly judged in terms of a contribution it may make toward appreciation of other forms of art. Yet if literature takes, as is widely acknowledged, the entire province of human experience as its domain, can it not be looked at as it relates to visual sensitivity or art appreciation? This author believes it can and proceeds from this premise. CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF ART APPRECIATION
This study is based on the premise that the ability to
appreciate art and more specifically visual art is desirable and that
education should address itself to ways of effecting this ability.
This chapter will examine what is meant by art appreciation, what
types of knowing and learning go into and are important to the act of
"appreciating."
A Definition of Art Appreciation
Webster's Third Internationa1 Dictionary (1961) subdivides its
first definition of appreciation into four parts. Part la defines it as "recognition through the senses especially with delicacy of perception; specifically: sensitive awareness of worth or especially aesthetic value," part lb as "estimation, judgment; specifically a written or spoken critical estimate especially when favorable," part lc as "expression of gratification and approval of gratitude, or of aesthetic satisfaction," part Id as "recognition of aesthetic values that is cultivated in students especially through courses emphasizing enjoyment and discrimination rather than historical back ground or scholarly method."
15 16
This study will look at the "recognition” mentioned in parts la and Id for without it one would logically assume that neither the estimation or judgment and the satisfaction which are mentioned in definitions lb and lc are possible. This writer agrees with Harold
Osborne that in current usage appreciation when referring to the process by which one relates to a work of art is not primarily an evaluative term. ^ This does not however preclude the possibility that one who appreciates is able to evaluate or that evaluation does not take place in one's relationship with a work of art.
Appreciation, for the purposes of this paper, will be regarded as an ability, the ability to recognize or be aware of or apprehend aesthetic objects. The apprehension of an aesthetic object is to be thought of as a special kind of relationship to it. It is one that for centuries philosophers, psychologists, educators, writers, and others have tried to describe, to dissect, or otherwise make clearer to man's understanding. Today the effort is intense, the literature replete with efforts to come to grips with the problems involved in man's relationship to the arts. Concern with the problems of aesthetic education has increased considerably in the last twenty years as has literature on the subject. One often senses a kind of mission attempt ing to make amends for the long neglect of the aesthetic in tradition al education.
■^Harold Osborne, "The Act of Appreciation or Appreciation as Percipience," in ed., Ralph A. Smith, Aesthetics and Problems of Education (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 446-447. 17
The Experience and Knowledge "Of" and the
Experience and Knowledge "About"
In the process of coming to grips with the special relationship art appreciation involves, a number of thinkers have looked at the special relationship or type of experience with an art object which characterizes art appreciation. This is given a number of different names: aesthetic apprehension, aesthetic experience, aesthetic per ception, aesthetic percipience, aesthetic intuition, aesthetic atti tude, aesthetic knowledge, aesthetic understanding, aesthetic aware ness, aesthetic cognition, and aesthetic contemplation. All these terms are used in the literature to describe essentially the same experience although often attempts are made to justify usage of one term in preference to another. In arguing for the use of the term
"aesthetic knowledge" to describe the experience, Louis Arnaud Reid calls it:
. . . a kind of knowledge sui generis, know ledge of meaning wholly embodied in the aes thetic object and in this way different from all other knowledge.^
In defending his use of the word "meaning" in the context of an aesthetic experience, he argues:
'Meaning* is a word with a rich variety of content, and should not be used in one logical context only.3
2 Louis Arnaud Reid, "Knowledge and Aesthetic Education," in ed., Ralph A. Smith, Aesthetics and Problems of Education (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 163. 3 Louis Arnaud Reid, Meaning in the Arts (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), p. 68. 18
In preferring the word "percipience," Harold Osborne emphasizes his thesis that art appreciation involves perceptual skill:
There is also a tendency for perceptual activity to be enhanced and to predominate over analytical and classificatory thinking as we become engrossed, however momentarily, in the perceptual object which holds our attention. Our interest 'terminates1 in the object and our concern with it goes no further than perceiving, bringing it more fully and more completely into perceptual awareness.^
Despite preference for one term or another, all seem to agree that the type of experience with an art object which they describe is special and of value in and of itself without any practical, utili tarian, or moral purpose involved. They also distinguish this experience or knowledge of the object from experience or knowledge about the object. This latter encompasses intellectual, analytical, critical, and evaluative experiences. Many do however point to the importance of the "experience and knowledge about" to the "experience and knowledge of" and this dissertation, in treating books and their relationship to appreciation, will treat this aspect at length.
Two terms which are used frequently in the literature and which relate to the problems of distinguishing experience and knowledge of from experience and knowledge about are "discursive" and "non-discur- sive." Discursive is a term which refers to discourse, the use of language to mediate or articulate thought. The pattern of this dis cursive thought Susanne Langer terms "discursive form," a "highly versatile and powerful pattern" which more than we know forms "the
4 Harold Osborne, The Art of Appreciation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 21. very frame of our sensory experience— the frame of objective facts in 5 which we carry on the practical business of life." Discursive form
has an important role to play in the appreciation of art, but it is
not involved directly in the aesthetic experience, the experience of
the art object. The discursive form plays a role in the experience or
knowledge about art. It is here where language, as Arnheim contends,
"assists the mind in stabilizing and preserving intellectual entities."
It uses the generalities acquired in aesthetic experiences and in
learnings about art history, biography, and art forms, classifies and
analyses, and in this role can affect the nature of the aesthetic
experience. In contrast the non-discursive form refers to the art
object or symbol which is experienced, presented or made known to an
individual in an aesthetic experience. Language may be used as art
object as in poetry and in literature but in this use it is metaphor
or non-discursive form. It is known or experienced directly and is
non-translatable. It can never be stated in discursive language but
can only be grasped intuitively in aesthetic experience.
Rudolf Arnheim makes the distinction between experience or know-
ledge _of and experience or knowledge about by establishing two types of
cognition, intuitive and intellectual cognition. Intuitive cognition
or experience or knowledge _of takes place "in a perceptual field of
freely interacting forces." As a gestalt psychologist he sees the perceiver as receiving a total image or percept as a result of the
5 Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art, Ten Philosophical Lectures (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1957), p. 21. 0 Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of Cali fornia Press, 1969), p. 236. interaction among the various components of the art object. This
intuitive grasp of the total image or percept involves according to
Q Arnheim a great deal of thinking and problem solving. In contrast,
intellectual cognition does not involve an experience of the whole, but
an isolation of parts to establish their individual nature and the
relationships among them. The components of intellectual thought
processes follow each other in linear succession, as opposed to the
interaction within a continuous field characteristic of intuitive cog- 9 nitron. Perkins makes a similar distinction of experience with wholes
and parts but refers to them as "two modes of matching, 1 analytic' and
'synthetic'" and points out very importantly that although the
experiences are phenomenologically distinct, they "may shade one into
the other."^0
The ability to appreciate art involves both intuitive and intel
lectual cognition, the experience and knowledge of as well as the'
experience and knowledge about and the intricate and coirplex relation
ship between them. Throughout the literature on human knowing and
development we read that what we experience and learn is determined by what we already have experienced and know, that there is throughout
life a dynamic relationship between the two experiences. Gombrich sums
7Ibid., p. 233.
8Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 234.
*®David Perkins, "Talk About Art," In ed., Stanley S. Madeja, Arts and Aesthetics; An Agenda for the Future (St. Louis: CEMREL Inc., 1977), p. 289. 21
up the idea simply when he states that there is no innocent eye, that
the eye comes always ancient to its work," Arnheim when he refers to
"the past in the present." Various efforts have been made to con
ceptualize the processes of learning, knowing, and experiencing by
setting up theoretical constructs to show how these processes take
place.
Throughout the literature one encounters such concepts as cogni
tive units or patterns, perceptual units or patterns, perceptual
structures, cognitive structures, preconsciously accumulated internal
systems, tacit store, tacit or implicit knowledge, storehouse of
visual concepts, knowledge base, network of knowledge, memory (long
term, short term, and sensory store), memory traces, theory of the
world in our heads, and construction and organization of experience.
All these concepts with their varying terminology have been established
in an effort to explain the activities of the human organism in the
process of learning, knowing, and experiencing and the dynamic that
exists between present and past. They refer either to the content and/
or method of organization of content which the human organism brings
to an experience or object, often collectively called the "environ
ment. "
Frank Smith uses the terms theory of the world, working model of
the world, non-visual information, long-term memory, prior knowledge,
and cognitive structure as alternative terms to describe that which is:
...the basis of all our perceptions and under standing of the world, the root of all learning, the source of all hopes and fears, motives and 22
expectancies, reasoning and creativity. And this theory is all we have. If we can make sense of the world at all, it is by inter preting our interactions with the world in the light of our theory. The theory is our shield against bewilderment.-^
An important characteristic of this theory of the world is that it is 12 "implicit knowledge," knowledge that cannot be put into words.
For Smith this relates to a crucial idea in his thinking, that "know ledge that cannot be put into words is not knowledge that can be com- 13 municated by direct instruction." Children develop their theories of the world according to Smith by conducting experiments, by testing hypotheses, and by evaluating feedback. This process of hypothesis testing he feels goes on instinctively below the level of awareness.
Learning is the modification or elaboration of what is already known, 14 of cognitive structure, the theory of the world in our heads. We stay with our theory for as long as it works, modifying it, looking for another hypothesis if it fails.
It is not difficult to imagine that we carry with us a so-called
"implicit knowledge," however amorphous the concept may at first seem to be. We know we have it if we stop and reflect on our perceptions and attitudes towards our environment, how they are shaped by parts of this tacit or implicit storehouse we carry around with us. We also
11 A Frank Smith, Understanding Reading, A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), p. 57. 12 Ibid., p. 87.
13Ibid., p. 88.
14Ibid., p. 95. 23 know that we call on it in many situations, problem-solving and recall being but two of them. Michael Polyani, who has attempted to clarify the concept of implicit or, as he calls it, "tacit knowing," writes of the experience of the "exciting intimation" of the hidden presence of "unspecifiable things" as an "engrossing possession of incipient knowledge which passionately strives to validate itself."
Furthermore he maintains that all knowledge is tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge:
...While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied....A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable.
The importance of the nature, qualitative and quantitative, of this tacit store to an understanding of art appreciation would appear obvious. It is the basis of our appreciation, the experience and knowledge of as well as the experience and knowledge about and their dynamic interrelationship. Here is the theoretical basis for all the research which shows that the nature of what we perceive is conditioned or shaped by what we have perceived, "the past in the present." Art and aesthetic education literature is replete with examples which give evidence to show that this is true. The conclusions of an experimental study held in Germany to determine whether what the child was esqposed to determined his artistic taste concluded that both in the visual
15 Michael Polyani, "Knowing and Being," 1961, in ed., Marjorie Grene, Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polyani, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 131-132. 16 Michael Polyani, "The Logic of Tacit Inference," 1964, m Ibid., p. 144. 24 and linguistic fields, the child is "endowed with a basic feeling for artistic merit," but this predisposition is so fragile that responsi bility for the growth of artistic norms rests with the environment.
The report concludes that examples to which the child is exposed,
"wall decorations, texts, comic books, etc.," especially because a child is exposed to them over extended periods of time, exert consider- 17 able influence, both favorable and unfavorable, on the child. The division persistent in the writings of Harry Broudy between "serious art" and "popular art" and the need to expose young people to examples of the former rests on the premise that it is "serious art" which offers the models which train aesthetic development of the highest 18 order. In the thinking of Susanne Langer, what we see, hear and experience actually shapes our emotive experience:
...the arts we live with— our picture books and stories and the music we hear— actually form our emotive experience.^
Emotion and Intellect in Aesthetic Experience
Langer's use of the term "emotive experience" brings us to the need to consider one of the persistent problems which anyone who attempts to look at the literature on art appreciation finds— the
17 Wolfgang Metzger, "The Influence of Aesthetic Examples," in ed., Gyorgy Kepes, Education of Vision,(New York: George Braziller, 1965), pp. 16-26. 18 Harry S. Broudy, "The Case for Art Education," In eds., Elliot W. Eisner and David W. Ecker, Readings in Art Education, (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell Publishing Co., 1966), pp. 460-463.
■*’9Langer, pp. 71-72. 25
differences among the various thinkers on the nature,, quality, and
quantity of emotion, intellect, cognition, perception, and sensory
experience involved in our experience with art, and in fact what these
terms actually mean to each. Some by preferring one term to another
seem to be emphasizing one side or the other of the traditional
emotional-intellectual or cognitive-affective dichotomy. Nelson Good
man believes that he has bridged the gap when he states that "in 20 aesthetic experience the emotions function cognitively." Yet his
elaborate system which looks at symbols for the properties they exhibit
and judges them on how well they serve cognitive purpose certainly
seems to subsume emotions as well as "aesthetic knowing" under "cogni
tion ."
...Use of symbols beyond immediate need is for the sake of understanding, not practice; what compels is the urge to know, what delights is discovery, and communication is secondary to the apprehension and formulation of what is to be communicated. The primary purpose is cognition in and for itself; the practicality, pleasure, compulsion and communicative unity all depend upon this.
Symbolization, then is to be judged funda mentally by how well it serves the cognitive purpose; by the delicacy of its discrimina tions and the aptness of its allusions; by the way it works in grasping, exploring, and informing the world; by how it analyzes, sorts, orders and organizes, by how it participates in the making, manipulation, retention, and trans formation of knowledge. 1
20 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis; Bobbs- Merrill, 1968), p. 248.
21Ibid., p. 258. Susanne Langer's work in contrast would seem in emphasis to stress the importance of art for its function in the training of man's emotional life— "that a wide neglect of artistic education is a neglect in the education of feeling."- Educating feeling, developing its scope 22 and quality is for her "at the very heart of personal education."
Yet the very act with which one perceives the import of a work of art and which she calls "intuition" is "intellectual activity" comprising
"all acts of insight of recognition of formal properties, of relations, 23 of significance, of abstraction and exemplification." One might ask then, if intuition is intellectual activity, why should she lay such emphasis upon feeling as the heart of personal education. Why not stress intellect? Her further emphasis on the emotion side of the traditional dichotomy is her very definition of art as "image of 24 feeling" or "perceptible forms expressive of human feeling." Yet she seems to qualify this also when she writes that the art object is the subjective realm objectified. What the artist expresses are "not his own actual feelings, but what he knows (this writer's underline) 25 about human feeling." In yet another instance in her work, the relative roles and relationships between intellect and emotion are difficult to comprehend. That occurs with reference to our use of art forms "to imagine feeling and understand its nature." This
22 Langer, p. 72. 27 for her leads to "self-knowledge, insight into all phases of life" 26 which is the "cognitive value of the arts." Yet if we stress self- knowledge as the raison d'etre of art, what about the need to realize qualities inherent to the art object, studying them, apprehending them?
What seems to be involved here are the problems of subject- knowing or self-knowledge and sensing which we can only know with respect to object and object-knowing knowing the object with respect to itself, its inherent qualities. This problem is directly relevant to the content and teaching approach of aesthetic education. Louis
Arnaud Reid in criticizing Langer's definition of art calls attention to an art object's distinct feelings, that unique to it apart from an artist's feelings or knowledge of them:
...The form of the feeling in any indivi dual work of art (accepting pro tern this lan guage) is as special to that work as, in a dif ferent way, the form of any particular complex of life-feelings is special to a particular life situation. Strictly speaking, the forms of the feelings of life-situations cannot be ex pressed or projected into art-situations. 'Expression' and 'projection' seem to be the wrong words and the wrong ideas for formulating the essential nature of art. What happens is that in creating a work of art a new complex object comes into being, and in our aesthetic experience of it we come to have new feelings, and new structures of feelings, which are not projections of forms of life-feeling but new vital feelings themselves, not just 'how vital and emotional and intellectual tensions feel...' but new and fresh vital tensions relevant and specific to the meaning specifically embodied in this thing before us, nowhere else and never before.27
26Ibid.. p. 71. 27 Reid, Meanxnq in the Arts, pp. 61-62. It would appear that Reid, in calling attention to the art
object for meaning specific to it is inplying the need in aesthetic
education for one to attend to it, obj ect-knowing. Yet because of the
nature of art as the product of human imagination and relationship to
it as a reciprocal one of spectator to object, it would seem essential
that understanding oneself with relation to the object or subject- knowing is part of the process of aesthetic experience. Any writer or art history/appreciation literature would be remiss to neglect this
dynamic interrelationship.
A central concern of this dissertation is to examine the nature
of books as they address the goal of art appreciation; it is essential therefore to make some clear-cut definition of just what makes up this ability to appreciate including, the relative roles of emotion and
intellect if indeed one can separate them. Yet, as one examines the literature on the subject, he finds that this is not easy to do. In
fact, it is not possible to instruct how to "experience aesthetically.
One can only describe the experience and look at the complex of com ponents which have helped to determine its nature. The often quoted
statement that an appreciation of art is "caught, not taught" seems to be based on solid theoretical foundation. One cannot teach the
"experience and knowledge of;" one can only contribute to it by helping one develop in the "experience and knowledge about." Part of this instruction should be an understanding of the relative roles the two play in the appreciation of art. Harry Broudy seems to have per ceived the danger so prevalent in traditional teaching situations of tipping the balance in favor of the "about" side of the appreciation 29 equation when he stated:
...One cannot repeat too often that in the perceptual approach to aesthetic education verbal descriptions and categories are used as guides to perceiving the object...aesthetic analysis is not for the sake of analysis or for the purpose of giving students a chance to air their knowledge about works of art. Analysis is done for the sake of better per ception.^®
Broudy clearly sees the experience and knowledge about art as a means of enriching the experience and knowledge of art. That same view is expressed by Louis Arnaud Reid who feels that both feeling and thought are intrinsic to the actual aesthetic experience. When writing of the study about art he says:
...The possible or potential cognitive content of the study of 'the arts,' over and above the cognitive content of actual aesthe tic ejqperience, is enormous, in fact in definitely large. But it can only be part of education _in art if it is constantly related in feeling and thought to the intrin sic aesthetic experience. If this does not happen, there is the danger that it will become a clutter of so much information about art, learned and reproduced, a lumber room of 'inert ideas.' If on the other hand, the centre of it all, from which the rest branches out, is aesthetic knowledge and feeling, then everything which is learnt about art becomes not only an extension of informational knowledge but at the same time a deepening and enriching of artistic experience itself.2®
28 Harry S. Broudy, Enlightened Cherishing, An Essay on Aesthe tic Education, the 1972 Kappa Delta Pi Lecture. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 72. 29 Reid, Meaning m the Arts, p. 302. 30
For Reid the first principle of art education should be initiating
people into what it "feels like to live in music, move over and about
in a painting, travel round and in between the masses of a sculpture,
dwell in a poem by reading and hearing it with understanding." The
central starting and expanding point is aesthetic insight, "feeling 30 from inside what art is."
This author would agree with both Broudy and Reid on the
priority of the "of," but of the importance of the "about" and with 31 Robert Frost that art is a "thought-felt thing." We think when we
experience in the of sense, but it is the intuitive cognition that
Arnheim writes of, that which takes place in a perceptual field of
freely acting forces. It is in the experience and knowledge "about"
that his intellectual cognition is at work, that when items are
isolated from the perceptual field in order to establish the particu
lar nature of each. These two experiences, the "of" and "about" are
essentially what Polyani is treating when he writes of the two kinds
of awareness in the process of knowing of the same particulars:
(1) subsidiary awareness or attention which is directed to particulars
in terms of their participation in a whole, in a context, and (2) focal
awareness which is focusing attention on or analyzing isolated par- 32 ticulars themselves.
31 Quoted from an article by John Ciardi, "Esthetic Wisdom," in ed.,Ralph A. Smith, Aesthetic Education Today: Problems and Prospects, Proceedings of Spring Conference of the Institute for Study of Art in Education, The Ohio State University, May 4-5, 1973, p. 77.
32Polyani, "Knowing and Being," pp. 128-129. 31
Particularly important to the topic of the nature of the ability
of art appreciation is Polyani's thesis that elucidation of a compre
hensive entity takes place as a result of an alternation of these two
types of attention:
...the alternation of analysis and integration progressively deepens both our insight into the meaning of a comprehensive entity in terms of its particulars and the meaning of these parti culars in terms of their joint significance.33
This position clearly relates to that of gestalt psychologists
who see perceptual development in general as one of growth in the
ability to discriminate specifics or particulars and to integrate, to pick up higher order structure, the nature of wholes. Eleanor Gibson
describes the criterion of perceptual learning as an "increase in
specificity. What is learned can.be described as detection of proper- 34 ties, patterns, and distinctive features." She regards the "which
comes first" wholes versus parts issue which puzzles some psychologists
as a "false issue":
...But the very notion of parts and wholes in perception is mistaken; objects are dif ferentiated by distinctive features which must be discriminated, and objects are also characterized by structure. Higher order structure creates new units by grouping subordinate units, enabling more information to be handled while reducing uncertainty. Enlarging the chunks might be considered inte gration of parts into wholes, but we must not forget that there is also progress toward dis covery of the most economical and critical set
33Ibid., p. 129. 34 Eleanor J. Gibson, Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development,(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 77. 32
of distinctive features. Which of these two equally adaptive kinds of change characterizes behavior will depend upon the task and the stimulus information, and both may even occur at once.
While Gibson is treating perception in a broad sense and this
study addresses itself principally to the appreciation of visual art
objects, those skills which mark art appreciation as defined here are
clearly related to general perceptual skills. A number of those
involved in the field clearly point this out. In their analysis of
"aesthetic sense," Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca state:
...Surely a most important factor in achieving an aesthetic attitude is perceptiveness in general. In its widely inclusive meaning, perception involves observation and, to a degree, all senses, and a highly complex "sort ing mechanism" of great sensitivity. 6
It is clear that if one is to look at development in the ability to appreciate art he must look at it in the context of general develop ment. The following chapter will survey characteristics of a child's general development and consider their relationship to his development in art appreciation.
35Ibid., p. 447. 36 Betty Lark-Horovitz, Hilda Lewis, and Mark Luca, Understand ing Children's Art for Better Teaching, 2nd Ed., (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1973), p. 224. CHAPTER III
DEVELOPMENT IN ART APPRECIATION
Having accepted the position that art appreciation involves both intuitive and intellectual cognition, the question of growth in art appreciation must be addressed.
The whole area of development in art appreciation is a complex one which educators, psychologists, and philosophers have not begun to probe (in any systematic way) until quite recently. This is par ticularly true with regard to a child's appreciation of art. A recent work in the area is Howard Gardner's The Arts and Human
Development^ where a theory of aesthetic development is proposed, the modal-vectoral theory, which attempts to reconcile with relationship to the arts some of the findings of different developmental psycholo gies: the psychoanalysts, the gestaltists, and the cognitive theorists. In so doing the theory tries to bridge the cognitive-affec tive, intellectual-intuitive, or intellectual-emotional gap so common to psychological literature. Central to Gardner's theory is a defini tion of art as symbolic communication, that communication being of
■'■Howard Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, A Psychologi cal Study of the Artistic Process, (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973).
33 2 "generalized aspects of experience" embodied in symbolic media such
as music, the visual arts and literature. Development consists of
the increasing differentiation and integration among three systems
in which individuals participate: the making, perceiving, and feeling
systems. Drawing heavily on the work of Erik Erikson, Gardner tries to
show how aesthetic functioning relates to a development in and inter
relationship of physiological functioning and psychological processes.
Modes, or general stances toward the world, and their vectors, or
specific dimensions, initially related in the young child to drive
states and bodily patterns come to take on psychological significance,
gradually becoming integrated or associated with objects and events,
including art objects. 3
Whether or not one wishes to accept Gardner's theory, his work
in the area is the most comprehensive yet bearing on the problems of
a child's developing art appreciation. He postulates four modes in
which one participates in the artistic process— as artist, as audience
member, as critic, and as performer, and treats separately the abili
ties, skills, and developmental processes involved in each. His work
has clarified and synthesized for the student of art appreciation
much of the research bearing on the area. This author has found his work most helpful in the present study. 35
Children and Art Appreciation
When does or can art appreciation begin? When can one call a
child's relationship with an object "aesthetic"? How broadly can one
define the term? There is wide disagreement reflected in the liter
ature on the topic. While Howard Gardner feels the child of two
adopts an "aesthetic attitude" when he associates objects or materials
with his mother or qualities of his mother thus heralding his use of 4 symbols, Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca feel that "only during 5 adolescence does a true aesthetic attitude break through." There is
obviously a problem of definition in establishing when aesthetic
attitude or response is present, how and if it differs from any
pleasurable attitude or response to an object, and if indeed one needs
what is commonly regarded as an art object present to respond aestheti- 6 cally or assume an aesthetic posture or attitude. Herbert Read and 7 Louis Arnaud Reid both feel that the aesthetic is wider than the
arts, and includes the world of nature in the opportunities offered
for aesthetic attention. What also complicates the problem of assess
ing just when aesthetic response takes place in the life of a young
child is our inability, because we lack the tools, to analyze, to
^Ibid., pp. 92-93. 5 Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca, p. 224. 6 Herbert Read, Education Through Art, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945), pp. 16-21. 7 Louis Arnaud Reid, "Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education," in eds., Dick Field and John Newick, The Study of Education and Art, (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 180. 36
delve into the mystery which is a child's response to or relationship with a traditionally recognized art object or a number of other ob
jects as well. Most of the traditional testing tools require addi
tional skills, particularly the use of language.
A child's judgment "like" which he uses in response to objects and situations is synonymous with his "good," "pretty," and "nice"
and may not relate to what are traditionally thought to be aesthetic values as Brittain has pointed out by citing a study at The Pennsyl- vania State University. Young children show no common agreement as to what constitutes beauty, but pictures containing flowers, animals, home furnishings, jewelry, and other familiar objects, all comfortable and pleasurable items in the child's experience, most children agreed were beautiful. Evidence also that young children from four to seven years generally display misconceptions about the human origins of a work of art and are unaware of the cognitive and perceptual skills involved in aesthetic experience has been found in studies of young 9 children's conception of the arts, indicating that it would be diffi cult to establish aesthetic appreciation in children if one were to base it on knowledge of the creative process. Yet in this regard children engaged in the act of painting seem to know when their picture satisfies them. Brittain attempts to explain this in terms of process, completion of an act of painting, rather than in a
8 W. Lambert Brittain, Creativity, Art and the Young Child, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), p. 168. 9 Howard Gardner, Ellen Winner, and Mary Kircher, "Children's Conceptions of the Arts," Journal of Aesthetic Education IX, (July, 1975), pp. 65-66. 37 contemplative evaluation or consideration of the elements that made up the picture.*0 Yet he ties a child's painting to an exploratory urge and behavior which is "closely linked to aesthetic pleasure":
...In some cases it was hard to differen tiate between these. A small child who puts her finger in a puddle of water and watches the ripples could be said to exhibit exploratory behavior and scientific curiosity to determine the result of the action upon the surface of the water, but it may also be an aesthetic experience as she watched the ripples grow larger and finally subside.11
Gardner, pointing to the art work of preschool children as evidence, suggests that children have at that time absorbed "much of the formal aspects of the arts," their works exhibiting rhythm, balance, and overall harmony. A five to seven year-old he feels can claim an affinity with the practicing artist:
He shares the spontaneity, the natural sense of form and balance of the accomplished artist, and lacks the inhibitions about the product, the self-consciousness about tech nique that may well impair the work of his older peers.12
He further points out that in order to exhibit awareness of aesthetic qualities in the works of others one must use verbal means, very dif ficult for a young child, it being a "meta-aesthetic task," more 13 demanding than simple art practice.
*°Brittain, p. 165.
11Ibid., p. 167. 12 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 175.
13Ibid., p. 169. It would appear then that a child develops a sense of what is involved in art by "doing" or "making" activity. Indeed there is much evidence to show that a young child's primary interest in what we traditionally call art is in production or making. Yet concomitantly he is developing perceptually, emotionally, and in experience with people and objects; his "theory of the world" which he brings to his contact with an art work is expanding greatly. Gardner sets up three systems, the making, the perceiving, and the feeling systems all essential and integral to art appreciation. These three systems he feels operate independently and often interfere with one another in the immature organism, but gradually come together to "interact smoothly with one another," the latter occurring by the child's third 14 year. It is at this point that a child's knowledge of these three systems, as well as their properties and components, is exhibited.
This occurs through his use of various symbolic media such as drawing, everyday language, and music. According to Gardner the child in fact looks to symbolic vehicles to manifest his feelings, percepts, and actions.^
If one is to accept Gardner's thesis that a normal child of three has integrated the three systems and that by age five he has achieved the status of "audience member," whose feeling life is affected when he encounters a work of art, who can appreciate the line between reality and illusion, and who can phenomenally appreciate the
~*~4Ibid., pp. 39-41.
15Ibid., pp. 161-162. 39 type of messages as well as the way in which they are transmitted in 16 aesthetic objects, it would seem that the aesthetic certainly does play some role in child development.
What the literature seems to indicate is that there is indeed a development, or potential for development, in art appreciation despite the way one wishes to define the process and the exact point at which
"genuine" aesthetic attitude or experience is possible. Those who have attempted to outline the course that this development takes have posited a "mature," albeit continually developing, art appreciation which, although desirable is by no means inevitable and clearly needs to be trained. It is essential to this study that the process be elucidated.
Three States in the Development of
Art Appreciation
Models which describe the process of development are character istically divided into stages. This is true of child development in a number of areas, including that of art appreciation.
This author has decided to use a three-stage model to describe how growth in art appreciation takes place. From the beginning how ever it should be understood that these stages are only theoretical constructs and much overlapping in both directions takes place. They generally parallel three age periods: Stage I, early childhood;
Stage II, middle childhood and adolescence; and Stage III, late
16Ibid., p. 167. 40 adolescence and adulthood, but development in the direction from
Stage I to Stage III is by no means automatic. Many adults, with regard to the visual arts, never have experienced certain character istics of the three stages; some experience them only as adults. Few ever reach Stage III, that of mature appreciation. It should also be noted that characteristics of Stage I are often exhibited at later stages, in fact retention of some characteristics of one stage at a later stage is considered not only desirable but necessary. A mature appreciator, will, when confronted with a work of art, often experience the type of exhileration and freshness characteristic at Stage I.
Stage I is essentially an introductory stage, the stage when the child is first exposed to the visual world encompassing tradition ally called art objects as well as non-art objects. It is the stage 17 variously called that of Unconscious Enjoyment (Early); the Period of the Innocent Eye, Ear, and Hand (Broudy); the Exposure Phase (Biber); the stage of Falling in Love (Murphy); the stage of Romance (Whitehead); the stage of Spontaneous Response (Rosenblatt); the stage of Naive
Perception (Gotshalk); the stage of simple, strong, spontaneous reac tions (Arnheim); and the stage of the Naive Viewer (I. Child).
Stage II is a training stage when one learns the language of art, a stage of probing, questioning, a stage of growing critical attitudes, a stage of a great growth in information and life
17 These names have sometimes been given to stages of develop ment when other areas and disciplines were being referred to, but this author lists them because she has found that they closely parallel characteristics of development in visual art appreciation. experience. It is a stage when instruction both self and other-
directed as well as the language and images or symbols of one's cul
ture become important determinants of one's percepts and concepts.
It is a stage particularly important to this dissertation for it is
during this period that much of the groundwork essential to the
mature appreciation in Stage III takes place. It is a stage when
books can play an extremely important role in the developmental process
by contributing to one's "theory of the world," by expanding the
opportunities to grow in experience and in knowledge both "of" and
"about" art. This stage has been variously called the Period of
Apprenticeship or Self-Conscious Appreciation (Early); the Period of
Conscious Work (Poincare); the Period of the Conventional or Stereo typed Eye, Ear, and Hand (Broudy); the Stage of Precision (Whitehead); the Stage of Grammar (Whitehead), and the Eager Period (V.S. Pritchett)
Stage III is that of mature appreciation, variously referred to as the Period of Conscious Delight (Early); that of Disciplined Aes thetic Experience (Gotshalk); the Period of the Cultivated Eye, Ear and
Hand (Broudy); the Period of the recovery of childhood innocence but in cultivated form (Broudy); the Period of the Connoisseur (Broudy); the Stage of Generalization or the stage of shedding details in favor of the active application of principles, the details retreating into subconscious habits (Whitehead); the period of Discriminating Apprehen sion (Reid); the period of mature making, feeling and perceiving sys tems (Gardner); the period of Self-actualization when "peak experiences such as the aesthetic are possible and sought after (Maslow); the period of the Third Freedom, that of freedom through discipline (Reid); 42
and the Period of Mastery (Biber).
A further discussion of these stages is essential if one is to
relate art history/appreciation literature to children's development
in general and to their development in the visual arts in particular.
What follows is an attempt to outline this development with discussion
of some of the many issues involved. Attention is focused on Stages I
and II, the Introductory Stage and the Period of Training, the stages
of developing art appreciation. Under these stages this author has
discussed their characteristics and a number of the factors which
determine those characteristics. Because she felt that a topic such
as "children's art preferences" was better treated as a unit rather
than divided and reintroduced under the next stage, there is some
overlapping. Under Stage III, that of Mature Appreciation, this author has listed those qualities which mark the stage, with further elabora
tion where needed.
STAGE I: -INTRODUCTORY STAGE (Early childhood to about age seven)
Psychologists have long pointed to the importance of early
experiences to a child's development. Foundations upon which art
appreciation is based are inextricably bound up with a child’s develop
ment in general, his affective as well as his cognitive development,
if one wishes to use these terms despite the artificial division they
create. Although the young child is limited in that he has not had
the years of experience to build up a "theory of the world," in that his vantage point on the world centers around self, in that he is
only gradually learning to distinguish reality from fantasy, and in 43 that it takes time to develop an understanding of and a way with the
symbol systems or art media important to mature art appreciation, this early period is crucial as a foundation upon which later development builds. It is the stage of discovery, of interest in objects and the way they look, of first and fresh apprehensions, those not dominated by a need to analyze or dissect. Whitehead calls it the stage of romance, a time that in education he feels freedom should dominate over discipline.
In their research on child development, Piaget, Bruner, and
Gardner all focus on the young child's absorption with the visual, appearance, the concrete, the object, or the image. However, whereas
Piaget and Bruner are concerned with the earlier stages as they relate to the higher forms of development, logical and scientific thinking,
Gardner's principal concern is with the image, the concrete, the object, the art object, and the role they play in child growth and development. While not denying the validity Piaget's claims and emphases may have for the scientific realm, Gardner indicates the problems such exclusive enphasis has for the arts:
...The very processes which Piaget discounts or minimizes are central in artistic activity: the ability to perceive details within a sensory modality, to retain sensory impressions, to value sound qua sound or a color qua color, to be alert to the multiple aspects of language as well as to other forms of imagery.'*'®
•^Howard Gardner, "Senses, Symbols, Operations: An Organization of Artistry," in eds., David Perkins and Barbara Leondar, The Arts and Cognition. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), p. 93. 44
Bruner, like Piaget, feels the child in his natural course of
development learns to go beyond the overwhelming dominance of the
perceptual-iconic representation in order to process or order infor
mation. For him the vehicle for this skill is language, the cogni
tive instrument that makes it possible for the child "to represent and
systematically transform the regularities of experience with far 19 greater flexibility." By learning to use language in a symbolic
operation, the child resists the temptation to use perceptual appear
ance to solve problems.
The decline in preference for perceptual or iconic ways of
dealing with objects and events Bruner sees as a consequence of growth
and the facility with language as an intellectual instrument. Language
allows for a remoteness of reference, transformation, and combination,
"realms of intellectual possibility that are orders of magnitude 20 beyond the most powerful image forming system." Problem-solving and
inference are a model for perception, perception arrived at through a
series of hypotheses, by trial and check, and by matching to a cate
gory.
Although Bruner's position does not go unchallenged, his influence
and that of others who see the senses as furnishing nothing better nor worse than raw material which must be acted upon by so-called higher processes of the mind, has been considerable. It has affected the nature of school curriculum not only during middle childhood and
T9 Jerome Bruner, "The Course of Cognitive Growth," American Psychologist XIX, (Jaunary, 1964), p. 4.
20Ibid., pp. 13-14. 45
adolescent years, but even as early as nursery school. In fact
Gardner sees the decline in the use of figurative inodes of cognition
in favor of operative modes as a child develops within our society,
the sharpest decline occurring after eleven or twelve, as a result of a cultural emphasis on operative rather than on figurative capacities. 21 The former happens at the expense of the latter.
Citing neurological studies, Gardner points out that an early maturation of sensory zones leads to a dependence on figurative modes of cognition and to extensive use of individual sensory modalities— sight, touch, audition, and kinesthesis in early childhood. As the child grows, however, he develops the capacity to combine information from different sensory modalities often transferring from one mode to another, thus engaging in more operative activity. It is the right hemisphere of the brain that is involved in figurative capacities, making discriminations in the sensory realm, metaphoric thought, and emotional response. The left hemisphere is important to linguistic abilities and seems to be more crucial for operative capacities. One engaged in any artistic role— audience member, creator, performer, and critic— must use both figurative and operative skills, but Gardner feels that society's emphasis on the latter militates against the 22 former.
Perhaps the most scathing criticism of those who emphasize higher processes of the mind to elaborate "raw material" of the senses
21 Gardner, "Senses, Symbols, Operations: an Organization of Artistry," p. 93.
22Ibid., pp. 104-107. 46
comes from Rudolf Arnheim who insists that shaping, ordering, or cate
gorizing of this raw material takes place in direct perception it
self, and any secondary manipulation of this material presupposes this 23 primary shaping in direct perception. A gestalt psychologist, he
takes a strong stand against what he terms the "linguistic deter-
minists" (Cassirer, Sapir, and Whorf) who take the visual world in
itself to be shapeless, needing some non-perceptual power— language—
to do the "job of separating one object from the next, discovering
similarities and differences, inferring generalities from individual
instances, and establishing the character of any particular thing or 24 species," processes which Arnheim sees as taking place in perception
itself. Citing Einstein as an example, he points out that even in
the most creative kind of scientific reasoning, perceptual experiences
rather than words or formulae are often given as a base:
The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are;certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined.... These elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is
23 Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 81. 24 Rudolf Arnheim, "The Myth of the Bleating Lamb," in Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, Collected Essays, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 139. 47
sufficiently established and can be repro duced at will.25
This discussion bears directly on any analysis of the child in the introductory stage proposed here, for the young child exists in a world in which both the image and language, as well as the cultural emphasis on operative rather than on figurative skills play important roles in shaping how he will develop not only in a more general way, but more specifically in how and if he will come to participate in the artistic process as audience member, creator, critic, and/or performer.
During early childhood a child is building a foundation upon which mature art appreciation is based, and at the same time he is participating in the artistic processes from where he is at a particu lar time. Although this author wishes to hold out a theoretical though dynamic "end" point (Stage III) toward which development moves, she does not wish the stage method of presentation to suggest that Stage I or II is any less important, or that a young child's participation in the artistic process in whatever manner is less valuable or valid than one participating at Stage III. The character of the participa tion differs because of age, experience, and developmental differences.
What is happening at this early stage and what are characteris tics of a child's early experience which affects his participation in the artistic process? What is the nature of his aesthetic response?
Although there are wide differences both individually and develop- mentally within early childhood, the outline below attempts to
25 Ibid., p. 146. See Albert Einstein, "Letter to Jacques Hadamard in ed.,Brewster Ghiselin, The Creative Process, (New York: A Mentor Book, 1964), for text of letter. 48 pinpoint some of the main characteristics.
1. HE IS DEVELOPING, ELABORATING, AND CHANGING HIS THEORY OF THE WORLD.
This theory of the world as defined earlier includes both cog nitive and affective dimensions. Along with becoming acquainted, through experience, with objects and people in the external world, building up a store of information about them, he is developing atti tudes toward them. He is establishing values, preferences, and emo tional attachments. He is giving objects significance, endowing them with special qualities. Some objects become the focus of his interest, curiosity, pleasure, and delight, characteristics of aesthetic attitude at any stage. There are those, among them Howard Gardner, who feel that an ability to form close ties to objects, endowing them with feelings, experiences, or aspects of oneself may be a necessary ante-
26 cedent to a full appreciation of art objects. Susanne Langer sees one's projecting feelings into outer objects as the first way of sym bolizing, "and thus of conceiving those feelings," a phenomenon belong ing "to about the earliest period of childhood that memory can re- 27 cover." She sees a young child's over-active feelings as fastening upon material often endowing inanimate objects with expression, some times making them symbolize a feeling, at times making one thing look
26Howard Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 261.
27 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, A Study of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd ed., (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 124. like something else.
Concurrent with the child's developing interest in and attitudes towards objects is a development of a sense of self apart from those objects. Egocentrism is often cited as a characteristic of the young child:
...the child's initial universe is entirely centered on his own body and action in an egocentrism as total as it is unconscious (for lack of consciousness of the self).29
The "decentering" process is a gradual one, but by the end of the sensorimotor period (approximately two years), it has been achieved to some degree. The process is helped by one's social contacts, seeing oneself as apart from or distinct from others. Play and imitation are important means to this end. By experimenting with actions, behaviors and perceptions, by "trying them on" in play the young child is helped to understand and to cope with them. What the young child tries on, what he plays with is part of the "world" in which he lives, the cul tural and social tradition of which he is a part. He may try on or play with what he sees in his contact with people at home, in school, etc., but he may also try on what he is exposed to through the arts— the stories he comes to know, the visual art he sees, illustrations, art objects of all types including abstract ones. James Britton, based on the work of Donald Winnicott, calls this area of play a "third area," one "lying between the world of shared and verifiable experience
2ft Ibid.. p. 123. 29 Jean Piaget and Barbel Inhelder, The Psychology of the Child, (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1969), p. 13. 50 30 and the world of inner necessity." Winnicott maintains that cul
tural experience is first manifest in play which occurs in a space
between the individual and the environment, a space the potential and
nature of which is determined by what takes place in an individual's 31 early life experiences.
One might ask how this "trying on" the child does in play,
Winnicott's "third area," differs from the "empathy" or "feeling into"
or "the feeling from the inside what art is" or the "experience of"
which we established as central to art. Do we have in children's play
a prototype of what is essential to art experience? Can one not point
to characteristics which Piaget associates with the sensorimotor, pre-
operational, and concrete operations stages as part of and essential on to art experience? Two psychologists cite Lipps's "theory of
feeling-into" where evidence is provided that shows that there is in
adults a primary tendency to imitate perceived emotions, movements,
and dynamic qualities of objects and people, a tendency which, because
of cultural conventions, is manifest in more reduced forms in adults
than in children. In adults it may occur as incipient movements in
the muscles experienced kinesthetically. What Gardner is essentially proposing in his modal/vectoral theory is a systematic esqplanation of
^James Britton, "The Third Area Where We Are More Ourselves," in eds., Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow, and Griselda Barton, The Cool Web, the Pattern of Children's Reading, (New York: Atheneum, 1977), pp. 46-47. 31 D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971), p. 100. 32 Hans Kreitler and Shulamith Kreitler, Psychology of the Arts, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), p. 268. 51 how and why this happens, taking into account perceiving, feeling, and making aspects of our encounter with art. He proposes only two stages of development as it relates to "participation in the artistic process," the sensorimotor and the symbolic, but the emotional-physiological aspects of the former continue into later development in art:
I contend that, as the child develops, he may continue to make, feel, and respond to objects and experiences both in the direct way charac teristic of the sensorimotor period, and on a superimposed plane of symbolic experience... The power and fascination of the arts rests precisely on the fact that individuals become involved with them on both the sensorimotor and symbolic planes.33
Research conducted in an Israeli museum with ninety randomly selected observers before six sculptures concluded that:
... 84 percent of the observed spectators displayed overt imitatory movements during their inspection of the statues, while an additional 3 percent displayed them after having left the statue when casting their eyes back on it....
Most of the 'imitators,' i.e., 65 per cent, performed only one imitatory movement, while 35 percent of the 'imitators' copied more than one movement, usually two to five, apart from one spectator, a child about five years old (the only child in our sample), who engaged in a series of eight fully imita tory motions.3^
The above provides a cursory look at behaviors which are impor tant to the character, content, and dynamic of one's "theory of the world." In addition, through continued exposure to the external world,
Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 132. 34 Kreitler and Kreitler, pp. 275-276. 52
the young child develops his perceptual system; his- discriminatory
powers become finer. He develops the ability to conserve, recognizing
identities or gestalts even if they appear in different contexts and
guises. Quantitatively, the child is accumulating a vast storehouse
of information which he brings to his experiences, including ex
periences with art.
2. HE IS BECOMING ACQUAINTED WITH SYMBOLIC MEDIA— IMAGES, WORDS, AND SOUNDS— AND BEGINS TO USE THEM AND BE SHAPED BY THEM.
It is well known that a child picks up language and the rules of
its use through using it, without the need for explicit instruction.
Similarly, through the young child's exposure to the styles and content
of the arts of his culture, his "styles of feeling" are shaped:
The arts we live with— our picture books and stories and the music we hear— actually form our emotive experience. Every genera tion has its styles of feeling.35
.Broudy refers to this phenomenon of the arts of a culture to
shape one's impressions as well as expression as inevitable, as
"social habituation." For him however it is the less desirable
"popular arts" that "standardize" our images of feeling— popular music, fiction, painting, and standardized images of masculinity,
femininity, heroism, love, courage, good, and evil:
...They are as automatic and pervasive in their influence as the syntax of spoken language. We use them long before we study them, and we use them without thinking about
35 Langer, Problems of Art, pp. 71-72. them. They are the aesthetic mores of an age.36
Although Broudy allows for a period of the innocent eye, ear, and hand when the influence of the so-called stereotyped image does not hamper spontaneous expression, because of American youth's immersion in electronic media, carriers of the popular arts, their influence is seen even in early childhood. Likewise, in studies of children's color preferences, cultural standards and conventions were found to influence choice.37
What a culture offers a child in terms of art images, attitudes, etc. determines in large measure what he expects. Visual forms such as book illustrations, television shows and commercials, and pictures hanging on the wall at home and at school become frames of reference for him and his earliest indications of preference for images are in part shaped by them.
A number of psychologists and art educators have studied chil dren's preferences in art trying to determine not only what is pre ferred but why. The results consistently show that younger children prefer paintings for their subject and color, generally ignore
"realistic representation" (fidelity to subject matter) and sometimes
Harry S. Broudy, "Impression and Expression in Artistic Development," in ed., Elliot W. Eisner, The Arts, Human Development, and Education, (Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1976), p. 91. 37 R.W. Pickford, Psychology and Visual Aesthetics, (London: Hutchinson Educational Ltd., 1972), p. 186. 38 even like abstract paintings. In Gardner's studies of style, he has found that when the powerful pull of subject matter is absent or con trolled and does not function as a miscue, six year-olds can group
OQ paintings by artist's style as well as adolescents can. Training can play an important role in more conscious perception of the formal art elements, training which focuses on grouping by an artist's tech niques rather than by objects within the work.^® Perhaps, by their very nature, these preference studies rather than actually helping us come to grips with a young child's sensitivity to the integral form- content wholeness of art, tend to measure only what is measurable.
What we get as response are indications of such things as a child's interests, so determined by his culture, sex, and age.
In Cleveland Lark-Horovitz made studies of two groups of chil dren, classified as "average" and "special," both groups in the eleven to sixteen year-old range. "Specials" were those more adept at drawing and enrolled in the Saturday Art School of the Cleveland Museum of Art and "average" were those from the Cleveland public schools who showed less drawing ability. She found that the preferences in subject matter was similar, reflecting the overwhelming main interests of the age group, but that the "specials" were quite different from the
38 Pavel Machotka, "Aesthetic Criteria in Childhood: Justifica tions for Preference," in Child Development XXXVII, (December, 1966), p. 877. 39 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 224.
^ I b i d .. pp. 224 and 228. See also Howard Gardner, "Children's Sensitivity to Painting Styles," Child Development, 1970, pp. 813-821. 55
"average" group in the attitudes with which they contemplated a pic ture :
While the attitude of the average child is non-aesthetic or only crudely so, that of the special child is aesthetic to some extent and of an analytical quality. For the ■ average child contemplating a picture is a stimulating enjoyment but with no parti cular purpose whereas for the specially able child it seems to be a means of learn ing. 41
These studies seem to this author to indicate only that Saturday classes at The Cleveland Museum of Art can direct one's conscious interest to the more formal elements of art, the style or manner in which a subject is presented. By engaging in the creative process, i.e., by drawing, painting, etc., one is compelled to become intimately aware of the problems of organization and the design elements with which an artist works. Also, in these classes a child is most likely to become acquainted with the "language" of art, terms which an instructor uses to point out characteristics of visual phenomena. • As
E. Gibson notes, "labels" further perceptual learning by performing a selective role in perceiving.^
If one wishes to measure sensitivity to the form in which con tent is presented as apart from the content itself, it appears that different tests must be devised which, upon contemplation, might bring one to consider whether such tests are possible. Back one comes to
41 Betty Lark-Horovrtz, "On Art Appreciation of Children: Preference of Picture Subjects in General," Journal of Educational Research XXXI, (September, 1937), p. 136. 42 E. Gibson, p. 156. the age-old form-content controversy. Can one not be at least sub sidiarily aware of or sensitive to the form in which content is pre sented even if on tests one seems to be conscious only of subject matter? Do not these responses point, as earlier indicated, to dominant interests in our society, age group, etc.? Do they not also point to what a child has learned to respond to when asked such ques tions? He is taught early to respond, particularly with regard to art, with "thing" answers, descriptions of subject or content. What mother or teacher has not repeatedly asked of a young child as he puts image to paper, "What is that?" It is a "thing" answer that is demanded, naming and describing the content. Even one of the more 43 recent methods used by art educators, that of Edmund Burke Feldman, begins by asking children what they see in a work of art, description of content. It is again "thing" answers that are demanded. This is not to say that the young child is not subject-oriented or shouldn't be, but only to suggest that tests devised to determine children's interests or preferences in art may also be weighted to elicit descriptions of content rather than responses related to formal aspects or emotional content.
How can one test to see if the artist has created an "object" in which a child can see intensely, feel vividly, or identify with, dreaming and imagining within it— participating in Winnicott's "third area?" Yet this is what good art does, tapping what are "large
43 See Edmund Burke Feldman, Becoming Human Through Art; Aesthetic Experience in the School, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), Chapter 12, pp. 348-383. 57 reservoirs of prelogical, primitive or personal, sensed, felt and imagined meanings, which have never been quite integrated into formal 44 languages," what has been previously called our tacit or implicit storehouse, our "theory of the world."
Gardner sees a child's development with symbol systems as cru cial to entry into an ever-expanding world of the art object. In fact use of symbols and symbolic systems he regards as "the major developmental event in early childhood, one decisive for the evolution of the artistic process":
...Operating on the plane of symbols produces a revolution in the child's world, for he is no longer limited to making, perceiving and feeling in relationship to material objects and events; he can go on to invent new objects and events, adopt a variety of complex relationships to them, and use them to communicate subtle and even imaginary views and situations to other persons. Essentially he confronts a realm of infinite possibility, drawing from it, he may go on to produce unique objects, to embody his own feelings in them and to become a practitioner or observer of the various artistic forms.^
He further states that:
...Symbols remake our world, and color even those interactions and perceptions that might previously have been judged as 'direct.' or 'unmediated.' Accordingly, symbols gradually yet inexorably become our reality, and once '■ the individual has crossed the Rubicon of symbol use, he may never again have an innocent eye, or a symbol-free experience, except perhaps under conditions of brain injury or regression.^6
44 Kreitler and Kreitler, p. 321. 45 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 129. 58
This author takes issue with Gardner's stance that symbols
function in art only as means of communication. However Gardner makes
his position very clear:
...A randomly produced pattern may be deemed beautiful but it will not function as an aesthetic object unless a communica tive impulse has stimulated it.47
Symbol systems function as a way of knowing or understanding
one's own relationship to one's environment and are the medium in
which thought and reflection take place. This aspect is theoretically
set out in the work of Robert Witkin.
Witkin sees the symbol for its importance as a way that one
comes to know one's own sensing. He terms this "subject knowing,"
or knowing oneself in relationship to an object as opposed to "object- knowing" with which Piaget concerned himself, when a child comes to
grips with the world of objects, coming to know them. The form in which one comes to know or recall one's sensing in relationship to an object is a symbol, an expressive medium of some sort, and because the impulse to define, to make sensate experience known to oneself occurs in many forms of creative activity, Witkin sees it as the epistemological foundation of the creative arts. It begins in early
infancy. The circular or repeated action that Piaget finds the child exhibiting in order to know an object is also present in the child's
attempts to know his sensing in respect of the object.
...In repeating the operation he is recalling the sensation, i.e., expressing his sensing in order to know it....Even in
47Ibid., p. 31. 59
infancy we can find the embryonic forms of expressive action in the attempts made by the infant to know his sensing of the object as distinct from his attempt to know the object in respect of which he is sensing.
Seeing art as "symbol" or form of feeling and meaning and the role of symbol systems, modes or media of presentation, in the growth of a child is extremely important to this study which deals not only with visual art but also with literature, literature which itself is an art form and yet is contributing to development in visual art forms. Research in visual and verbal symbolic modes and also in the relationship between them seems to be of growing interest to educators 49 and psychologists in recent years. The research by Harvard's
Project Zero is just one example of the growing interest in the area.
Children do pick up gradually, by interaction in the world, characteristics and functions of the various symbol systems. They learn that some pictures describe, tell a story, or are just there to be looked at. They learn that language as well may be used in dif ferent ways and for different purposes, and they act and respond accordingly. They learn that the verbal can be used to describe, enhance, or supplement the visual, and the visual used likewise with relationship to the verbal. A. Paivio maintains that developmentally imagery precedes verbal processes, but that once verbal skills are
^®Robert Witkin, The Intelligence of Feeling, (London: Heine- mann Educational Books, 1974), p. 22. 49 For one bibliography on the topic see: Don Woods, "Reading Pictures and Words: A Critical Review," Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, Vol. 9, Winter 1978, pp. 30-38. 60 acquired, verbal and visual skills develop concurrently and inter- 50 actively. This verbal-visual interaction is important to this dis sertation, one part of the foundation for a theory which maintains that "experience and knowledge about" can contribute to "experience and knowledge of." In the art history/appreciation book the verbal can interact with the visual to deepen or heighten one's understanding and esqperience of visual art.
More controversial is Paivio's stance that "linguistic ability 51 depends initially and ultimately on a substrate of visual imagery."
In giving the visual this prime role in thought processes he agrees with Arnheim who maintains that language is "a perceptual medium of sounds or signs which, by itself, can give shape to very few elements 52 of thought...imagery is the medium in which the thought takes shape."
Langer however disagrees:
The fact is that our primary world of reality is a verbal one. Without words our imagination cannot retain distinct objects and their relations, but out of sight is out of mind.
Whatever view one wishes to take in this philosophical and psychological controversy, there is the widely held position that from early childhood language does and can help visual development in many ways. Controversy arises however over the type, degree, and
50 A. Paivio, Imagery and Verbal Processes, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1971), p. 437, as quoted in Ibid., p. 25.
51Ibid.
52 ■''“Arnheim, Visual Thinking, pp. 240-241. 53 Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, p. 126. 61
amount that should be used, particularly at the early stage when too
many words, too much verbal instruction, may kill the "romance," the
delight, or the "experience of." It is often pointed out that a young
child can respond to life directly, for the very reason that he has 54 yet to be "dulled or tainted by a set of imposed verbal symbols."
Eleanor Gibson maintains that language can be used in perceptual
learning. By naming or labeling, information is supplied which pro
vides for "monitoring and check by calling attention to distinctive 55 features and higher order relations." Perkins and others would
concur that language does provide a type of "pointing function" in
visual art appreciation, guiding our senses to recognize things not
apprehended before." Language used in a variety of ways may serve
this function— single words, elaborate statements, metaphor, new
definitions being but a few. Gardner sees a developmental aspect in
the reciprocal relationship of words and images, words increasingly
guiding what the child perceives or discriminates.^ One reason given
to explain the phenomenon that children can utilize imagery more
effectively with increased age is that they are taught to coordinate 57 visual and verbal processes. Arnheim also acknowledges that
language can play a role in visual development:
54 H. Taylor, "Music as a Source of Knowledge," Music Educator's Journal LI (1964) as quoted in Gardner, The Arts and Human Develop ment, p. 226. 55 E. Gibson, p. 161.
Perkins, "Talk About Art," p. 282. 57 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 140. 62
Language assists the mind in stabilizing and preserving intellectual entities. It does this for example with the perceptual concepts that emerge from direct experience. The generalities acquired in perception are em bedded in the continuum of the visual world... Thought needs discrete types and perception is geared to supply it, but the structure of the raw material of experience does not furnish neat dichotomies, simple either-or's; it consists of ranges, shades, gliding scales... Here language is helpful. It supplies a clear- cut distinct sign for each type and thereby encourages perceptual imagery to stabilize the inventory of visual concepts.^®
Although pointing out the function language can play in visual
development, Arnheim also issues a warning:
...The function of language is essentially conservative and stabilizing and therefore it also tends, negatively, to make cognition static and immobile.^®
The degree and type of verbal-visual interaction will of course
vary with each child as well as with the child's progress within one
symbolic medium. Also different children prefer different media.
Gardner has pointed out however that even though preference differs
from child to child, to the extent that it does occur within a medium, 60 "it seems to occur in much the same forms and order across children."
Also, he adds, the child's relationship to symbols shifts at about two
and one half years of age:
Arnheim, Visual Thinking, p. 236.
59Ibid., p. .244.
^°Howard Gardner, "Sifting the Special from the Shared: Notes toward an Agenda for Research in Arts Education," Journal of Aesthetic Education XI (April, 1977), p. 37. Before that time, children are allowed to make what they will of symbols with parents intervening only to clarify or aid. There after, the child is increasingly expected to interpret and utilize symbolism in the manner embraced by the culture.61
One could argue that there is a certain degree of need as well as merit in this and that it is unavoidable. The problem arises as to determining what expectancies or interpretation or utilization of symbolism should be espoused by those in positions to influence. An author of an art history/appreciation book is obviously in one of those positions of potential influence.
Langer points out the child's tendency to "read a vague sort of meaning into pure visual and auditory forms," and that childhood is a
"great period of synaesthesia," of making associations across dif ferent senses, symbol systems or modes of experience, i.e., feeling 62 colors, seeing sounds. The danger of language if used in certain ways is that of fixing concepts and ideas on visual phenomena thus preventing the child's mind and imagination from acting freely with regard to them. Even adults will reflect on instances where, with regard to an image or object, they will say, "I wish he hadn't told me about it— when I see it, I can only see what he pointed out!" This experience may also work in the other direction. People often regret seeing a movie after having read the book upon which it was based.
The world of mental imaginings created and recalled during the reading can often be destroyed by the new reality, a film producer's
61Ibid., p. 38. 62 Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, p. 123. 64 interpretation and visual imagery. The same may be said of book illustration. The power of the image to fix or stabilize an idea or character is very real and illustrators are interpreters whose views may even be at variance with those of an author. One of the often mentioned dangers of television is that it "circumvents the effortful translation of words to images," thus eliminating the role personal creative imagination can play in generating its own imagery.
James Britton has laid out three general modes of language use: transactional, which includes giving and seeking information, inform ing, advising, persuading, recording facts, constructing theories; expressive, the language of everyday conversation, talk between friends freely verbalized, free writing, relatively unstructured; and poetic in which category he places literature, the verbal as an art 64 form, a "verbal object." In chapter five we will look at these categories as they relate to art history/appreciation literature.
Here, however, it should be pointed out that children early begin to pick up characteristics of these various modes and use them in their daily lives. By the time most children reach school age they can freely function in and relate to the three modes. Also they are con tinually building up their theory of the world with knowledge and experience acquired through interacting with language in these modes.
63 Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer, "Is Human Imagination Going Down the Tube?" Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 1979, p. 56. 64 James Britton, "What's the Use? A Schematic Account of Language Functions," Educational Review XXIII (1971), pp. 205-219. 65
A child's growing and more complex use of languagecan be pointed to for the role it plays in an emerging self-consciousness and decreasing egocentrism, important for mature appreciation in art:
...The "I" is a linguistic metaphor for the behavior and perceptions of a subject, and the capacity to speak of "I," "you," and "our," signals the child's discovery that he is a person, like those about him, capable of entering into relationships and describing them.
Although perception or conception of his unique identity with rela tionship to objects and other persons is obviously necessary before a verbal label will have meaning, the label does stabilize and preserve the concept as Arnheim has contended.
3. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND INTERESTS AFFECT THE NATURE AND QUALITY OF HIS EXPERIENCES WITH ART.
The multitude of factors that make for the uniqueness of each child will of course relate to how he participates in art experiences.
Genetic endowment and experience with his environment including very importantly the attitudes he meets in contact with others are signifi cant in determining how a child elaborates his uniqueness, a unique ness found even in very young infants. Psychologists have used such contrasts as "active" versus "inactive," "difficult" versus "easy,"
"field independent" versus "field dependent," "visual" versus "haptic" and "a patterner" versus a "dramatist" to distinguish among children.
Sex, temperament, perceptual sensitivity, intelligence, activity level, and degree of curiosity are all mentioned as indicators as
Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 140. 66 well as determinants of a child's uniqueness and affect his relation ship to the world, which includes art objects and involvement in the creative process.
Studies with children as early as infancy indicate that they differ in temperament evidenced by the manner and tempo of their interaction with objects. Kagan calls this a difference in "conceptual 66 tempo." Some children have slow, some fast tempos when confronted with something moderately new. The former pause to examine closely, look quietly and respond calmly and quietly while the latter become excited, may move around the object physically and spend a shorter time with it. These temperamental differences in examination of objects seems to relate to the two creative types which Victor Lowen- feld set up based on art expression and one's attitude toward ejqperi- 67 ence, the "visual" and the "haptic." Although indicating that these types are extremes and most people lie somewhere between them, a full seventy-five percent have an appreciable tendency toward one type or the other. The visual type is the observer, the spectator interested in appearances, able to see the whole as well as details of the whole.
Lowenfeld's visual type seems similar to the child Gardner defines as taking the "stance of the patterner," one intrigued by visual and other static configurations, attending to overall gestalten, interested in formal properties of objects or scenes accessible in a
66 Jerome Kagan as cited in Helen Bee, The Developing Child, (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 133. 67 . Victor Lowenfeld and W. Lambert Brittain, Creative and Mental Growth, (fourth edition), (New York: Macmillan Co., 1964), pp. 258- 262. 67 68 single moment of time. The haptic type Lowenfeld defines as a sub
jective type, kinesthetically and tactily oriented who becomes emotion
ally involved with objects and whose art is a synthesis of bodily,
emotional, and intellectual comprehension of shape and form. Gardner's
"dramatist" bears remarkable resemblance having a flair for media that
unfolds over time, more riveted by semantic content, more comfortable with and seeking out interpersonal situations and assimilating events
C. Q to a story context or to happenings in his own life.
Although such type categorization has been and will continue to be an object of debate as to the degree of validity, such schemes direct one's attention to the fact that temperament and personality do play a part in how one approaches the world, and for our purposes pinpoint some alternative approaches to the world of the visual arts.
Inclusion of other factors is essential to a more total picture how ever, factors such as sex, interests, and age of the participant.
It is well known that an infant's sex determines many of the feelings, attitudes, and actions of people with whom he comes in contact. Although cultures and families differ greatly in the ways they interpret and value sex roles, there is evidence that one can generalize to some degree within cultures and times how sex will help determine a child's interests, values, behavior, and even what his art preferences and propensities will be. Preferences according to sex are related to interest which a society helps to shape for one sex and
68 Gardner, "Sifting the Special from the Shared: Notes toward an Agenda for Research in Arts Education," P. 38.
69Ibid. 68
another and these will change as they have in the last fifteen years.
Data collected in preference studies twenty years ago could not be
relied upon to measure children's interests and preferences by sex
today. There is some evidence however that, in some respects, after
about age thirteen boys and girls interests as manifest in the visual 70 arts will coalesce.
If, as Whitehead asserts, interest is the sine qua non for
mental development, attention, and apprehension, individual differences
including those relating to sex and temperament are important in selec- 71 tion of books for children. William James in the late nineteenth
century pointed out the importance of interest as a sharpener of dis
crimination, acting through directing attention to distinctions, an
idea important to Gibson's discrimination theory. We know from many
studies that young children's preferences in art and their ideas of
what is beautiful are related to the subject matter of the work. The
choice is often a very personal one, but the perennial popularity of
certain art works at certain ages does indicate the presence of certain
universal interests as well as emotional chords to which these works
appeal.
We have already noted individual differences with regard to preference for different media. One should also note briefly that
there are individual differences related to intelligence (I.Q.).
Irvin Child reports one study which found that individual differences
70 Lark-Horovitz, Lewis and Luca, p. 215. 71 William James as cited in E. Gibson, p. 25. 69
in understanding pictures positively correlated with two other vari
ables, accuracy of physiognomic perception and a measure of cognitive 72 complexity. Because both accuracy of physiognomic perception and
cognitive complexity are developed with increasing age and experience,
this finding seems to parallel what is proposed here in the three
stage process of development in art appreciation. However, within
the same age group, native intelligence does play a part in the 73 ability to make fine discriminations and note complexities. What
should also be noted is that the child with an especially high I.Q.
is not necessarily either talented or especially creative. Although a
child may have a good verbal ability and discrimination powers as measured on I.Q. tests, he may lack the qualities essential to creative 74 thinking and making.
4. THE YOUNGER CHILD RELATES TO THE WORLD IN A MORE DIRECT, INTUITIVE WAY, ONE NOT DOMINATED BY SYSTEMATIC OR LOGICAL PROCEDURE.
This characteristic of early childhood is that highlighted by many of those who use the three-stage division of developmental 75 progress.
Studies of the perception of very young children show that they are caught by gestalt-like structural features of a stimulus. Three
72 L.J. Nidorf and A.H. Argabrite as cited in I. Child, "Esthe tics," Annual Review of Psychology. 1972, p. 672. 73 E. Gibson, pp. 466-467. 74 Lark-Horovitz, Lewis and Luca, p. 249. 75 See page 40 for the different terms. 70 year olds keep their eyes on a single spot longer than do six-year olds and do not seek out distinctive features of objects. The more detailed exploratory search comes gradually with more experience and learning.
The attention of young children is caught by objects or scenes that are strong and simple— big, bold strokes, bright, clear color, sharp contrasts, and similar over-statements. Having less experience with phenomena, they see less detail, follow outlines.
The characteristic of young children to attend to phenomena in a so-called "fresh" way, unencumbered by verbal labels and interpreta tions is often paralleled to the "fresh" way an artist attends to 77 visual stimuli. When asked how a painter keeps his painting fresh, the late Ben Shahn replied:
I think it becomes a habit after a while to regard anything as something that one is seeing for the first time in one's life— as if it comes from a very strange and distant country.^®
Although we shall see in our treatment of Stage III that the perception of the artist cannot be the same as that of a young child, the interest in, attention to, and values given to objects and their visual, sensual, and emotional qualities for their own sakes does in
76 Muriel Beadle, A Child's Mind, How Children Learn During the Critical Years from Birth to Age Five, illus. by E. John Pfiffner, (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday and Co., 1971), p. 15. 77 See Gardner, The Arts and Human Development for quotes from Herbert Read, Goethe, Victor D'Amico, Rudolf Amheim, and P. Slade on this topic> P» 296. 78 Quoted in an article, "Just Looking" by Mary Cowen. Complete bibliographical data not noted. 71 some respects parallel that of the mature appreciator. A young child is, as artists are, figuratively-oriented, a characteristic which gradually changes-with further development and growing dependence on language and the analytical and operational behavior characteristic of Stage II— but it was the child in Stage I who with fresh insight
"dared to call the emperor naked."
STAGE II: PERIOD OF TRAINING (Middle Childhood and Adolescence)
The term training has been used for this period to mark what this author feels must be its characteristic attribute if Stage III, that of Mature Appreciation, is to be reached. Although the period, from approximately age seven to fourteen but often beyond, covers a number of years in the development of the child and there are distinct differences within the period, some form of conscious instruction either self or other-directed or both is essential if Stage III is to be reached. The following chapters will treat in more detail what character this may or should take. Here we will look at general characteristics of young people during this period particularly as they may relate to their attitudes and relationships to art. We shall look at internal and external influences that may determine interests, attitudes, values, personality, and approaches to the world, including the world of art.
Generally, the child is developing in the areas treated under
Stage I: he is expanding his "theory of the world," growing in the nature and quantity of life experience; his culture continues to impress its images and symbols on him and help shape the framework, 72 perspective, or set from which he looks at art; he continues to develop in and be shaped by interaction with symbolic media, and individual differences based on age, sex, temperament, personality, intelligence, and interests still help shape the nature of his contact with the arts. Below are some additional characteristics which should be considered because they bear directly on the way he will relate to art.
1. THERE IS AN INCREASING FLEXIBILITY IN THE MODES OF THOUGHT EMPLOYED IN VARIOUS SITUATIONS.
Logical thinking according to Bruner is possible from the age of seven and although for Piaget a child from seven to eleven (stage of concrete operations) is still dependent on mental representations and not capable of abstract scientific thinking (stage of formal opera tions, age twelve to adult), both acknowledge the gradually increasing flexibility in thinking available to a child during this stage. This greater flexibility is essential to the different art learnings or appreciation skills. To discern, describe, analyze, compare, inter pret, and evaluate parts and wholes of aesthetic objects is necessary to mature appreciation. This critical posture is developed gradually 79 with age and experience. Gardner distinguishes the critic from the audience member, creator, and performer because of his need to use
79 See Ralph A. Smith and C.M. Smith, "The Artworld and Aesthetic Skills: A Context for Research and Development," in ed„ Stanley S. Madeja, Arts and Aesthetics: An Agenda for the Future, (St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc., 1977), pp. 312-313 for a chart of aesthetic skills and concepts with a list of anticipated difficulties due both to problems inherent in the concepts themselves and to those based on students' misconceptions. 73
formal operations, engage in hypothetical thought, and reason about
propositions, processes which employ verbal characterizations of the
object. In contrast, an artist he sees as working in the realm 80 described by Piaget's "concrete operations." In fact however it
would be rare to find an artist who did not also function critically,
even younger artists. The division seems to be somewhat arbitrary.
With the child's increasing ability to use language to process
information and the school's emphasis on analytical skills which
depend on verbal abilities, for the child during middle childhood and
adolescence in American society words rather than visual or graphic
symbols become the dominant mode in which he functions. With language
it is more typically the transactional and expressive rather than poetic functions that are employed. It is important to note however
that the sharpening critical sense which is developing as a result of
growth, experience, and the practice that takes place in formal
schooling and which is certainly important to mature appreciation, the
"experience and knowledge about," often militates against or occurs in
lieu of "experience and knowledge of." Intellectual cognition unfor
tunately often replaces "intuitive cognition," a characteristic
helped along by the values inherent in most school curricula. In the
realm of the visual arts the years of preadolescence are those when a
number of children lose interest in art, a phenomenon partially
attributable some feel to a greater criticism of one's own work,
finding it deficient when compared to that of others. In a period
80 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, pp. 326-329. 74
when peer pressure is especially high, this may cause many to culti
vate interests in other directions. Because middle childhood is a 81 period when realism is a criterion for preference in art, recogni
tion that one lacks the artistic skills to create what one sees as
"good" art can be frustrating. While one may feel that making art is
not necessary to visual art appreciation, it must be pointed out that
it does provide occasions for noticing cues and realizing, through
intimate involvement with media, what is involved in the creative
process. Many would argue that participation in the creative process
through doing is essential to mature art appreciation, or that being Op without such experience is certainly a "limitation."
The pedagogical problems are quite obvious— how one retains
interest in art and maintains a child's intuitive experiences, his
sense of delight and freshness of discovery in art, at the same time
as sharpening his critical powers and developing in the other essen
tial aspect, "ejqperience and knowledge about."
There is evidence that children from about nine through fourteen
are eager to learn and are willing to exert considerable effort to enhance their delight if their interest is whetted. They are also often good detectives and have a growing interest in particulars which accompanies their developing powers of discrimination and mental
capabilities. Maslow sees the "need to know" to be a spontaneous product of maturation rather than of learning, however defined. This
8^Machotka, p. 877. 82 . Reid, Meaning m the Arts, p. 303. 75 is seen more strongly in late infancy and in childhood than in adult- 83 hood.
Experiments with sixth grade children have shown that they can engage in the type of thinking and inquiry basic to growth in the aesthetic:
...Children not only talk about art but also talk about their talk; they not only criticize art objects and events but also reflect upon the nature of the critical act itself.84
Ecker has established five levels of inquiry in which children can 85 engage. Level (1) assumes art production and art appreciation as inquiry: . ..
(1) creating and appreciating art
(2) criticizing it
(3) challenging or supporting the judgment of others,
whether adults or children
(4) theorizing about the nature of art and criticism
(5) analyzing theories and arguments
In addition to critical inquiry, studies have shown that chil dren in upper elementary and junior high can be instructed to recognize style, to discriminate what the experts consider better and poorer works, to attend less to literal aspects and more to symbolic content,
83 Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), p. 96. 84 David W. Ecker, "Analyzing Children's Talk About Art," Journal of Aesthetic Education VII, (January 1973), p. 70.
85Ibid. to sense the feeling content in art, and generally to understand and
enjoy art at a more meaningful or deeper level than younger children.
Although such training is most often discussed in a favorable light and
there are studies that support its efficacy, there is other evidence
to show that it is not always successful, does not necessarily result
in increased understanding and in fact may, in some instances, inter- 87 fere with a variety of enjoyments in art. Also it has been found
that intensive exposure to art does not uniformly develop increased 88 interest in it. Research by Mendenhall and Mendenhall found that
repeated exposure to particular pictures and poems leads children to
like better what they already like and to dislike even more intensely 89 what they already dislike. Other experiments have reported that the
only effect of repetition is decreased liking. The importance of
novelty, of new ground for the viewer to explore, has been established
as important to liking, yet the new level of complexity must not be
too much beyond the "audience's" present capacities or interest will
not be whetted.
86 Lark-Horovitz, Lewis and Luca, pp. 305-307. 87 Irvin L. Child and Rosaline S. Schwartz, "Exploring the Teach ing of Art Values," Journal of Aesthetic Education I. (Autumn, 1966), pp. 53-54. 88 Irvin L. Child and Rosaline S. Schwartz, "Exposure to Better and Poorer Art," Journal of Aesthetic Education II, (January, 1968), pp. 121-124. 89 J.E. Mendenhall and M.E. Mendenhall, The Influence of Familiar ity upon Children's Preferences for Pictures and Poems, (New York: Bureau of Publications of Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1933), as cited in Ibid., p. 119. 90 Ibid., Child and Schwartz, 1968, p. 119. 77
In view of these findings, it seems incumbent on those in posi tions of responsibility with regard to children's art appreciation to carefully weigh the many factors discussed here. Such considera tion is essential in determining what techniques and programs should be used to encourage understanding and appreciation of art. Child
and Schwartz sum up the dilemma:
What, then, can be the value to the child in a series of exposures to art? Discrimina tion is not necessarily learned, and we can not count on the development of interest out of mere exposure to good art, nor out of exposure to contrasts between better and poorer art. Whether interest can be shar pened probably depends, as we have seen, on the personality of the individual and on the way the experience is offered; and there are no easy rules to guide the teacher in presenting it.9^
2. THERE IS A DECREASE IN EGOCENTRISM WHICH GRADUALLY ENABLES THE CHILD TO ACHIEVE THE NECESSARY AESTHE TIC DISTANCE, THE SPECTATOR ROLE, BOTH WITH REGARD TO HIS OWN ART ACTIVITY AND THAT OF OTHERS.
By age seven or eight the young child is able to distinguish between the "real" and "pretend" and alternates between them in his play. He has achieved a sense of self and other persons and sees himself as operating with and yet apart from them. He has also developed a certain perspective toward and control over important parts of his environment. He has had many opportunities to feel and express his attitudes towards objects, people, and events in his life and sees his wishes, beliefs, ideas, and feelings as "his,"
91Ibid., p. 123. 78 perhaps sometimes uniquely "his."
A child can and often will have what is commonly called "empathy" with the content of an art work, mental "entering into" or identifi
cation with the feeling or spirit of the content, the subject, or activity represented. This type of affective relationship character
izes children at all ages. What the child before ten or eleven does not have according to Brittain and Vernon is "a feeling for the inter relationship between the parts of the picture." They are unable "to interpret what is happening in a picture, what the people are doing, 92 or what action is taking place." Children before this age can name objects within the picture but general theme or artist's intent is little understood. What is not felt until about age twelve or junior 93 high is the "mood or atmosphere of a picture." Machotka maintains that before mood or atmosphere is felt one must be able to objectify emotion, see it as belonging to a work as one interprets it, as dis tinct from emotion one feels within himself. He attributes this ability to sense the "affective tone" of an art work as apart from that within oneself to a decrease in egocentrism and relates it to 94 those qualities Piaget sets apart in the stage of formal operations.
Gardner in the same area points to the need to abandon the wide spread assumption that children are naturally "in tune with" and capable of "reading" the art objects of their culture:
^Brittain, p. 168. 93T,. , Ibid. 94 Machotka, p. 883. 79
...Style and metaphor sensitivity are not available in young children. Indeed in the middle years of childhood (around the ages of eight or nine) children prove to be ex tremely literal-minded. They reject figures of speech that cut across domain (a color can't be loud; a heart can't be heavy); they dislike paintings that deviate from the strictly representational.^
Weaning away from literalism and the ensuing increase in sen
sitivity to style and metaphor he sees as possible, with prudent
instruction, in about the fifth grade or around ten years of age, and
cites studies where it was done. This is perhaps one area in which
art history/appreciation books can play a part. Likewise, because
mood or atmosphere is closely related to style and metaphor, sensi
tivity to them is also possible with good instruction.
The child's greater self-awareness and the consequent decrease
in egocentrism is obviously aided in large measure by his growing
capacity to use language. With language, a child is helped to dis
tinguish the "I," "you," "he," "it" and "our" and to regulate his communications to others and to himself by conscious selection of appropriate words, phrases, emotional tones, etc. Language helps to clarify thinking.
Another important characteristic occurring in middle childhood and related to the increasingly objective and relativistic outlook of children in this period is that they begin to "locate themselves in
Gardner, "Sifting the Special from the Shared: Notes toward an Agenda for Research in Arts Education," p. 35 and The Arts and Human Development, p. 212. 80 96 time." They see themselves as taking part in man's history and understand that it will continue after their stay on the planet. They become interested in their own past and future as well as that of others. It is a time when history and historical figures become meaningful to them. The mysteries of life, birth, and death are pondered from about age ten, and they meditate on what it means to be ten, twelve, sixteen, or twenty.
3. A CHILD IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE HAS A GROWING CAPACITY TO APPRECIATE A WORK OF ART AT VARIOUS LEVELS.
It is widely acknowledged that good art is complex, significance and meaning often beyond the understanding of the child with his limited life experience and capabilities. Despite this many children in middle childhood and adolescence can and do grasp intuitively qualities and subtleties at levels beyond the literal or surface meaning, and can be trained to realize additional levels of meaning or significance. The nature of instruction is crucial, an area where art history/appreciation books may have a role.
The structure of art allows for a certain degree of freedom or latitude in interpretation of theme and organization. This is the creative activity of the audience member which has parallel in the creative activity of the maker or artist. Reflection, evocation of thoughts and emotions, personal evaluations, personal perspectives,
96 Joseph L. Stone and Joseph Church, Childhood and Adolescence, A Psychology of the Growing Person, (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 441. 81 temporary and habitual feelings and thoughts, all are part of the creative activity of the audience member or spectator. He supple- ments, personalizes, becomes an "accomplice" to the artist. 97 The potential for buildup in this area seems limitless, but it is essen tial that new insights and responses "be linked up with the student's own primary response to the work." 98 The "experience and knowledge about" must be linked to the "experience and knowledge of."
4. CHILDREN IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE OFTEN EXHIBIT A SOCIAL AWARENESS AND SOPHISTICATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS.
Raised in an age of television news and brought up with bussing, rights movements, political scandals and wars, today's American chil dren often become emotionally involved in these issues. At an age when problems of justice and injustice are important to them as indi viduals, detecting such issues in society at large can affect them with great poignancy. These factors should help them find social comment in art more' meaningful.
5. SOME TYPE OF IMITATIVE BEHAVIOR IS OFTEN CHARACTER ISTIC OF THIS PERIOD FOR ONE WHO CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY SETS OUT TO DEVELOP IN ART APPRECIATION.
Imitative behavior is characteristic of children in middle child hood and adolescence and as interests, loyalties, and life patterns
97 Kreitler and Kreitler, p. 290.
98 Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, 3rd ed., (New York: Noble and Noble, Publishers, Inc., 1976), p. 76. 82 change, so do one's models. A type of imitative behavior could be said to be a necessary component to all growth and certainly tradi tional schooling requires a type of it. In this "period of training" in art appreciation when one is often "self-consciously appreciative," when one's reactions, thoughts, and preferences are compared with those of the critics, one's teachers, artists, and authors, a child often shapes his own behavior according to that of these "models."
Most educators would see this as normal and harmless as long as this imitation is just a "stage" through which one passes and does not 99 become a fixed attitude. In the process of attempting to tap and clarify one's own response to art, the views and insights of others serve as substance for reflection and comparison. Learning to enter into the structure of assumptions of an art work and working at build ing a critical perspective which becomes habitual in the mature appreciator requires an apprenticeship and the importance of "masters" is not to be ignored. In this sense, good art history/appreciation books can be thought of as "masters."
STAGE III: STAGE OF MATURE APPRECIATION (Late adolescence to adult)
The titles given to this stage by others,those like
"disciplined aesthetic experience," "discriminating apprehension," or
"the cultivated eye, ear and hand" indicate its nature and characteris tics and in general there is agreement among those who attempt to
99 Margaret J. Early, "Stages of Growth in Literary Appreciation," The English Journal, Vol. XLIX (March 1960), pp. 165-166.
•'•°®See pages 41 and 42 for complete list. 83 define it. Differences of emphasis may mark the work of those who have written on the topic, but this author has found little contra diction as to what characterizes mature appreciation in art.
It should be indicated that with regard to age, mature art appreciation demands the type and scope of life experience and emo tional and intellectual development not possible before late adoles cence and most that have it are adults although, as previously indi cated, the percentage of the adult population who are "mature appreci- ators" is low. Also, it should be restated that there is a dynamic dimension to the stage. One continues to develop, expand or grow in appreciation— in fact continuing development is a characteristic of the mature appreciator.
Below is an attempt to synthesize in list form characteristics which mark mature art appreciators. It was compiled after examination of the thinking on the topic by educators, philosophers, and psychol ogists all convinced of the value of the art experience.
1. THEY APPREHEND AESTHETIC MEANING OR IMPORT. THEY INTUITIVELY GRASP THE ART OBJECT AS AN INTEGRATIVE AESTHETIC WHOLE.
2. THEY ARE AWARE OF THE COMPLEXITIES THAT MARK THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MAN AND ART.
They realize the dynamic nature of that interaction and its experiential, intellectual, and emotional dimensions. They see the integral relationship of the "experience and knowledge about" and the
"experience and knowledge of" and keep these experiences in proper perspective. 84
3. . THEY SEE THE ART EXPERIENCE AS VALUABLE IN AND OF ITSELF AS AN "END" EXPERIENCE RATHER THAN AS INSTRUMENTAL OR FUNCTIONAL, ALTHOUGH THEY ACKNOW LEDGE THE ROLE IT PLAYS IN A GENERAL ENRICHMENT OF LIFE.
4. THEY HAVE THE CAPACITY AND FREQUENTLY THE DESIRE TO ATTEND TO WORKS OF ART OVER AND OVER AGAIN, AND OFTEN DO SO WITH FRESH INSIGHTS AND VISION. THEY BOTH CONSCIOUSLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY SEEK OUT ART EXPERIENCES AND REPEATED EXPOSURE TO AN OBJECT OFTEN MAKES THEM ADMIRE IT MORE, DEEPENING THEIR FASCINATION AND LIKING FOR IT.
5. THEY ARE ABLE TO ATTEND TO BOTH THE FORM AND CONTENT OR THE UNITY, FORM-CONTENT.
Although at times mature appreciators may choose to focus on
one or other aspect of the form-content duality, they realize the
essential unity of art. Their attending is "idiosyncratic"'1'®'1' or
fresh, determined by an effort to see the unique work of art for what
it is, divorcing it as much as possible from prior stereotypes they
or others may have formed.
6. CERTAIN PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS GENERALLY MARK MATURE APPRECIATORS.
They have independence of judgment, tolerance of complexity,
and a sensitivity to and interest in human values and human nature.
They tend to have a lively, questioning mind, are curious and often
seek to apprehend new and contemporary forms of expression as well as the traditional. They remain flexible and are willing to accept the non-traditional.
^^•''Maslow, p. 263. 85
7. THEY CRITICIZE AND EVALUATE WORKS OF ART AND LOOK AT THEMSELVES CRITICALLY FOR THE BASES UPON WHICH JUDGMENTS ARE MADE.
Realizing that art judgment involves art work as well as art viewer, they will often check their own judgments to test their validity with relation to the world, looking carefully and discriminate- ly at it in view of what they know about art, art of the time, the artist, etc. They will often compare their judgments with those of others in an attempt to sharpen their own discriminations, and they seek out data of various types which may not have been previously available. They will often choose to reserve judgment until they feel familiar with enough of the complex of factors which make up a work of art, although they may in some cases choose to evaluate on limited grounds, such as aesthetic or formal values. Mature appreciators, realizing the complexity of factors which make up the world of art, will usually admit personal deficiencies and continue to research, read, and look to correct them.
8. THEY USUALLY HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF THE HISTORY OF ART, THE MULTITUDE OF FACTORS WHICH HAVE SHAPED IT AS WELL AS SOME GRASP OF THE DIFFERENCES IN STYLE, CONTENT, AND MEDIA USED AT VARIOUS TIMES.
This characteristic takes time to effect, yet they understand this and work at it in their own way. One must shift points of view and frames of reference as he looks at the art of different periods and a mature appreciator realizes this. One cannot judge Baroque art by Renaissance or contemporary standards or the work of one artist by the standards of another. Mature appreciators often know how art 86 criticism and patronage has shaped both style and content as well as helped to determine what art has survived.
9. THEY ARE AWARE OF THE PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS OF DESIGN AND OF VARIOUS TECHNIQUES OR MEDIA AS THEY AFFECT THE ART PRODUCT.
A mature appreciator may not have been actively involved in the creative process within a particular medium, but there can be little debate that such activity does deepen one's understanding not only of the process of creativity, but of the potential of that medium. To have participated in the struggles of the creative process is to have realized what is involved in an intimate and personal way for which it would be difficult to find a substitute. Yet one who has not participated may still realize what makes for good design, meaning ful expression or, one might say, art of quality. Through careful and discriminating observation and instruction over a period of time, a
"layman" or non-practitioner can very often acquire the sensitivity which marks mature appreciation.
10. HE RECOGNIZES THE NEED FOR "AESTHETIC DISTANCE" IN RELATING TO A WORK OF ART. THE EXPERIENCE MUST BE OBJECT-CENTERED RATHER THAN EGO-CENTERED.
Aesthetic distance of course does not preclude emotional or empathetic involvement in the work, which does take place in aesthetic experience, but it does preclude the need for the spectator to act upon the insights he may gain when apprehending a work of art. 87
11. THEY TREAT THE ART OBJECT WITH RESPECT, EVEN REVERENCE.
The roots of this attitude stem from one's appreciation of art and the role it has and continues to play in the life of man. The aesthetic experience has often been compared to the mystic or religious experience. Maslow calls it a "peak experience," one offering "high est happiness and fulfillment" and implicitly a "caring for the object" which will produce sustained attention and repeated examina- 102 tion necessary to perceive all aspects of the object.
12. BECAUSE MATURE APPRECIATORS HAVE PASSED THROUGH A PERIOD OF TRAINING OR DISCIPLINE, THERE IS A CER TAIN SENSE OF FREEDOM AND SPONTANEITY IN THEIR APPROACH TO ART OBJECTS.
This freedom and spontaneity is that gained through experience with art, through acceptance of its rules, through knowledge of its forms. Louis Arnaud Reid calls it "the third freedom— glorious liberty, freedom from the domination of unordered impulse as well as a sense of release into new worlds of meaning...achieved through volun tary acceptance of some kind of order or law." This allows one to 103 "move about" in the discipline.
...'Glorious freedom' stands for the sense of joy in which order has become assimilated into the person in a way which no longer feels restrictive but expansive. 04
102Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1968), pp. 73-76. lOO JLouis Arnaud Reid, Philosophy and Education, An Introduction, (London: Heinemann, 1962), pp. 125-127.
104Ibid., p. 127. 88
A mature appreciator is often called childlike, spontaneous, direct, or fresh in his approach to art, his response likened to that characteristic of the child at Stage I. The approach is often of this nature, but the mature appreciator differs from the child in that he has been through a period of training in which details, rules, prin ciples, and their application have become subconscious habits.
Alfred North Whitehead writes of the "rhythm of education":
...the adaptation of freedom and discipline to the natural sway of development. My main posi tion is that the dominant note of education at its beginning and at its end is freedom, but that there is an intermediate stage of discipline with freedom in subordination.
^Alfred North Whitehead, "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," in A.N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 31. CHAPTER IV
PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CRITERIA FOR THE
SELECTION OF ART HISTORY/APPRECIATION BOOKS
FOR THE YOUNGER READER
In the preceding chapter this author has established a framework for understanding development in art appreciation. By linking aesthe tic development to child development, an attempt has been made to make the reader aware of the complex of factors which bear on the child's relationship with art, and therefore of some problems which may occur in the process of becoming a "mature appreciator.11
Specifically this dissertation addresses itself to the role which books, designated here as art history/appreciation books, can play in effecting art appreciation. These are books which attempt explicitly or implicitly to effect understandings specific to the visual arts. It should be noted that the potential for books to enhance one's appreciation of art is very great. Art may theoreti cally take all of human life and experience as content and therefore any book which calls one to experience, to widen his sympathies and understandings of the world, really feeds the base, the "theory of the world" with which one approaches the visual arts. One can theoretically help build art appreciation through many types of experiences as well as many types of books, and an awareness of this
89 90 fact should be built into any art appreciation program. Making this fact known may be one way to overcome many of the parochial views which pervade understanding of the arts. A widening awareness and understanding of the world in general will contribute to the under standings and experiences which are more specifically thought of as art experiences.
While bearing in mind the possible scope of literature which may enhance one's appreciation of the visual arts, this author wishes to direct attention in this dissertation to books which deal more speci fically with the visual arts and visual awareness. Four categories of such books has been established and each will be examined separately to determine what art learnings books within each category aim to effect, what particular stage or stages of development in art apprecia tion such books address, and what inherent qualities these books have or lack which make them more or less desirable choices for use in effecting art appreciation. These categories are:
(1) General Art Appreciation Books
These are general "how to see" books which treat the
language of art, an art form(s), design, and/or the
process of ejqperiencing or understanding works of art.
(2) Art History Books
These are books which treat art form and content in or
from an historical perspective.
(3) Art Biography
These are books which present some view of an artist's (or
artists') work, life, thinking, and/or role in history. 91
(4) Picture Books
These are books which strive, often implicitly, to
effect awareness of some aspect of the visual world,
art, the artist, the creative process, and/or the
art experience.
Books in their role in developing art appreciation can address
themselves to both the "experience and knowledge about" and the
"experience and knowledge of." By describing, labeling, analyzing,
and categorizing, many art history/appreciation books are definitely
designed to effect more informed, intensive, focused, satisfying, and
richer observation. They are "teachers" with a goal in mind, and
although their methods, use of language, illustration, and the criti
cal viewpoints reflected may and do vary, their intent is clear— to
serve a role in the "training" established in the preceding chapter
as essential to mature art appreciation.
Books which deal specifically with art history/appreciation are
most often classified in the literature under the term "informational
books" or "nonfiction" and categories one through three fall for the
most part within this classification. Exceptions are fictionalized biography, biographical fiction, and historical fiction where liber
ties are often taken with factual material and "filling in" done in order to present the book in a form which an author may feel for one or many reasons, including greater reader engagement, is better for his purposes. Category four, picture books, may also be either fiction or non-fiction, although the vast majority are fiction. When one looks at the pedagogical methods used by those who write in or about art in informational/non-fictional and in fictional form, there can be great similarity. Often the writer of the informa tional books on art uses language in a way that engages, inviting the reader "into" the work of visual art in a participatory sense— moving around in the design, empathizing with the content, feeling the con viction expressed, techniques which are often thought to belong exclusively to fiction, but believed by many, including this author, to belong to much good non-fiction as well. The author of such infor mational books uses the verbal to create a "sense" of the visual, to engage emotions as well as intellect. When an author uses language in such a way in certain types of art history/appreciation books, and this can be done for readers at all stages in art appreciation development with various levels of prior understanding assumed, the reader while engaged in the books often alternates between "of" and
"about" ejqperiences. The author has so organized his book that by analysis, description, and statements of his personal insights with regard to an art object, the latter often reproduced beside the verbal text, he contributes to a reader's apprehension or experience of the work. The author has provided the reader with a richer "theory of the world" with which to confront the work. One's experience with such a book may be said to be an alternation of intellectual and intuitive cognition, of subsidiary and focal awareness. This author feels that a case could be made for one's experience with any book, but parti cularly with the art book with reproductions and text as being essen tially a combination of "of" and "about" experiences. Some feel that 93 this is what good teachers provide and what good communication is all about, engaging the student in such a way that he comes to understand the content and its parts more fully (intellectual cognition), but apprehends the whole (intuitive cognition) finding the experiences rich and personally satisfying. This is the method of education 1 which Herbert Read calls "formally and fundamentally aesthetic."
The pedagogical method which uses language carefully, choosing appropriate words as well as content so as to engage the reader, inviting him, even teasing him into sensing or apprehending an art object, is not the only one employed in art history/appreciation books nor is it to be assumed that this author feels that it is the most effective one. Facts "about" art or a work of art which may or may not be illustrated are often presented in a straightforward, objective, or didactic way, with no attempt to engage a reader's emo tions and intellect as described above. The straightforward approach is often, in many ways, the most effective method when the audience addressed wishes it. Some people prefer to do their own "filling in," to direct attention to aspects of their own choosing. It may also be an effective way if the author wishes to focus a reader's atten tion on the reproduction of the art work rather than on words about it.
There are writers of art history/appreciation books very wary of using too much description, too much interpretation, and instead use words very sparingly, pointing out certain aspects of a work briefly in an effort to make a reader behold the art object with greater intensity.
•*-Read, Education through Art, p. 217. 94
One writer on the subject of interpreting art works has decried our tendency to:
...use our eyes almost entirely semantically, forever turning our visual cues to practical account, almost any visual presentation is likely to be "seen as" standing for some thing or other.
...Most of us are so semantic-habituated that we impose object-shapes upon grease spots and ink blots and vagrant clouds, as well as upon Leonardo's famous plaster cracks.2
The same tendency is seen in museums as so many visitors spend a good part of their time reading labels, and so rarely take the time neces sary to experience a work. Gardner warns of the danger that a child may substitute verbal description, sometimes incorrectly or incom- 3 pletely understood, for careful perceptual attention. Labeling, categorizing, and interpreting has the potential to hinder as well as to enhance art appreciation. One of the problems in some types of art history/appreciation books is for the author to know when, in what way, and with whom and what he can employ language, the verbal to effect visual appreciation. This is clearly a challenge. It is like wise a challenge for critics and those responsible for art history/ appreciation book selection to know if the visual-verbal relationship in a certain book may help or hinder a child's growth in art apprecia tion.
2 Douglas N. Morgan, "Must Art Tell the Truth," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXVI (1967-68): p. 23. 3 Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 158. 95
The visual-verbal relationship is but one part of an art
history/appreciation book. Design of parts as well as of the total
book, and size, type, amount, and use of illustration or reproduction
are others, and equally as important to the "book," the whole with
which the reader is presented. They are also an important part of
the philosophy or approach to education the author is taking, and
must be judged on how they relate to an author's educational goals.
What has been indicated in this brief introduction to the
nature of the art history/appreciation book are factors which may not
at first be obvious: that it can be an educational tool, a "master"
or teacher in the training for mature appreciation; that there are a
variety of educational methods employed that, whether intentionally
or not, reflect an author's personal approach to the teaching of art
as well as his ideas about the art treated; and there is, although
often not explicitly stated, a type of audience addressed evidenced
by such elements as type of language the author uses and background
assumed of the audience. What a teacher or reader does if he picks
up such a book is to assess if it will serve his particular purpose
and audience. For a teacher, parent, and even reviewer, it assumes
a great deal, particularly if he or she knows little about art, the way appreciation in art happens and what may help or hinder growth,
the ways in which children can and do find art meaningful, and what ways of presenting art in book form certain children will respond to, i.e., type of content treated, what use of language, design, reproduc
tion, and the many possible combinations. Perhaps it is an intimation of these factors and their own inadequacies when confronted with them 96
that make many reviewers shy away from anything but brief descriptions
of an art history/appreciation book's subject matter and avoid evalua
tion of any type.
It is difficult to read the literature on art appreciation, psychology of art, art education, as well as general education without becoming aware of implicit or explicit references to how appreciation is effected as well as references as to what precautions teachers should take in working towards it. Even philosophers and psychologists on the topic of art appreciation are often not content to describe the process. Many attempt to prescribe formulae for bringing it about.
By far the loudest and most persistent cry which this writer has met many times over throughout the literature is that during
Stage I the child should be free to explore and discover without adults intervening, dulling, inhibiting, forcing, or otherwise thwart ing or directing what are the child's fresh responses to the world, his "experiences and knowledge of" guided by his own instincts and interests and not those imposed by some adult. What the child must be allowed to do is play, operate in the "third area" which Winnicott 4 and Brittain feel so essential. It is during this early stage that a child should be permitted to imagine, to create freely.
The consequences of rushing a child to Stage II before allowing him sufficient time in Stage I are pointed out by many. Barbara Biber sees it as a deterrent to creativity, and criticizes traditional
^See Chapter III, pp. 49-50. 97
education for sacrificing it by prematurely imposing a mold "instead
of providing a developmental sequence from exposure to mastery."^
Frank Smith writes of the danger of overburdening long term memory by
attempting to cram too much information in it.^ Lark-Horowitz, Luca,
and Lewis write of the need for pacing new learning and carefully weighing content because:
...to overwhelm the child with too much stimula tion can be as destructive as starving him with too little.^
James Britton, in looking at how literary sophistication is attained, warns that there is no "short cut" to the goal.
...it is a short circuit that destroys the whole system.®
He particularly cautions against introducing literary criticism, i.e.,
talk about forms, conventions, devices, techniques, etc., before a child has passed through the stage of concrete operations. There is a danger that the voice of the critic becomes the voice of authority, and the child, confronted with adult criticism, senses his own responses to literature as inadequate, disowns them, taking up in their place the ideas and opinions of respected critics.
5 Barbara Biber, "Premature Structuring as a Deterrent to Creativity," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry XXIX (1959), p. 283.
®F. Smith, p. 50. 7 Lark-Horowitz, Luca, and Lewis, pp. 333-334.
Q James Britton, "Response to Literature," in eds., Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow and Griselda Barton, The Cool Web, the Pattern of Chil dren's Reading, (New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 109. 98
...more harm has probably been done to the cause of literature by this means than by any other.... We should be more afraid of introducing such matters too early than too late.®
Although Britton is referring to development in literary ap preciation, the same warning may also be applied to development in
the visual arts. Gardner speaks of the difficulties created by the
"innocuous procedure of discussing art works with adults" because of the child's tendency to "deal directly with materials rather than to introspect about or comment on them.1,10 He suggests in lieu of labels
for the teacher to use additional materials where the child could learn to sense or intuit their characteristics as well as similarities and differences between them, drawing on his inherent synesthesic per ception as a means to discoveries. Although Gardner, in making this point, is suggesting methods to be used by a teacher while the child is engaged in art-making activities, this author sees certain books introduced to the young child as supplying a similar groundwork for building up the intuitions basic to visual art development.
It is interesting to note Rhoda Kellogg's observation with regard to young children's own art that, by introducing aims and criteria irrelevant to the child's imaginative production, further development is often hindered and his work is often of poorer quality.
^Ibid., pp. 109 and 108.
^°Gardner, The Arts and Human Development, p. 185.
^Ibid.
•*-2Rhoda Kellogg, Analyzing Children's Art (Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1969), pp. 150-158. The esthetic elements of children's schemas are largely lost on most adults, who have been processed through school art education or none.
Lambert Brittain in his studies with children in nursery school found that in painting children "seemed to be involved in an inverse relationship to the amount of instruction received; the more instruc- 14 tion the less the child was involved." Irvin Child cites research by H. Voillaume (1965) which found that:
...general cultural level of family was negatively correlated with quality of production.^5
This implies as does Kellogg that contact with an adult approach to art can hinder a child's art production. Also with regard to making art, Herbert Read speaks of a child's instinctive sense of design 16 being inhibited by "the premature use of implements of precision."
Although these studies refer to the quality and type of a child's art production, adult attitudes which a child absorbs from reactions and pressures in his own work will carry over to how he reacts to all art.
Clearly they will affect the foundation upon which ideas of art value are based. A teacher must be wary of encouraging a child to substi tute knowledge and experience about for knowledge and experience of, of forcing a child's standards to become but conventional verbal guides which do not arise out of personal explorations and convictions.
13Ibid. 14 Brittain, p. 160
■^Irvin Child, "Esthetics", Annual Review of Psychology XXIII (1972), p. 683. 100
What Kellogg, Voillaume, Read, and others seem to be saying is
that the child needs an Introductory Stage, Stage I, in which he has
freedom to explore, to play, to figure out for himself, to experience
directly and in an individual or idiosyncratic way, to become emotion
ally involved before such experiences are checked or even prevented by intellectual analysis, to become acquainted with the world of art where, in contrast to other fields with which he is becoming acquainted,
there is not just one "right" answer, but room for a variety of indi vidual responses, attitudes, and searches. He needs these ejqperiences before the more structured, traditional approaches are introduced in
Stage II, the stage of training.
Herbert Read in what seems to have become pedagogy out of vogue in an age of back-to-basics and competency testing writes of a teacher's duty of watching over a young child's natural, "organic" growth process:
...to see that its tempo is not forced, its tender shoots distorted.^
Perhaps the term "organic" so characteristic of pedagogy in the early part of the century is due for a revival, particularly in light of what we know of child development today. This author feels that much of what has been presented here clearly makes a point for the need to allow for a period of uninhibited, instinctive, personal search and discovery, a period of "organic" development if one chooses to use
Read's terminology.
17Ibid., p. 209. 101
Read clearly makes a point of the need to change teaching strate gies as the child grows, and in what this author feels is one state ment which seems to sum up the process put forth in this dissertation he states:
What is valuable in and for the child of five will not necessarily be valuable for the child of ten or fifteen. Among other things, the teacher must be prepared to say a reluctant farewell to the charms of naivety. The problem is to preserve an organic continuity, so that the poetic vision of one age fades insensibly into the poetic vision of the next age: that the sense of value never loses its instinctive basis, to become an ethical code or an aesthetic canon, an artificial appendage to an otherwise purely appetitive existence.
Are there art history/appreciation books which are addressed to the young child, one at Stage I, which allow him to freely explore and discover in a personal way, which avoid channeling and fixing his values in art in one direction or in directions prescribed by adult interests, values, and sensibilities? This author feels that there are, but there are also books which do attempt to fix or force one's values in art in a determined direction, which do try to impose disciplined knowledge before one is ready and often in a dry, didactic way, which do fall prey to the temptation of many instructors to teach pupils a little more of fact and precise theory than they are fitted for or ready to assimilate. These books often use a lecture- type format— describing, analyzing, informing— as opposed to pedagogi cal methods which invite the young reader's personal participation. 102
Books which invite him to explore and empathize, which encourage
his emotional as well as intellectual involvement, which toss around a
problem or art-related question to see it from various perspectives
so he can come to his own conclusions rather than having ready-made
solutions imposed on him, books which address his interests and con
cerns and yet allow him to enter imaginatively into experiences and
activities beyond his own time and place, and those which respect his
need for time and space to do this, time to savor and enjoy are books which encourage growth in art appreciation. These qualities are some of the characteristics or criteria by which art history/appreciation books for young children, particularly those at Stage I, must be
judged. Often these characteristics may and should be applied for those at Stages II and III. They are criteria which relate the child, books, and the process of development in art appreciation, criteria which this author feels are essential to a meaningful experience for him.
One aim of this dissertation is to lay out these criteria so that one interested in development in art appreciation can judge books which purport to serve this end. Based on considerations treated in this and previous chapters, the following list has been prepared. It should be noted however that not all these criteria will be applicable to all art history/appreciation books because of the wide variety of types of books included here under that general heading. In most cases however a majority of them will apply. The criteria treat characteristics of reader-book relationship as well as qualities of authorship which this author feels essential to the good art history/ 103 appreciation book.
1. rt should allow the reader room to exercise his imagination. inviting him to personally explore and participate both emotionally and intellectually.
Because of the personal nature of art itself as well as an individual's relationship to it, a young reader should from the very beginning be encouraged to participate in a personal way, with the
"theory of the world" which he has built up at a certain time. Books should be judged partially on how and if they.allow this to happen.
Art by its very nature leaves much larger margins for subjective elaboration, for "filling in," tapping one's prelogical reservoirs, than does the logically formulated statement, and making a younger reader aware of this from the very beginning of his development in art appreciation can give him a sense of freedom. Such freedom is not encouraged by authors who write as "authorities," as possessors of the "right" approach to see and evaluate art. As has been observed 19 earlier, this approach intimidates a child, makes him look to the
"expert" for answers and responses rather than searching for his own.
It may, particularly at the early stage, discourage him from art experiences altogether. The older child may just adopt the expert's stance as his own.
Whether the art history/appreciation book be informational/ non-fiction or fiction, there should be room to explore and participate.
There are many ways in which this may be done: some supply stimuli
19 See above, pp. 97-98. 104
with which the child can empathize, providing selective descriptions
or characteristics; some provide for comparisons the reader is
encouraged to make; some offer the opportunity to browse or skip to
content which is of particular interest; some use the discovery
approach. Huck suggests three approaches to getting reader involve
ment in a book of non-fiction:writing in a conversational tone, 20 using the second person, "you," and asking questions. Whatever the
approach, organization, or content, freedom for exercise of the
reader's imagination should be built into the book's structure.
2. _It should explore the art-related problem, question, situation, and/or objects with as open and objective _a stance as possible, looking at it with some understanding of the variety of approaches or perspectives from which it can be seen.
Authorship of an art history/appreciation book demands consider
able experience in the field as well as possession of those character- 21 istics delineated under Stage III, Mature Appreciation. If authors possess these qualities, they realize the complex nature of art, the
subjectivity of it, and the need for one developing in art apprecia
tion to "try on" many points of view, to toss them around until he
comes to a point of personal perceptions. Polyani has suggested that 22 knowledge cannot be told, but must be discovered. One way to
discover it is by "trying on," by playing with different perspectives.
20 Charlotte S. Huck, Children's Literature m the Elementary School, 3rd ed., (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), p. 536.
^ S e e Chapter III, pp. 82-88. 22 Polyani, p. 142. 105
One art history/appreciation book may supply many, but because of the personal nature of art and one author's response to it, one is more likely to have the opportunity to discover with richer and wider variety if he is exposed to a number of books, something which those concerned with art appreciation should encourage.
Although art is a very personal experience and therefore allows for a variety of interpretation, an author of an art history/ appreciation book should defend his claims and hypotheses as much as possible with evidence from the art objects themselves and should make it clear, particularly with younger readers, when statements are just opinion based on hypothetical grounds. Younger readers inexperienced in art criticism need time to discover the personal and hypothetical nature of art judgment and of many of the ideas and positions commonly put forth in the literature. Mastery of methods of investigation are only slowly developed but they can be helped along by authors aware of their value in art appreciation growth. A younger reader is also less able to detect when fact is mixed with fiction and personal anecdotes, when an author is indulging his pet theme or artist by rendering him status beyond what is accepted in the critical community, and when an author's personal art philosophy, values, and attitudes and hence interpretations of works are paramount in a book. An art history/appreciation book needs to provide the opportunity to "try on" but with the provision that a reader may "take off."
3. _It should exhibit an understanding of the interests, concerns, thinking, and feelings of the audience to whom it is addressed. Whitehead has said that interest is the sine qua non for atten- 23 tion and apprehension. Norma Schlager maintains that books- whose
main characters reflect the complex psychological and emotional
aspects of the reader, his perception of the world, are what children
clamor for, and those books which do not have a low readership no 24 matter how well written the book may be. Lillian Smith points out
that the lives of people of genius in the field of literature, art,
or music which give such pleasure to adults seldom interest children
because they do not have enough life experience to be able to:
...view with sympathy and understanding the abstract ideas and theories which find expres sion in achievements in the arts by men of genius. An attempt to bring these lives within the understanding of a child will usually result in an over-simplification which leaves their greatness unexplained, because inexplicable, to a child.25
Cianciolo, in citing various research into children's interests,
observes them as acquired yet based on such factors as constitutional
nature, personality, and by unique experiences and environment; in nature as broad but sometimes elusive, subtle and transitory; as
influenced by current events, television programs, and school assign ments; as determined by sex during middle and higher grades; and as
2 *5 A.N. Whitehead, "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline, in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 37. 24 Norma Schlager, "Predicting Children's Choices in Literature: a Developmental Approach," Children's Literature in Education IX, No. 3 (Autumn 1978), p. 137. 25 . Lillian Smith, The UnreluctB.nt Years (Chicago: American Library Association, 1953), p. 187. showing little difference between children from rural, urban, and
26 metropolitan backgrounds at least as reflected in book choice.
What seems to be suggested by these writers, whatever their perspective may be, is that some understanding of the interests, con cerns, feelings, and thinking of an audience is essential to author ship if one is to communicate an interest. This would require some attempt on the author's part to look at the world as a child sees it, of being in tune with his interests, of knowing the context out of which he comes, of acquaintance with the television characters and programs that appeal to him— essentially the same knowledge that is demanded of teachers and parents and others who work with children.
This author would question Lillian Smith's contention that artists' lives demand more than a child is capable of understanding.
A child's grasp of the complex of meanings even of such classics as
Alice in Wonderland could be said to be limited, but they have appeal at levels of understanding which are within the reach of the young child and may provide him with intimations of further meanings which at a prelogical level he may nurse until such time as his life experience provides him with sufficient basis to realize them with the richness the adult is capable. The same may be true of art works an author may choose to treat in an art history/appreciation book. Some clearly demand more life experience to realize in a richer sense, but there may be some appeal which an author can nourish, extending
26 Patricia Jean Cianciolo, "Criteria for the Use of Trade Books in the Elementary School Program," Dissertation, The Ohio State Univer sity, 1963, pp. 71-89. 108 the child's interests, concerns, thinking, and feeling. As has been seen, a child does have much in common with the artist, very import antly the fresh approach to looking at the world. In any case, work with, interest in, and knowledge of the child is essential to an author of art history/appreciation books for children no less than any other type of literature for children.
4. It should encourage and/or give the reader the opportunity to experience and know art in the "of11 sense as well as in the "about" sense.
Although art history/appreciation books do not often explicitly state what this dissertation has presented as its principal thesis, that art appreciation involves both knowledge and experience o_f as well as about, many books implicitly convey the idea that richer aesthetic apprehension or the experience £f is the end which description, analy sis, categorization, and interpretation serve. There are however some books which give one the impression that such analysis serves no end other than itself, a kind of intellectual game in which one should relish if he is to be truly "cultured" or possess the powers of con- noisseurship which society seems to revere. One way to discourage a young reader is to overwhelm him with so much analysis that art seems to be just one more "school subject" that he must master, one more realm of enigma that he must learn to decipher. This author feels strongly that a method currently popular in the field of art educa tion which encourages a child to name, describe, interpret, and evaluate art at an age as young as nursery school, while it may pro duce budding critics, clearly limits the child's freedom to enjoy, 109 to delight, and to experience in a personal idiosyncratic way. There is danger that such pedagogical methods which art educators like Feld- 27 man advocate attempt to bypass the all-important Stage I which this dissertation has proposed as essential to development in art apprecia tion. It is important that those responsible for children's art history/appreciation book selection and critics and reviewers of such books are aware that books which stress or treat only the "about" by using such a rationale as the need for the child to "read," "under stand," or get "meaning" from images and dismiss the experiential, the "of" experience as only "sensational reading" of an art work, fail to understand the nature of the child, of art, and of aesthetic experience. They should be wary of such statements as that which follows that not only seems to deride the art experience of the child and delight in visual phenomena for its own sake, but seems to look disparagingly on modern abstract art:
A good deal of art instruction is conducted as if a childlike or primitive mode of seeing were highly desirable. One can go further and assert that certain types of contemporary art are created for the sake of promoting a childlike, that is, an essentially sensational or infantile mode of seeing. What we have, then, is an ideo logical and educational situation in which pre literacy and anti-literacy become the marks of a sophisticated person....
...So if we want to build linguistic theory, or pedagogical method, on an artistic foundation we should seek our materials in the large body
27 See Feldman, Becoming Human through Art, Chapter 12, pp. 348- 383 and his article "Art Criticism and Reading," in ed., Elliot Eisner, Reading, the Arts and the Creation of Meaning, (Reston, Va.: National Art Education Association, 1978), pp. 141-157. 110
of imagery that preceded the emergence of the sort of art that acts on the organism like an aspirin, a stimulant, or a consciousness- expanding drug.^®
Such educators do not understand the nature of art knowing, the nature of art as metaphor, or that art experience, the "of", is never just a sensation but a complex experience which involves both emotion and intellect— "visual thinking" as Arnheim proposes.
Many art history/appreciation books provide an opportunity for the reader to alternate between about and of experiences by providing reproductions of art works accompanied by verbal material about them.
On this point it should be mentioned that there are some who would argue that a reproduction is not an art object, and thus the experience is less valid. This writer does not hold that view. It is not to say that an "aesthetic experience" with a reproduction is the same as or a substitute for an experience with the actual work of art, but only that it is a valid "aesthetic experience."
There are art history/appreciation books such as biographies which will be discussed in the next chapter where reproductions are not used, but where in a variety of ways the reader can become aware of as well as be encouraged to participate in both the of and about experiences. In fact such books by their very nature address them selves to the "about," to such art learnings as an artist's motiva tions and responses to life and the joys and struggles of the creative experience.
^®Feldman, "Art Criticism and Reading," p. 155. Ill
5. rt should respect the reader's need for time to savor the material within. Careful and thoughtful organization of the book1s content with respect to anticipated audience must be exhibited so as to ensure that the reader is not overwhelmed by the volume or difficulty of the material.
It has often been pointed out that pace is the secret of success ful teaching, and this is as true of a book as it is in a classroom situation. Too often however the temptation by authors of art his tory/appreciation books is to cram as much as possible between the covers so as to overwhelm the younger reader. Younger children are limited in their ability to attend to content over long periods of time and an author needs to be aware of this fact.
The richness of the area, encompassing the art of thousands of years, many different peoples and cultures from all parts of the planet, thousands of different artists and styles, and many dif ferent techniques and specialized vocabulary calls for careful think ing and planning as to what can and should be attempted within the confines of one book meant to be read by a non-specialist in the field.
It is a challenge that must be met if the reader is to be encouraged to grow in his interest in, understanding of, and ejqperiences with art. A book that respects a reader's need for time to savor will grant him an essential ingredient in the "digestion" process.
A number of inherent qualities of the book will affect a reader's experience with it and the pace it establishes. Book design or format, use and type of language, the relationship of the visual and the verbal, the number of pages or the book's length, and the amount, size, placement of visual material are among the elements which help to establish a book's pace and the way a reader will relate to it. 112
If art appreciation instruction is to convey the idea that art offers
possibility for contemplation or aesthetic experience, that works
can be looked at over and over again with fresh insights and vision,
then careful pacing of the material is imperative. The all-too-common
practice of the art history/appreciation book to "stuff" the reader
with reproductions and data should be looked at carefully by those
who critique and select books for young readers. Paul Hazard, the
author of a classic on children's literature, Books, Children and Men
addressed this concern when he stated.
I like books of knowledge...when they have tact and moderation; when, instead of pouring out so much material on a child's soul that it is crushed, they plant in it a seed that will develop from the inside. I like them when they do not deceive themselves about the quality of knowledge, and do not claim that knowledge can take the place of everything else.^9
6. It should use language in such a way as to create a sympathetic atmosphere thus interesting the reader and whetting his appetite to pursue the subj ect.
Because art history/appreciation books are written in a number
of ways and styles with differing specific purposes within their wider overall purpose to help effect appreciation of visual art, the problem of looking at books in this area presents a number of difficulties particularly as regards the use of language. This has been alluded to earlier (see pp. 92-95), but needs to be examined in the context of this critical criterion.
2Q Paul Hazard, Books, Children and Men, translated, Marguerite Mitchell, 4th ed., (Boston: The Horn Book, 1963), p. 43. 113
James Britton has divided use of language into three functions: transactional which includes that which is informative and conative, expressive which is close to the speaker, freely uttered and present ing his interpretation of things, and poetic which is a "construct or 30 artifact, a verbal object." There are art history/appreciation books written employing all three of these uses of language, and some employ a combination of them. Problems arise when one attempts to decide if language used in one or other of these moods is actually more effective. Earlier a case was presented for the validity of different uses of language in the art history/appreciation book. This author wishes to maintain this position but because she believes that some art history/appreciation books are themselves art— literature— feels that some further clarification is needed.
Lillian Smith has listed three ways of writing for children books whose purpose is to inform:
1. with information as the sole aim.
2. to provide interpretation in addition to information.
3. to write literature which informs and interprets.
The latter she finds "rare" in informational books, the reason being that the intent of the author of an informational book is different from that of the creative writer. She proposes that there therefore 31 be a different set of standards for judging informational books.
30 Britton, "What's the Use? A Schematic Account of Language Functions," pp. 245-251. See also Chapter III, p. 64 of this dissertation.
31L. Smith, pp. 180-187. 114
This author would agree with Smith that it is rare that an informational book can be called literature but would like to elaborate on the role that use of language plays in making it one. Any author, whether he is writing in fictional or non-fictional/informational form, if he is to interest his reader, should be aware of the poten tial word use holds to make his book more effective and interesting.
An art history/appreciation book can present special problems to write because words which themselves have inherent characteristics and nuances and which change in context, are often used to describe, dis tinguish, enhance, and make more vivid or real visual art qualities.
Careful word choice is very important. A metaphor in verbal form if carefully chosen and worded can help in intensifying our experience with visual art or in clarifying some aspect of it. Writers of art history/appreciation books often come from the visual arts community where contact with literary art and practice with the written word and language in general is sometimes limited. They need to realize that if the book, one with word as well as image, is to be used to effect art appreciation, the importance of the word cannot be ignored. The more familiarity the authors have with the qualities that make for good literature, the better prepared they will be to use word as well as image and the other elements that make up "the book" in a way that makes for the sympathetic atmosphere which good art history/apprecia tion books must have, and which makes them literature whether fictional or informational/non-fictional in form.
Milton Meltzer in an essay "Where do all the Prizes Go? The
Case for Nonfiction" published in The Horn Book pleads a case for the 115 non-fictional/informational book to be considered as literature when it, like quality fiction, meets the criteria for art, for literary excellence. He criticizes Lillian Smith's comments and categories with the statement that...
...the best writers of nonfiction put their hearts and minds into their work. Their concern is not only with what they have to say but how they say it. Lillian Smith, like so many others, is guilty of bearing in mind only the finest writers of fiction when she discusses children's literature and thinking only of run-of-the-mill writers when she discusses information books. She com pares the rare few— the best— in fiction with the hacks in nonfiction. But there are as many stories as there are works of nonfiction which deserve to be promptly forgotten. In both cases no art is exercised, nor does the writer put his whole heart and mind into the book. Or if he does it is a second-rate mind and an unfeeling heart.
7. rt should exhibit an awareness of what the reader at ji parti cular stage demands in literature. The reader has demands relating to content, style, literary form, and author attitudes.
Early has listed a series of demands which the child at Stage I has with regard to literature:
...In narratives, he wants a definite plot, with action rising to a climax and falling to a satis fying conclusion. A story should have a begin ning, a middle, and an end. It should have a "point"— an easily recognized purpose or theme. Characters may be stereotypes; indeed, the card board figure is preferable, for complexities of character may obstruct the flow of action. Humor is desirable, too, if appropriate to the theme, but it should be obvious humor, requiring no subtleties of thought. The subject may be
31 Milton Meltzer, "Where do all the Prizes Go? The Case for Non fiction," in ed., Paul Heins, Crosscurrents of Criticism, Horn Book Essays 1968-1977, (Boston: The Horn Book, Inc., 1977), p. 53. 116
fanciful or realistic, but in either case close enough to the reader's experience so that he can respond readily. The story should be told in language that delights the ear and fits the subject....
...They generally do not like didacticism, long descriptive passages, lyric poetry, and first-person narratives.32
Huck, in observing demands children make on a writer's style, points out that they tend to:
...want action in their stories and prefer a style that has movement rather than too much description or introspection. Children also demand conversation in their stories....
...They dislike a story that is too senti mental; and they see through the disguise of the too moralistic tales of the past. Adults respond to the cute, the clever, the slyly written, and the sarcastic; children do not.33
While these characteristics relate to fiction, many apply to non- fictional/informational books. A number of them would also be demanded by older, even adult readers.
Criterion number three points out the importance of the fact that the book must exhibit an understanding of the interests, concerns, thinking, and feelings of the audience to whom it is addressed, a criterion clearly related to this one. A younger reader is particular ly aware of the attitudes which an author holds both with regard to a book's subject matter as well as to him as reader. About the latter,
C.S. Lewis cautions that authors:
^Early, p. 163.
"^Huck, p. 13. 117
...must meet children as equals in that area of nature where we are their equals....The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized; we talk to him as man to m a n . 34
He also cautions against that "worst attitude of all" which is "the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle." Because children are sensi tive to attitude expressed in literature and it is inherently part of the pedagogical situation, one must look at it seriously when evaluating art history/appreciation books.
In writing for the young person at Stages II and III the author should be aware that at these stages children can handle, and in fact defhand, something more definite in the way of techniques, information, and understanding in their art training and they "enjoy a definite 36 series of steps to get somewhere." This explicit training which the older child demands and which is usually more academic and didactic in nature has been seen as essential to mature appreciation. It may relate to a variety of art learnings— knowledge of art history, identi fying with one's own art tradition, appreciation of style, under standing the language of form and the forms of an age, etc. Whatever the content may be however an author cannot ignore the preceding and following criteria. Such aspects as a book's form, attitudes reflected, understanding of the reader, and organization are all part
34 C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," in eds., Sheila Egoff, G.T. Stubbs, and L.F. Ashley, Only Connect; Readings on Children's Literature, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 219.
36 Thomas Munro, Art Education, Its Philosophy and Psychology, Selected Essays, (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), p. 154. 118 of it and must be considered along with content.
8. JEt should convince a. reader that what is treated— the content— is worthy of _a book devoted to it.
One obligation of an author to his reader is to provide content which is important and worthy of treatment, a statement that should or must be made, whatever form a particular book may take. The author must inherently, and either explicitly or implicitly, or in a combina tion of both ways, make a case for this statement such that a reader is satisfied with the book both during and after the experience of reading it. A reader must be convinced of a book's value.
9. It should exhibit either implicitly or explicitly or in ji combination of both ways the bases or foundations upon which value judgments within the book are made.
An author must be extremely careful of the value judgments inherent in statements made and characteristics portrayed in art his tory/appreciation books.
It is rare to'find an art history/appreciation book in which value judgments or criticism do not play an important part. The adjectives good, beautiful, lovely, ugly, better, best, right, wrong, and original occur repeatedly in such literature, and often little basis is given for making such judgments, no criteria set up for a reader to know what "good," "bad," etc. mean. Often by book's end and even after having met these terms repeatedly in the course of his reading, one is no closer to establishing their bases, essential to clear definitions. This can be very confusing to a young reader 119 trying to look for some foundation upon which to base his own critical growth.
It is true that value judgments in the arts are often very personal, but in some way an author owes it to a young reader to make this known. So often however he is made to feel that he must come to espouse some "star system" which an author or general opinion has established. There are even books where paintings like da Vinci's
"Mona Lisa," "Whistler's Mother," or Wyeth's "Christina's World" are set up as the "Ultimate" in painterly perfection. Words such as
"genius," "famous," and "timeless" are often tossed out to enhance a work's sacred status and clichds and stereotypes of art and artists are put forth repeatedly. These practices are unfortunately not atypical indicating to this writer the lack of sufficient background of many authors of art history/appreciation books. They themselves have not reached what this author has set up here as characteristics of mature appreciators.
Another practice not uncommon in art history/appreciation books is for the author to compare works of one artist to those of another, often from different periods, and establishing a hierarchy of value.
Sometimes different works of one artist are compared as to their rela tive value. Such comparisons are often made without understanding the periods from which the art comes or the period and purpose of an indi vidual artist. It is even possible for a careful reader to find inconsistencies in an author's thinking. Comparisons of the types mentioned have questionable validity, but if an author does have some criteria upon which they are made or some reason for making them, he 120
should make it known to the reader.
This author feels that it is imperative for an author or prospec
tive author of art history/appreciation books to have a good grounding
in the nature of art criticism. It is the best way to become aware of value judgments one makes both consciously and unconsciously.
Value judgments are inherent in all books, but because of the very nature of art history/appreciation, they seem to be more common than in many other kinds of children's literature.
10. It should convey values appropriate to establishing and main taining respect for art, artists, guality in art, the creative process, art learning, and the aesthetic experience.
It seems important to the purpose of this dissertation that this be established as one criterion on which an art history/apprecia tion book should be judged. Despite an author's personal biases and philosophy in respect to how these terms are defined, it seems incum bent on a writer of art history/appreciation books that it be made clear to the reader that the author holds great respect for what these terms embody and for the potential art holds for man in enriching his life. A writer must be careful that, for example, such terms as temperamental, eccentric, and non-conformist often applied to artists does not color the value held for and the contribution made by the artist in the history of mankind.
11. rt should be organized in all aspects— content. visual material, choice of paper size and type, letter type, reproductions, binding, and colors, and relationship among these parts— so as to be attractive, readable, and interesting to the intended audience. 121
Overall appearance of a book is often a very important basis on which it is picked by a young reader, and one which helps to sustain his interest. All parts of the book contribute to appearance and an author in organizing his material must not lose consciousness of any part and must work at the relationship between them so as to get the whole, "the book," which satisfies not only himself but will be of interest to his intended audience.
Clarity of approach and the author's intent should be apparent to the reader as well as the author. If the author diverges from his main topic, such departures should in some way relate to and/or enhance it. If he is to provide anecdotes or other forms of relief from the intensity of concentration often demanded in some books, particularly informational books, they should be well integrated into the presentation. A seemingly disconnected book is very disconcerting to a reader and to a young reader especially, who may not easily grasp the rationale behind such diversions if it is not made clear. Because an author of an art history/appreciation book has so rich and broad an area from which to choose his material, he can easily lose the main thread, idea, or concept which is essential to hold the book together. If a number of themes or ideas are treated they should logically proceed from or grow out of earlier ones, and the reader should be able to understand this. Throughout his preparation and organization for a book, "unity" should be uppermost in the author's mind.
Relationship of visual and verbal material should also be well thought out in terms of both content or idea and the physical or 122 design aspects of the book. Visual material, text, descriptions, cap tions, titles, and other information must relate to one another clearly and should be readable and pertinent to the author's goals.
Descriptions and interpretations of works of art which are not repro duced, which are reproduced on another page, or which are too small or too poor in reproductive quality are very disturbing to readers of all ages.
Many art history/appreciation books even those for younger readers are by design encyclopedic or reference-type in nature and are not meant to be read through at one sitting. Some are the coffee table or browsing variety and invite limited perusal, study of a defined area, or just picking up and looking at "as the spirit moves."
Such experiences can be extremely valuable for visual art development and should be encouraged; but books designed for these uses must be evaluated with them in mind and not by standards meant to apply to books to be read at a single sitting.
Careful selection and elimination are two important dimensions in organization of any book. Careful trimming is essential to organi zation and an author's skill in this regard is obvious to a critic who knows the field and is able to note which material was chosen and which eliminated. Although a reader with limited background may be unable to detect fine points in the selection process which has taken place, as he reads he does respond to the choices made. Writing for the younger reader demands a simpler and broader approach in many areas, but this calls for no less of an author's ingenuity and flexibility within the range he can work. Careful selection is a key 123
to the process— selection of content, language to be used, visual
material, and the number of other parts of the book.
12. rt should meet the requirements of readability for the audience to whom it is addressed.
Readability is an all-encompassing criterion and involves many
aspects which have already been treated in this listing. Here aspects which have not been looked at will be examined.
Frank Smith maintains that there must be a balance between visual information, that which is received through the eyes, the print and visual material, and non-visual information, knowledge behind the eyes— knowledge of language, subject matter, and how to read. If there is not a proper balance, and a reader must pay attention to 37 every word, "he is put into a condition of anxiety."
Whether this hypothesis is correct (the division it creates is certainly open to challenge particularly by Arnheim who maintains that non-visual information is visual in aspect), what Smith's theory does call attention to is the whole question of the experiences of readers as they relate to both form and content of a book. Signifi cant differences in reading ability as well as in experience of young people covered within this dissertation is obvious. The difficulty of the words used, word length, sentence construction and length, number and types of clauses, grammatical complexities, variations in style and tone, figurative language or the lack of it, literary allusions, use of metaphor, use of symbolism, types of characterization,
■^F. Smith, pp. 5-7 and 178-179. 124
use of flashbacks, number and complexity of the various threads, plots and subplots, points of view, use of abstraction, use of tech
nical language, a book's weight and size, its beginning, and the
amount and type of introspection are some of many factors which
affect a book's readability and any evaluation of a book should con
sider them.
Rare is the art history/appreciation book which does not con
cern itself either implicitly or explicitly with the task of helping
a reader to grasp certain abstract ideas, principles, or concepts.
James Steel Smith, in addressing the issue of abstraction, observes that in order for one to understand history he must have grasped a concept of continuity in human events. A child for whom history is
just a series of unrelated events is less likely to understand and become interested in human events beyond his own small sphere.®®
We know from studies in child psychology that the more abstract concepts must wait to be understood, usually until the child reaches the stage of formal operations. Those concepts which in some way relate to concrete phenomena can be grasped earlier. In a field such as art where there are concepts and ideas dependent on concrete as well as on the abstract, an author must carefully select which are to be covered with which age group. How they are to be handled also demands considerable thought.
One characteristic to look for in a book in this regard is whether the concept is dealt with in a manner that makes for clarity
James Steel Smith, A Critical Approach to Children's Litera ture, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967), pp. 278-279. 125
and understanding. Are a sufficient number of examples given to effect the needed grasp or does the book suffer from the all-too-common dilemma in art history/appreciation books of the "one example syndrome?"
Are the examples carefully chosen? Important concepts such as ideali zation, stylization, and conventionalization are difficult to grasp without carefully worded explanations and a number of examples.
Another important consideration in evaluating an art history/ appreciation book as it relates to readability is to look at the types of experience(s) described, interpreted, and illustrated to see if it
(they) are within the range of understanding of the group to whom the book is addressed. Children's range of experience, their theory of the world, is more limited, less built up, and therefore the circle of reference treated in a book must be narrower in order to hold their interest and be understandable. An author must often explain more to children, but too much explanation makes a book difficult for a child to read. He will weary of it very quickly. This is not to say that presenting adult matters, situations, and points of view should be eliminated, or that it can be. A child lives with adults and is often capable of grasping or at least getting a "sense" of adult motivation, interests, perspectives, and situations and the book can be one vehicle toward this end. The question again is what kind, how, when, and to what degree it should be done. Readability can be affected by an author's choice in this matter. A child's experiences as well as interests in addition to being more limited are also different in kind, and an author must consider this in selec tion of his material. 126
Another ingredient affecting readability is the structural com plexity of the book. Younger readers need a less complex combination
of character, plot, and theme. In addition they cannot be expected to
manipulate as many elements at once. Too many ideas, concepts, or
themes woven into the structure of an art history/appreciation book will affect the degree of readability. Also characterizations of artists' personality, motivation, and comments on their personal history should be kept broad and simple. Not only are young people
less able to understand many of the complexities that make up adult experience, they also tire of encyclopedic lists of facts on artists' lives. This does not mean that a child cannot grasp a sense of an artist's personality, interests, and motivation. As has been men tioned earlier, the child and artist have much in common. It is a question of kind and degree.
13. rt should, whether non-fictional/informational or fictional in form, exhibit evidence of sound research and scholarship. This should be accurate and up-to-date.
Because art history/appreciation books cover a wide variety of types of literature including various types of fiction where the author is permitted to elaborate, make up, dramatize, and personalize, this criterion must be considered very carefully when evaluating such books. Fictionalized accounts of artist' lives and periods in man's history are often the vehicles by which a young reader comes to know intimately what it feels like to create, to experience the exhilera- tion or satisfaction of the artistic process, to sense the struggles, and to have lived in another time. Literary art in this case serves 127
the appreciation of visual art. Even in the fictionalized form how
ever there is the possibility of distortion, false impression, and
# creating the unbelievable, stereotyping characters, making them so
wooden even a young reader is unconvinced. The story may also seem
contrived, unbelievable, with action not proceeding from or developing
out of convincing situations and characterizations. An artist's life,
like any biography, can be made interesting or dull depending on the
author's literary skill, knowledge of his subject, and his ability to
communicate with his audience. The same is true of historical fiction.
The requirements for an authentic biography or history do not
allow an author the degree of freedom which fictionalized accounts permit. Not only must the requirements for readability and interest and the other,, cited criteria be met, but the work must be accurate and
grounded in an author's thorough research into the period(s), artist's(s) lives, etc. Generalizations should be supported by facts and essential and significant information included. This is a very demanding requirement realizing the complexity of the field, but it is an essential one. Unfortunately, all too often authors are tenpted to slacken up in the area of sound and thorough art scholarship when it comes to children's books. Young readers, without art history and art biographical background, are unlikely to discover errors and art scholars very rarely review and criticize children's literature in the area. It seems incumbent upon those involved in the selection process in art history/appreciation that they request the services of those with a command of the subject matter and a knowledge of the process of development in art appreciation when the requirements of a 128 thorough critical review are to be met.
14. rt should exhibit careful selection and use of all visual material.
It has been stated that:
Children's reading is part looking. Their books are visual art as well as verbal art....
...children's books should be thoroughly grounded in the pictured, as well as in the told, story and poem. There are good reasons for this.
Justifying "visual representation" in children's books, James Steel
Smith speaks of it as an invaluable reinforcer of the situation and the object, and a "significant and inescapable" part of a child's learning through the elementary grades. He also mentions the added appeal "aesthetically satisfying" pictures give a book, making chil dren more likely to read it.40
Because of the scope of the books classified here under art history/appreciation, a great variety of types of visual material are used and in a variety of combinations. There are reproductions of paintings, sculpture, architecture, and other art and craft forms in total as well as in detail or part. There are illustrations, charts, graphs, time-lines, diagrams, and line drawings which are used to clarify, support, complement, or supplement ideas put forth in the verbal text. A number by themselves are meant to stand for ideas, concepts, or themes. Whatever the type or types used, there must be
39J. Smith, p. 305. 40 Ibid.. pp. 305-306. 129 evidence that they were carefully chosen with respect to the book's theme and content and the age and interests of the reader. They must relate appropriately to the verbal in both content and layout and whether in black and white or in color, they must be well reproduced without blur or lack of definition. The size must be such that the content can be seen in as many parts as possible. Large works of art with a number of figures and other elements are often unsatis factory if reproduced in too small a size.
In assessing how well visual material works in an art history/ appreciation book in respect to content, audience, the verbal, and the design, it would help to ask a number of questions:
1. How representative of the theme, age, artist's total
corpus or other content is it? Could some visual material
have been added or left out? Could the selection have
been better? more objective?
2. Would visual material reproduced in different size(s)
have enhanced the impact and goals of the book? Should
more details have been shown? fewer? more whole work?
Should visual material have been used to show different
angles? inside? outside? Should a detail have been shown
without a reproduction of the whole?
3. Should there have been more or less visual material used?
Could it have been better placed in terms of the whole?
the individual pages? Was there enough space around it to
allow for maximum impact, invitation to look in an uncrowded
atmosphere, and yet relate to the verbal in an easy and 130
meaningful way?
4. How is the quality of printing reproduction? Is the visual
material well reproduced and the quality consistent? If
black and white reproductions are used, how are the values
and their relationships rendered? If color, how well do
the colors resemble those of the original? Would the
material have been more effective if reproduced in black
and white? in color?
5. What liberties has the book's designer taken with the repro
duced art work? Has he shown, for example, a Greek black-
figure vase in dark tan or a Roman head in purple? How does
this alter one's appreciation of and response to the work?
Is this practice valid in this particular instance or does
it in some way give an untrue idea or picture of the work?
6. Is the illustrator of a book dealing with a people or cul
ture correct as to the styles and types of dress, architec
ture, artifacts, etc. depicted? Has the illustrator done
the necessary research essential to capturing a sense of 41 the people?
41 Ray Mickinock of the 0jibway Indian nation is justifiably appalled by illustrator Ezra Jack Keats' treatment of the Indians in Tillie S. Pines The Indians Knew for "spoiling a reasonably well done work by mixing hair styles of the Eastern tribes with the tipis of the West, the pottery of the Southwestern tribes with the travoix of the North." Ray Mickinock, "The Plight of the Native American," in ed., Lillian Gerhardt, Issues in Children's Book Selection, (New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1973), pp. 103-109. CHAPTER V
AN EVALUATION OF SELECTED ART HISTORY/
APPRECIATION BOOKS FOR THE YOUNGER READER
In this chapter this writer will look at books from all four
of the categories set up in Chapter IV (pp. 90-91), and discuss
various aspects of the types which anyone involved in the selection of
art history/appreciation books for the younger reader should be aware.
The evaluated books will be considered with regard to the fourteen
criteria set up in Chapter IV, but because a thorough analysis of each book with respect to each criterion would make this dissertation too lengthy, this author has chosen to focus on a more thorough analy sis of selected criteria only, ones which seem especially relevant to a particular book(s). Each of the fourteen is discussed in relation to at least one book.
Selection of the books was made on a variety of bases:
(1) for a comparison of different modes or approaches to the
same subject matter and the relative effectiveness of these
methods.
(2) to look at books designed both for younger and older readers
and those in various stages of child as well as art apprecia
tion development.
131 132
(3) to compare more and less effective ways of dealing with
the same subject matter in a wide variety of areas: book
design, use of visual material, use of language, organiza
tion of the material, and consideration of audience among
others.
All of the books have been published or reprinted within the last twenty-five years, most are readily available at schools and libraries, many are on recommended book lists published by recognized organizations, and more than half are still in print.
I. GENERAL ART APPRECIATION BOOKS
These are general "how to see" books which treat the language of art, an art form(s), design, and/or the process of experiencing or under standing works of art.
There are many books in this category. Some are very limited in scope treating only one art concept or element. Others are more ambitious and deal with a number of them. Many would be classified as "concept books," those which take a visual or art element or con cept and through different examples and comparisons attempt to increase the reader's understanding of it. Generally they are designed for the preschool through elementary school-age child who is learning to name, relate, and categorize visual phenomena or elements such as line, texture, shape, and color. Many have no or very limited text and much visual material. Sometimes concept books are used by art teachers as late as the high school years because they 133
help one to become aware of the visual world in fresh or new ways, ways in which the artist sees but in which most laymen have either
forgotten or about which they have not thought.
Another type of general art appreciation book takes different works from the history of art and discusses and compares them in dif
ferent ways: the different approaches artists take, the variety of emphases works exhibit, the different interpretations and responses a work may elicit, and for one or many other characteristics. Most of these are designed for upper elementary through high school age.
Many limit themselves to a certain form, such as painting, sculpture, or architecture and in the process of helping a reader comprehend aesthetically, include important art historical and/or biographical information.
The evaluations which follow look at books of these two types, the concept book and the book examining works of art from one or a number of perspectives.
A. A CRITICAL EVALUATION O F:
1. Is it red? Is it yellow? Is it blue? by Tana Hoban. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1978, 32 pp.
2. Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1961, 60 pp.
3. Shapes and Things by Tana Hoban. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1970, 36 pp.
4. Do You See What I See? Written and illustrated by Helen Borton. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959, 48 pp.
5. Color and Value by Joseph A. Gatto. Worcester, Mass.: Davis Publications, 1974, 80 pp. These are five books which aim to make a reader more aware of one or more of the visual or art elements: line, shape, color, value, texture, and space. Many of those involved in education in art feel that an awareness of these elements as well as how they work together both in the visual arts and in the world in general is the foundation upon which art appreciation is built. There is disagreement however over whether these terms and others which are part of the specialized vocabulary of the visual arts should be introduced as early as Stage I, the age to which, except for the Gatto book, these books generally address themselves, and whether the elements should be isolated for treatment as is the case in these books. This writer feels that it depends on how it is done, how the author addresses the elements, and how he relates them to the child's experiences. These five books have been chosen for evaluation because they exhibit different methods of approach.
Is it red? Is it yellow? Is it blue? is a book about color using the author's own color photographs but no text. The objects and scenes shown will be familiar to many children, although those from rural areas may find some city scenes unfamiliar and needing explana tion. Most were obviously taken in New York City and reflect perspec tives of a city dweller. Unfortunately because of this unfamiliarity, many young children may look at the photographs for content rather than for color. This defeats Ms. Hoban's purpose for she has care fully placed color dots of 3/4” in diameter beneath each photograph for the reader to match with colors in the photographs. An open violin case with scattered coins inside it lying on a sidewalk will 135 probably bring many young children to ask, "What's it doing there?"
"What is it?" rather than looking for the colors. This can however be a book for children to learn about colors— to name them, to see the
same color in different objects, and to realize how rich both man-made and natural colors can be. It is also a book which allows for self as well as teacher-directed training in color discovery, and because some of the objects such as a lollipop, a bubblegum machine, balloons, and a Halloween jack-o'-lantern are clearly of interest to children, there is the possibility that some will become "favorite pictures" as well as examples of color.
Ms. Hoban has chosen to highlight colors in their brightest intensity, those to which studies show young people are naturally attracted. The objects shown in the photographs and those colors pre sented in the dots are all bright, eye-catching, of rich intensity.
Although there are some muted shades in a few of the photographs, they are clearly overwhelmed by the intense hues to which Ms. Hoban gives clear focus. If one were to use this book with young children to create an awareness of color, he would clearly have to supplement it with some treatment of the less intense shades or values of the same color, and how they too can be interesting. This could easily be done in the same book with the treatment of highly intense colors and would make a book more valuable in establishing a comprehensive picture of color. However, what Ms. Hoban has done seems characteristic in introducing children to the concept of color, to take the highest intensity of the primary and sometimes secondary colors and treat them alone. In a world where advertising makes so much use of the 136
Intense hues for their eye-catching appeal some might question the
use of more subtle, less intense values of a color in an introductory book on color concept. This writer does not know of one that includes
them along with the intense hues but feels that, done well, it could be successful in introducing children to "all those other shades or values of a color that aren't so bright but are also nice."
Another approach to creating awareness of color is found in
Mary O'Neill's Hailstones and Halibut Bones, illustrated by Leonard
Weisgard. The book is a series of poems revolving around different
colors: purple, gold, black, brown, blue, gray, white, orange, red, pink, green, and yellow. Each poem taps one's potential for synesthe sia, of making associations across different senses, symbol systems, and modes of experience. Susanne Langer has pointed out that child hood is a great period for synesthesia, and for projecting feelings into outer objects.^- In these poems Ms. O'Neill has done both and invites the reader to share in her feelings and observations with regard to color. Colors are associated with sounds:
The sound of black is "Boom! Boom! Boom!" Echoing in An empty room. (p. 19)
They are associated with smells:
Brown is...... the good smell of The Sunday roast. (p. 23)
They are associated with personal feelings:
Blue is feeling Way down low. (p. 27)
^See Chapter III, pp. 48-49 and p. 63. 137
They are associated with touch:
Gold is... Warm as a muffin On your skin. (p. 15)
And they are the colors of many types of objects in our world:
Orange is a tiger lily, A carrot A feather from A parrot. (p. 39)
This is not the typical type of concept book which in the main
uses an informational format and points out different physical charac teristics of objects, often by comparison. But it may be a book which invites a deeper awareness of a color because it taps the intuitive,
the associational, the powers of synesthesia. For this writer it certainly relates color more completely to its role in art than does that ubiquitous color wheel which is rarely missing from books treating color. The one disadvantage of this type of presentation is that by its very nature it calls the young reader to feel with and see and make associations like Ms. O'Neill's. This adult reader does not share some of the poet's feelings with regard to colors nor do they conjure up the same associations. However one can appreciate them as belonging to the poet for whom the poem is her personal vehicle for expression. A younger reader whose associations with a color may be different has to learn that his feelings with regard to color are as valid as Ms. O'Neill's and that he need not feel he must try to change them to echo hers.
Tana Hoban's book of photograms, Shapes and Things, is a delight ful discovery and concept book. By using a photographic process which 138 eliminates most or all of the gray, the sharp white-black contrasts call attention to an object's shape. Because there are no words accom panying the photograms, the young reader is permitted to freely associate the objects shown, although the author has tended to present things together which are like in kind: kitchen utensils, toys, tools, etc. They are all objects which the nursery school child should recognize, yet the variety in shape is so overwhelming that whether one browses through this book on one's own or with a parent or teacher, he should grasp something of the nature of shape. The pages are so well designed with their rich contrasts that this book should provide room for thought and delight for all ages.
Do You See What I See? written and illustrated by Helen Borten is a book which takes three of the visual elements, line, shape, and color and explores them imaginatively often using the same type of metaphorical language which O'Neill used in Hailstones and Halibut
Bones. The child is encouraged to "feel-into" the elements as they appear in the visual world. Often using the first person "I," some times the second person "you," and at times asking questions of the reader, she personalizes the "experience" of her book. She also uses objects and expressions which delight a child and with which he is familiar:
I see shapes everywhere around m e ~ skinny. ones and fat ones, smooth ones and lumpy ones, squeezed-in ones and pushed-out ones. You have a shape. And so does your dog and your toys and the flowers and butterflies in your garden. You see, everything in the world has a shape! 139
The author's emphasis is on pointing out the rich variety of characteristics and ways lines, shapes, and colors appear.
Colors can be pale and timid as a mouse— or dark and mysterious as the night.
Lines can be as thin and delicate as a spider web, or as heavy and black as the bars of a lion's cage.
By making comparisons in metaphorical language the child can under stand the author encourages him in coming to know the element in a more intimate way. Accompanying illustrations are excellent and can complement and enhance one's understanding of the elements treated in the text.
This is an excellent book for a teacher who prefers to take the formalist approach to the teaching of art— by introducing the visual or art elements and defining their characteristics. It is a book which makes the discovery more fun. It can be used throughout the elementary grades, although a fifth or sixth grader may find the jolly Santa
Claus or frog with his throat blown up a bit "kiddish."
The fifth book of the concept type is Color and Value by Joseph
A. Gatto. It can be used with elementary school age readers, but it seems aimed principally at junior high and high school age. It is a very unsatisfactory book in almost every respect. Poorly conceived and organized, the language is so bad that one is often left very con fused as to the meanings intended. What is one to make of the follow ing statement?
The colors in the rug beater are of low intensity. Intensity also refers to the purity of color. In this way it differs from value which refers to the quality of light which a color reflects. Value is concerned with light whereas intensity is concerned with color. (p. 42) 140
This type of language with its circuitous and unclear explanations is typical of the book. It is also filled with non sequitors and gram matical errors.
The most frustrating aspect of the book however is that less than half of it is in color, yet the author analyzes the black and white photographic reproductions as if they were in color. Imagine the frustration of a reader who finds a statement like:
Look at the meeting of two contrasting colors on the handle of the blow-off valve and the shadow cast by the rod. (p. 18) and sees only black and white. This experience occurs throughout the book, building up a terrible sense of frustration. Undoubtedly costs are high to produce a book with all reproductions in color but one cannot treat color adequately using black and white.
There are always problems when one tries to isolate a single element for discussion and they must be acknowledged by the writer.
Gatto does not do so. Below a poorly reproduced black and white photograph of a stamp with Picasso's "Guernica" Gatto states simply,
"The artist Picasso used color and value to record the events of the
Guernica." That is all he states— nothing about the subject matter or about how color and value are used or that these elements are only part of a composition in which line, texture, shape, and space are also an integral part. There is a need in the literature for a book which isolates color and value to make them clearer to the understanding.
This is not the one. 141
B. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF
Looking at Paintings by Frances Kennet and Terry Measham, Illus trated by Malcolm Livingstone. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1978, 45 pp.
and
Invitation to Art, Opening your Eyes to Art I by Shirley Hochman. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1974, 40 pp.
These books have similar objectives and are addressed to a like
audience— late elementary through high school age. Both concentrate on
"how to see" or look at paintings and after a discussion of a work, recommend a variety of exercises and projects whereby a young person will come to a greater realization of the concepts developed. Both books can be read and used from beginning to end in lesson fashion taking one subject or painting and its accompanying projects at a
time or can be used in part by selecting only a single subject or painting for reading and/or discussion. This gives a teacher who uses the book a certain flexibility. One could also choose to use the book only as a supplement.
The Hochman book purports to advance "a totally new approach to teaching art and art appreciation by getting you to create your own work as you study the masters." (back cover) This is an admirable objective, a synthesis of art activity and art appreciation, for in
the creative process one often comes to realize more fully the prob
lems involved in many aspects of art. Unfortunately here the projects
are just "busy work," not growing out of, except superficially, the discussion of the painting shown. Many are just formulae activities where the reader is asked to copy sketches like those Hochman has 142 drawn. One of the eight paintings discussed by the author is El Greco's
"View of Toledo,” and following the discussion the reader is asked to
"Try This":
Imagine a city on a hill. Think of its build ings, towers, churches, castles, homes, barns, and other buildings. Use a soft-tipped marker to make a sketch of this imaginary place. Start with rectangles of different sizes. Have some of the rectangles overlap. (p. 10)
The author then shows a series of overlapping rectangles which she has drawn, a sure way to encourage a young person to "imagine" in the same way as Hochman has! She follows with two additional steps— the first in which she has added arches, towers, windows, and doors; and the second where she has added the hills. This is not the way to encourage a child to exercise his imagination or to egress himself through art.
It clearly and simply encourages copying, and not even from the El
Greco reproduction, but from Hochman's sketches! Another such irrele vant activity is suggested after treatment of Monet's "Rouen Cathedral,
West Facade, Sunlight." The child is told that:
The cathedral that Monet painted is one of the great examples of Gothic architecture. Notice the pointed arch that leads the eye upward. Sketch several Gothic arches. (p. 15)
Hochman then illustrates with three Gothic arches. In this case the child needs the author's guide because the outline of the arches in
Monet's painting is difficult to see. One wonders why she decided to have the child get involved in Gothic architecture in such a superfi cial way. After he copies Hochman's "formula" arches, which will take a few minutes at the most, what then? These projects with ready made solutions have very questionable value in learning to appreciate 143 art, a goal which Hochman has set for herself but does little to advance.
It is possible to find books which do incorporate projects that grow out of and relate to the subject being treated. This type of activity can extend a reader's awareness of an art idea or concept, contributing to art appreciation in the sense proposed in this dis sertation. A book which does this well is Kennet and Measham's
Looking at Paintings. Originally published in England, the book takes fourteen paintings, as opposed to eight which Hochman uses, and explores them in different ways. The selection has been carefully made because the authors show details from paintings treated earlier in the book to compare with the one presently being discussed. This method is very effective because the reader becomes better acquainted with a painting when he sees it from different perspectives. Hochman also incorporates comparisons in her book, but much less effectively.
One is told to turn back or forward to compare paintings, but it is never possible to see them side-by-side because of the way the pages are arranged. Reproducing the whole or details from the whole on the same two-page spread where the child is expected to make the com parison, the method used by Kennet and Measham, is much more effective.
The activities in Looking at Paintings which include art making, although not exclusively, clearly relate to the work being treated and focus on further ejqploration of it. One asks the reader to look for and count the different patterns in the pattern-rich fifteenth century "Annunication with Saint Emidius" by Crivelli. Another focuses on portraiture in this case Titian's "Portrait of a Man in Blue" and 144
how the clothes a sitter is wearing affect the work. The young
reader is asked to:
Cut a hole in a sheet of paper big enough to put the picture of the person's (Titian's male) face underneath. Then draw a body wearing jeans and a T-shirt. (p. 25)
This type of activity while being game-like in nature clearly has an
art appreciation goal in mind. Clothing a sixteenth century Titian
in late twentieth century clothes will make one realize that clothes
can be an important part of portraiture, that the type of clothes
clearly reflect the time, and that styles change.
There are a number of other qualities which make this book
superior to that of Hochman. It describes and gives examples of six
different ways a two-dimensiona.1 artist creates a sense of real space
in his work. In the Hochman book a short four-page introduction is
devoted to a cursory treatment of all the visual elements and under
"Space" only linear perspective is treated. That is done very super
ficially. The student is asked to "draw a line and decide where the
vanishing point will be" (p. 6). Never is "vanishing point" defined.
Looking at Paintings also makes continual reference to the actual size
of a painting. In addition to the dimensions clearly marked below a
reproduction, the authors give the reader other points of reference:
The figures in the painting are the same as real people. (p. 12)
'Guernica' is a huge picture— bigger than the wall of an ordinary living room. (p. 8)
There is also a two-page spread where six of the previously discussed paintings are shown in relative size. Illustrations of children 145 looking at them are also in relative size. These methods help a reader overcome some of the disadvantages of book reproduction size.
The Kennet and Measham book also attenpts to increase the reader's art-related vocabulary. New words are italicized, clear explanations are given, and even activities suggested which would help the reader understand what is meant. This is the case with perspective, fore ground, middleground, and background (p. 4). Hochman, on the other hand, presumes much of the reader:
Do you think the painting is realistic? Or do you think Renoir has made a picture of an ideal? (p. 16)
The concepts "real" and "ideal" are very often used in art literature for the older reader and even then there is some explanation given.
They can be difficult concepts to grasp. Few children of the age to which this book is addressed understand what they mean. She also refers to "childlike simplicity" (p. 20), a concept young people would also find puzzling.
Looking at Paintings is an excellent book with a good combination of discussion of the feelings expressed in art works, of the artist's background and interests, of a painting's style, technique, content and, by comparison, of different ways of showing the same subject.
The authors also realize the relative importance of the experience
"of" and the experience "about." In one statement whose significance perhaps only the older readers would grasp they state:
Both Monet's and Huijsum's paintings are about nature. But each artist makes us see and feel something different. .. All good paintings affect us in this way. They are a bit like music— we can sense what is going on without having to think it out. (p. 21) 146
There is no question that this book better meets the criteria estab
lished in Chapter IV than does the Hochman book.
II. ART HISTORY BOOKS
These are books which treat art form and content in or from an historical perspective.
One of the requirements of mature art appreciation is a good
sense of the history of art. This includes some understanding of the many factors which have shaped it and some grasp of the differences in the styles, concepts, content, and media used at various times.
It also includes an awareness of the sources of patronage and the role of the artist in different periods and in various cultures.
Obviously these understandings take many years to achieve to any degree, and in fact one can continue to learn indefinitely in the field of art history for the subject covers many thousands of years and many cultures. Basic to a motivation in this direction is an interest in, concern for, and even reverence for the art achievements of the past. But as has been observed earlier, this is not possible for the young child. His life has been too short and he is too busy living in the present to revere the past, even that of his own child hood. In childhood time is a continuous present and the idea of time as a progression, as continuity, comes only later as he begins to grow out of the egocentricism which is characteristic of the young child.
Development and realization of memory are important to the distance necessary to see events, both personal and historical, as part of a past in which he too may have participated, and to which he too is 147
joined as part of the continuing presence of mankind on the planet.
This "perception" of a past comes gradually and books can play an
important part in bringing it about.
Penelope Lively sees one way of developing this faculty in the
child is by making him aware of "Place":
We have to set the child down in a tangible landscape and say, "You are here...now... today, but here also have been other people. Just think about that." And children will, being— on the whole— obliging creatures.2
A sense of place as well as time is inherent in the historical novel
and authors like Lively, Olivia Coolidge, and Rosemary Sutcliff among
many others who write historical fiction for children know their
importance in creating an "experience" into which the child can enter
imaginatively. Through many such experiences the child gains and
develops historical perspective, exploring vast territories of space
and time.
The value of the historical novel as a means whereby a reader
can share in man's past, his achievements, his struggles, his humanity,
and his inhumanity has long been lauded. It is one way to learn "the
language of an age":
Past periods are like foreign countries: regions inhabited by men of like passions to our own, but with different customs and codes of behavior. If we do not know these we shall misunderstand their actions and mis apprehend their motives.^
2 Penelope Lively, "Children and Memory," in ed., Paul Heins, Crosscurrents of Criticism, Horn Book Essays, 1968-1977, (Boston: The Horn Book Inc., 1977), p. 228. 3 Cecil, p. 24. 148
One comes to learn the "language of an age" not only through the his torical novel and literature but through all the arts including the visual arts. One also learns it through a study of the period's history, politics, religion, philosophy, and all other areas of human thought and activity.
There are a number of types of books which attempt either implicitly or explicitly to effect an understanding of man's history of achievement in the visual arts. An historical novel if written by an author who is aware of the arts of the age about which he or she is writing and the role of artists in that age can weave these under standings into the thread of the novel. Esther Forbes has done this in Johnny Tremain. The value of an historical novel which does acknow ledge the arts in one way or another is that the young reader will see them as part of a larger picture, integral rather than separated from the life of a time. Unfortunately the task of an historical novelist is very demanding, having to be both a good novelist and good historian, and the potential material which he can tap is so vast that except in rare cases will an author pay much attention to the visual art forms and their role in the language of the age.
Also historical novels for the young reader cannot be too long and much must be cut out in the selection process. Of course many writers do not feel as comfortable with or knowledgeable of the visual arts and do not use them for this reason. However a brief reference to a hanging portrait or a description of a costume or a building will help establish a sense of the role of the visual arts in the age treated. One need not use long descriptions which tire many 149 young people. Crafted in a brief statement a sense of place as well as the role of the visual arts in the language of the age can be established. On the first page of Johnny Tremain, Forbes observes:
Boston slowly opened its eyes, stretched and woke. The sun struck in horizontally from the east, flashing upon weathervanes— brass cocks and arrows, here a glass-eyed Indian, there a copper grasshopper— and the bells in the steeples cling-clanged, telling the people it was time to be up and about.^
Here Forbes has established for the reader a sense of place, physical place, by inventoring several art forms which one living in eighteenth century Boston would have seen every day. She does this in a context which makes art a part of an integrated picture of the life of the time. Too often art historical non-fiction which treats the visual arts alone seems to create the impression that they are something apart from the time, something added, not integral to the language of a period. It need not, but in this sense the historical novel may have an advantage over the more typical informational art history book.
There is another type of historical fiction which takes the art of a time or place as its matrix and tries to weave an historical narrative around it. This is the case in Norman Bate's When the Cave
Men Painted, a tale which he has written and illustrated himself based on historical evidence, hypotheses, and unfortunately far-fetched fantasy which is invented purely to make an exciting story rather than to serve the truth. A more complete evaluation of this book is found
^Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1943), p. 1. 150 below, but because those who write about the past whether infictional ornon-fictional form have certain obligations to that past as well as to the reader, it is important to look at them.
On the subject of writing historical novels, Jill Paton Walsh has said:
...you have to be as good at history as any historian. You have to do the work; you have to have the right attitude; you have to have a historian's allegiance to history. You have to want to write what did happen and what it felt like and not what would have been romantic had it happened, or what you wish it had been like, or what would make a much better story if only it had been true. You have to believe, I think, that what really happened is bound to make the best story of all.®
The restraints to which Walsh refers as well as the liberties which the form does allow are of course not easy to set down in exact for mulae. The judgment lies with the author. Burton makes clear her feelings in this regard.
Sooner or later, the writer of historical fic tion has to make quite clear to himself where history ends and where fiction may legitimately begin. If the books are to appear on the shelves of a school library, I think it is his duty to indicate in an introduction where the dividing line comes.®
Unfortunately in the case of historical fiction for children the knowledge that children demand good stories can and has caused the
Sjill Paton Walsh, "History is Fiction," in Crosscurrents of Criticism, Horn Book Essays, 1968-1977, p. 224. g Hester Burton, "The Writing of Historical Novels," in ed., Virginia Haviland, Children and Literature, Views and Reviews, (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1973), p. 299. 151
balance to tip, as it did in the aforementioned Bate book, in a sacri
fice to the exciting story. Any critical evaluation has to make note
of this for not to means to encourage children to come to know as the
language of the age that which is untrue or based on hypothetical
grounds.
On the other hand, it must be noted that all history whether it
appears in fictional, non-fictional, as well as oral or visual form,
is interpretive. It is:
... a construct of the mind. The evidence has been selected, and patterned, and arranged; it has been masterminded into significance by the writer of the history book....
Both novelist and historian— merely in re counting a sequence of events— reveal the orien tation of their most profound beliefs.^
This fact is brilliantly brought out in a series of articles by Frances Fitzgerald on American history textbooks used in this country since the nineteenth century.8 Noting that "each historian in some degree creates the world anew and that all history is in some degree contemporary history," she paints a rather discouraging picture of the big basic American history textbooks in this country:
...a kind of lowest common denominator of American tastes...a compromise, an America sculpted and sanded down by the pressures of diverse constituents and interest groups... they differ from one another not much more than one year's crop of Detroit sedans....
^Walsh, p. 225. g Frances Fitzgerald, "Onward and Upward with the Arts, Rewriting American History," three-part series in The New Yorker. Part I, Feb ruary 26, 1979, pp. 41-77; Part II, March 5, 1979, pp. 40-91; and Part III, March 12, 1979, pp. 48-106. 152
...essentially nationalistic histories... written not to explore but to instruct— to tell children what their elders want them to know about their country. This information is not necessarily what anyone considers the truth of things. Like time capsules, the texts contain the truths selected for posterity.
The surprise is how quickly and how thoroughly these truths for posterity have changed...These apparently solid, authoritative tomes are in fact the most nervous of objects, constantly changing in style as well as in political content.
These observations are clearly relevant to art history books also, be they fictional or non-fictional in form. Even the fact that there are considerably more available for the younger reader today than there were twenty years ago reflects changes in values which book publishers see in society at large as well as in the educational establishment. These changes reflect both a greater interest in the arts and the fact that the current generation of children, raised on television, demand more visual material in their books. The current explosion in picture books some see as an offspring of this demand for more visual material and fewer words. Selma Lanes lamentsthe trend:
The artwork of today's illustrator usually bears far more weight than the words illus trated. And this is where a large portion of picture-book production stands today: a veritable Golden Age for the artist has made the genre increasingly alien territory for a purveyor of words of any weight. Where once words contained nuance and shading, today it is more likely to be the illustrations that reward careful study...Text now serves simply as captions for oversize, overplentiful and often overpowering illustration. It is entirely
9Ibid., February 26, 1979, p. 65. 153
possible that a generation of children is grow ing up undeniably quick of eye but impatient and even insensitive to the sounds and meanings of words.
Although this writer would challenge Mrs. Lanes on the point
that the insensitivity she predicts will and need result because of
attention paid to the visual, the ready availability of visual
material in books for children today should be noted. Unfortunately
her naivete with respect to how sophistication in art occurs is made
clear as she observes that because of such a proliferation of picture books this surely "must result in future adults with informed and
discriminating visual tastes.""^ The road as has been pointed out in
this dissertation is much more difficult than simply being brought
up on picture books.
In addition to picture books which can and often do have
examples from art history reproduced in whole or in part as well as changed and adapted to fit the author's and/or illustrator's purpose, there is an ever-growing presence of examples of objects from the history of art in school textbooks, particularly history textbooks.
Although it can be argued that American history textbooks do not strictly belong to the category "art history books" being considered here, this author feels that some mention of them within the context of this section will help the reader see that there has been a change in the way art belongs to and is interpreted within the larger
■^Selma G. Lanes, Down the Rabbit Hole, Adventures and Mis adventures in the Realm of Children's Literature. (New York: Atheneum, 1976), pp. 54 and 56.
^ Ib i d . , p. 63. 154 historical context. This growing "interpretation" of history to include the arts is a phenomenon both hailed and lamented. It is hailed because some see it as long overdue— a welcome change from history which featured only political, economic, religious, and social factors made more dull because they were associated with a group of facts to be memorized for the next test. It is lamented because the trend toward the visual may have gone too far:
Whereas in the nineteen-fifties the texts were childish in the sense that they were naive and clumsy, they are now childish in the sense that they are polymorphorous-perverse. American history is not dull any longer; it is a sensuous experience.^
FitzGerald describes this change as she contrasts American his tory textbooks of the fifties with those today, a very revealing account of vfoat has happened in the world of textbook publication.
Today's young person when he studies American history is more likely to see the arts as part of that history, growing out of and responding to other historical factors, social, political, economic, religious, and personal. As was pointed out with historical fiction, this pic ture of the arts as integral to an age and participating in the lang uage of the age, is very important in understanding the nature of art.
FitzGerald's account bears quoting:
The schoolbooks of the fifties showed some effort in the matter of design: they had maps, charts, cartoons, photographs, and an occasional four-color picture to break up the columns of print. But beside the current texts they look as naive as Soviet fashion magazines. The print in the fifties books is heavy and far too black,
•^FitzGerald, February 26, 1979, p. 46. 155
the colors muddy. The photographs are conven tional news shots— portraits of Presidents in three-quarters profile, posed 'action' shots of soldiers. The other illustrations tend to be Socialist-realist-style drawings (there are a lot of hefty farmers with hoes in the Colonial- period chapters) or incredibly vulgar made-for- children paintings of patriotic events. One painting shows Columbus standing in full court dress on a beach in the New World from a perspec tive that could have belonged only to the Arawaks. By contrast, the current texts are paragons of sophisticated modern design. They look not like People or Family Circle but, rather, like Archi tectural Digest or Vogue. One of them has an Abstract Expressionist design on its cover, another a Rauschenberg-style collage, a third a reproduc tion of an American primitive painting. Inside, almost all of them have a full-page reproduction of a painting of the New York School— a Jasper Johns flag, say, or "The Boston Massacre," by Larry Rivers. But these reproductions are separated only with difficulty from the over-all design, for the time charts in the books look like Noland stripe paintings, and the distribu tion charts are as punctilious as Albers' squares in their color gradings. The amount of space given to illustrations is far greater than it was in the fifties; in fact, in certain "slow- learner" books the pictures far out-weigh the text in importance. However, the illustrations have a much greater historical value. Instead of made-up paintings or anachronistic sketches, there are cartoons, photographs, and paintings drawn from periods being treated. The chapters on the Colonial period will show, for instance, a ship's carved prow, a Revere bowl, a Copley painting— a whole gallery of Early Americana. The nineteenth century is illustrated with nineteenth-century cartoons and photographs— and the photographs are all of high artistic quality. As for the twentieth century chapters, they are adorned with the contents of a modern-art museum.^
FitzGerald however has reservations about this phenomenon.
Despite "a much greater historical value," she finds some irony in
13Ibid., pp. 45-46. 156
"all the art and high quality design":
The nineteenth-century photographs of child laborers or urban slum apartments are so beautiful that they transcend their subjects. To look at them, or at the Victor Gatto painting of the Triangle shirtwaist-factory fire, is to see not misery or ugliness but an art object. In the modern chapters, the con trast between style and content is just as great: color photographs of junk yards or polluted rivers look as enticing as Gourmet's photographs of food. The book that is per haps the most stark in its description of modern problems illustrates the horrors of nuclear testing with a pretty Ben Shahn pic ture of the Bikini explosion, and the poten tial for global ecological disaster with a color photograph of the planet swirling its mantle of white clouds.
On this point this author would take issue with FitzGerald. The
art form, often used by the artist as social commentary, can make one
realize more fully such phenomena as war and poverty. Young people
particularly look for stories or messages in art work. Careful selec
tion is of great importance. If the authors and designers carefully
choose the works reproduced in the text, it is possible for a reader
to grasp the nature of the turn of the century child labor, war, or
the possibility of nuclear disaster with much greater intensity than
with merely verbal description. It will also be an opportunity for
the reader to know of artists' responses to conditions in the world
in which they live. One cannot disregard the observation that chil
dren brought up on television violence and news photographs depicting war and violence become indifferent to human suffering and the potential
for man-made disasters, but this is a controversial question on which
•^Ibid., p. 46. 157 there is much disagreement.
In addition to historical fiction, picture books mentioned here only briefly, and history texts as sources from which one can come to realize something of the role of art in history, there are those books of non-fiction which more specifically isolate art as the "subject" to be treated. They may of course show how art arises out of a larger historical context composed of a number of other factors, but it is
"art" which is the focus of the book. It is this type of book which this author wishes to address in greater depth and this will be done in the context of an evaluation of six books which treat some phase of art history. An evaluation of a seventh book, the book of histori cal fiction mentioned earlier, Norman Bate's When Cave Men Painted, follows.
A. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF:
The Art of Colonial America by Shirley Glubok, designed by Gerard Nook, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1970, 48 pp.
and
From Early American Paintbrushes, Colony to New Nation by Care11a Alden, New York: Parents' Magazine Press, 1971, 61 pp.
These are children's versions of the adult art survey book limited to one period or country. Glubok has written a series of them covering art areas and periods such as Japan, Mexico, Indian, and ancient Rome all in similar format and size, approximately 10" square and limited to about fifty pages in length. All are profusely illus trated and make rich use of different colors in the design although, except for the book's jacket, no color reproduction is used. Great 158 liberties are taken by the designer with the reproduction of both two and three-dimensional art objects. Parts of paintings and prints are cropped out or lost in the bindings and both two and three-dimensional objects are reproduced in "designer" colors as in The Art of Colonial
America where shades of olive green and copper-tan are adopted by the designer for the color scheme. In other books in the series the color scheme varies.
This author opposes such liberties being allowed a designer on the grounds that they are not only unnecessary, but that they are an adult eration of the truth. Although a black and white and even color repro duction are steps removed from the object itself and often, depending on the quality of reproduction, may distort or create a sense of a work not characteristic of the original, using a copper-tan background for a print which in its original form was white is changing the work where unnecessary, giving it a heavier quality than in the original.
Furthermore in the case here referred to, an early print of the Puri tan minister Reverend Richard Mather, where the designer has substituted a copper-tan background for the original white one, the author Glubok uses the print to exenplify the process of woodcut: "The parts of the design that are to remain white are cut away" (p. 5). A young reader looking at the print however sees no white! Perhaps there should have been greater collaboration between author and designer to avoid the confusion which can occur in a case of this type.
Today's book designers often feel that they can take unlimited liberties with artists' work in designing a book. This author had this experience with her first book, photographs cropped at the whim 159 of a designer destroying the artistic statement and composition of the original. In essence what is done, in such a case, is the destruc tion of another's art to create one's own, one's "book." What is lacking on the part of such a designer is a respect for the integrity of the art object with which he is working, an unfortunate characteris tic of a designer of an art book. In this author's case, after a bitter battle, the cropped parts were restored. In her second book a designer was chosen who respected the original art object. This is an area which needs discussion, and legal boundaries should be set as to the liberties a publisher and his designer can take. Some artists and museums maintain strict quality control over reproduction rights, but this practice is not as widespread as it should be.
In the case of the Alden book, fewer liberties are taken with the art objects with respect to cropping and there are no designer color schemes of the type used in the Glubok book, but the quality of color reproduction is poor. The works reproduced in black and white are much clearer although at times too small to see in a book
9" x 6h" in format. John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence" with forty-eight signers depicted is only 3 7/8" x 2".
Both books are profusely illustrated, the Alden book with fifty-nine works shown on forty-eight pages, the Glubok book with fifty-four on sixty-four pages. The Glubok book however has a much smoother flow of text and visual material than does the Alden book.
Although titled From Early American Paintbrushes, Colony to New
Nation, the Alden book has a number of European works, some whole pages and in color. Also reproduced are architectural exteriors and interiors, craft forms such as a toy, a weathervane, and a cupboard,
nineteenth century works, and even two twentieth century works clearly
postdating the period of the "new nation" and beyond the potential of
a paintbrush. Some of the works are not discussed in the text and
many are discussed on pages without the reproduction. The book has on
the whole a very choppy, disorganized quality which may in part be
due to the fact that it is "based on the production From Yankee Paint
brushes presented in the Art Entertainment series for young people 15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." The author's background which
is indicated on the back cover of the book seems to be in theater
although she is listed as a member of the Metropolitan Museum staff.
Chapter titles give one no further clue as to organization of the
book. The first three are titled: one, "America's First Artists";
two, "The Early Painters"; and three, "The First American Painters."
One wonders what is the difference between them! There is also con
siderable confusion as to definition in the Alden book. On the very
first page when writing of the Pilgrims, the author describes them
as "America's first artists, for each was a master craftsman of his
trade." A reader who had had some knowledge of the difference between
an "artist" and a "craftsman" would rightfully be left puzzled by
this statement. What is an artist? What is a craftsman? Are they
the same? Alden does not shed light on the subject.
At times Alden would appear to want to make her book an American history book, at others an encyclopedic-like list of American painters,
■^Statement from title page, From Early American Paintbrushes, Colony to Nation. 161 at others a book about art subjects and techniques. She does not successfully blend all these aims, but hops from one to another, treating each very simplistically. She spends three very short para graphs "summing up" almost two hundred years of American history, moves on to a short one paragraph superficial comparison of seven teenth and eighteenth century styles, then on to the training of painters in another short paragraph. This "rushing on" to another subject, theme, or painter is a characteristic of the book's style.
She never lingers over a thing. Clearly this is American art history for the jet age! What the young reader will absorb on the trip is questionable. The superficial and encyclopedic quality which plagues many art history books for the younger reader is clearly in evidence here.
The Glubok book fares not much better in this writer's estima tion. Both books would be better used as supplements to an American history unit where the reproduction would help give a visual dimen sion to a young student's idea of an age. Glubok's text is so very tedious and dull reading that this writer could not imagine a child reading it for very long without boredom— one fact after another stated in a string of declarative sentences. There is clarity without change and no excitement at all expressed in what is said, the most dull of all the literary styles found in the books reviewed.
This is an example of Glubok's style:
The most talented artist of colonial America was John Singleton Copley, who began painting in Boston at the age of fourteen. Copley studied engravings of famous European masterpieces. He learned to represent light and shadow and to give 162
the feeling of depth and space in his paint ings. Copley was greatly in demand as a por trait painter. He was able to capture the character of his subject. (p. 25)
When one reaches the end of this book he has accumulated a great many facts, many names of artists, lots of descriptive terminol ogy— a virtual encyclopedia of "data." One hopes that despite the liberties the designer took with the art objects, the young reader will devote his time to the reproductions. Instinctively, because of the dull prose style, he probably will.
Finally it must be noted that although both books purport to present the art of "colonial" America, they limit "colonial" to the
English colonies, with a sprinkling of Dutch. Neither book treats
French and Spanish colonial art history, both very important parts of the American colonial tradition.
B. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF:
Pyramid by David Macaulay, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975, 80 pp.
and
The Pyramids by John Weeks, Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1977. (Original edition, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 52 pp.
These books are both excellent. They are, on the whole, well researched, written, designed, and illustrated. By focusing on pyra midal complex construction, both authors were able to avoid many of the problems incurred when the scope of a book is too broad. The danger of attempting too much is even more obvious in a book for children where there is a very real possibility that one will either 163
overwhelm the reader with too much data or treat the material too
superficially. Macaulay and Weeks have done neither.
The historical background of ancient Egypt that they both pro
vide is, despite its limited nature, clearly stated and sufficient for
their purposes. Macaulay devotes only a page and a half of text to
it at the beginning of the book and immediately proceeds to his main
topic— the construction of the pyramidal complex. Weeks devotes a
ten-page chapter, "Land of the Pyramids" to background material,
briefly describing the land and the people and using a number of black
and white reproductions of tomb paintings and reliefs to illustrate
his points as well as to provide additional information. This writer
did miss some indication as to where the paintings and reliefs were
found and why they were made. This could have been made known easily
in a few sentences. Weeks describes only the construction of the pyramid itself whereas Macaulay describes construction of the total pyramidal complex including the mortuary temples.
The Macaulay book is large in format, 9" x 12", and illustrated
throughout by the author's excellent line drawings which many times
are close to 18" x 12" because the illustration covers the two-page
spread. These spreads are interspersed with single page illustrations,
pages with a series of explanatory drawings and diagrams, and smaller
drawings and plans taking up only a part of a page. There is a well- planned variety in organization of the book's visual and textual
materials. The parts which are more technical and more intellectually
demanding of a reader are interspersed among the larger spreads where
a reader can just revel in the vastness of the Egyptian desert and the 164
colossal nature of the pyramid-building enterprise. Many of the draw
ings are peopled, at times with small figures to indicate their physi
cal relationship to the background; at times they are larger when the
author wishes to focus on individual or small group activity.
Although the text of this book is demanding in that those below upper
elementary age would probably find it too technical, this book can be
browsed and provide a wonderful experience for even a younger child.
The drawings alone ensure a fascinating experience for reader young
and old.
The Weeks book is much smaller, approximately 8 " x 8" making its
visual impact not as overwhelming as that of the Macaulay book. There
is also a variety of visual material well distributed throughout— maps,
diagrams, line drawings, and black and white photographic reproductions.
Unfortunately the latter are not always clearly reproduced, being very
difficult to see. Like the Macaulay book, the illustrations which
themselves tell much of the story of pyramidal construction are excel
lent. Some in fact so closely resemble Macaulay's that one wonders whether he knew the earlier Weeks book, although similar explanatory
drawings of the process of pyramid-building have appeared in art history books published much earlier.
The organization of both books is similar, following logically
along the process of pyramid construction step-by-step. Macaulay
describes an "imaginary" complex "based closely on several of the pyramids and remnants of temples still standing in Egypt" (p. 6).
Weeks' descriptions are based on the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza.
The choice of an "imaginary" pyramidal complex gave Macaulay greater 165
flexibility in drawing on wider research in construction methods,
materials, funerary practices, and religious rites known or hypo
thesized to have taken place at other sites. Both authors have
carefully indicated for the reader the hypothetical nature of much
of the thinking with regard to pyramidal complex construction,
and both indicate the different theories. Weeks states for
example:
Some people think that they did not quarry granite at all when the pyramids were being built and could find all the granite they needed from loose blocks lying on the surface. They say that the copper tools would have been too easily blunted by the very hard granite. Others think that the Egyptians had discovered a special way which has been for gotten of making copper harder. Like many things about ancient Egypt we do not know for certain which is the truth. We can only guess at the most reasonable solution, (p. 26)
Macaulay indicates:
It is generally agreed that earth ramps were used in the construction process but there is a difference of opinion as to where those ramps were constructed in relation to the pyramid. I have included the two most popular theories in the way that I see them most satisfactorily employed. (p. 6 )
Indication of the hypothetical nature of many of the ideas with
regard to early architectural construction and indeed in many other
areas of art is extremely important. In this way a young person can
come to appreciate many of the problems in the field, many of the
unsolved mysteries. His own spirit of inquiry can also be fed by
the open-ended and of course scholarly approach.
Both authors enliven their books in a number of ways, Weeks by
comparing some modern and ancient building methods and professions, 166
Weeks and Macaulay both by describing the mummification process as well as including information as to the everyday life of the people.
Both seem to have anticipated what questions a younger reader would ask and know where many of his interests lie. The reader is never forgotten by either author. Another important characteristic shared by both books is the authors' evident respect for the traditions and accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians. This comes out in many ways throughout the books and it would be rare for any reader to complete them without a similar sense of awe and even reverence.
C. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF;
Made in the Middle Ages, written and illustrated by Christine Price, New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1961, 110 pp.
and
Made in Ancient Egypt by Christine Price, New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1970, 160 pp.
This evaluation was undertaken to compare the different approaches taken by Christine Price in two of her books, both part of the same series. This writer feels that the approach, organization, and style of the earlier book, Made in the Middle Ages, is superior to that of the later book and clearly, because she keeps the younger reader in mind throughout, will speak to him more personally and intimately.
The more recent book is an extended version of the Egyptian section of a college art history textbook, very heavy on names (and ancient
Egyptian names are very difficult for the young person), periods, change in styles, and brief descriptions, an encyclopedia of data of approximately one-hundred and sixty pages in length. It was even 167 overwhelming for this writer who has studied and taught the art of the period for many years. One gets the feeling that after a trip to
Egypt and years of research Ms. Price did not want to leave anything out! After reading both books, this writer wants to tell Ms. Price to return to her earlier style.
Ironically, the middle ages is perhaps more remote to the experience of today's young person than is ancient Egypt because of the Tutankamon exhibit and the perennial fascination with the pyramids.
But the author, both with her own excellent illustrations adapted in the main from medieval works and rendered at times with red or olive- green to contrast with the black and white, creates an interest in the period. She takes the reader along on a journey and right from the beginning has him entering imaginatively into a period and place.
Around the walls of the castles we could see clustered villages where the knights' tenants lived, farming the land, tending sheep and cattle and pasturing hogs in the forest. We would see the towers of churches rising above walled towns with market squares and narrow twisting streets of little shops; and along the coasts there would be busy seaports with ships unloading cargoes of silks and velvets from Italy, wine from France, Russian furs and English broadcloth, ivory from Africa and costly spices from the East.
On the roads between the towns we would see merchants with strings of loaded pack horses, and here and there the glint of sunlight on steel as a company of men-at-arms rode by, the retainers of some great lord. We might even watch an army besieging a castle in one of the many private wars between rival barons, and looking across the countryside of France, we would see burned villages, trampled fields and people left homeless by the Hundred Years' War between France and England. (pp. 10-11) 168
Cornpare this beginning with the straightforward factual approach of the Egyptian book:
For more than four thousand years the Pyramids of Giza have stood at the desert's edge. They rise above the green valley of the Nile like three mountain peaks, pale desert-brown under the hot blue sky of noon, black against the fires of the sunset. The pyramids seem to be a part of the land, solid and lasting as the rock of their foundations. The Sphinx that lies before them is carved from that rock, a powerful image of a lion with the head of a king. (p. 10)
This writer does not want to fault the factual straightforward approach in itself, but only point out the tedious effect one hundred and sixty pages of it may have on the young reader, and even on an older reader.
In this book Price is the schoolteacher pointing out facts about
Egyptian art with a sprinkling of questions. In the earlier book, she is a companion on an engaging and fascinating journey into the middle ages. If an imaginative and lively use of facts, one which creates a sympathetic atmosphere interesting the reader and whetting his appetite to pursue the subject is one of the criteria for good art history/appreciation books, the medieval book is the more successful of these.
Made in the Middle Ages is organized in two parts with subdivi sions: Part I, "Things Made for the Castle," and Part II, "Things
Made for the Church." If one does not want to read the book from cover to cover, he can skip, for example, "tapestries," and go to
"sports and pastimes." Only a few pages are devoted to each topic and they can stand alone, although reading all areas will give one a fuller picture and sense of the period. The carefully selected 169
drawings of such things as knights fighting, coats of arms, a shirt
of mail, sheep shearing, costumes, jewelry, a puppet show, a game of
bob-apple, and Samson and the lion are chosen with a younger reader in
mind, yet do not destroy the sense of the language of the age with
which most children reading this book are sure to go away. The
shorter length and smaller size, 7 3/4" x 6 1/4", as well as more
limited text makes it the type of book which a younger reader would pick up and stay with more easily.
Both books are very well researched and Price's respect for the periods and their achievements is brought out clearly. One only wishes that she had more thoroughly digested her Egyptian material,
got away from it awhile, thought about how a younger reader could relate to Egypt, and then, only after this period of "incubation," started to write. She has done this with the medieval book, but perhaps having been brought up in England helped her in this respect.
D. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF:
When Cave Men Painted, written and illustrated by Norman Bate, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963, 48 pp.
16 This is the book referred to earlier as an example of a type of historical fiction where the art of a time or place is chosen as the matrix around which an author chooses to weave an historical narrative. In this case it has been poorly done, and this writer feels this type of book cannot serve the goal proposed in this dissertation,
^6See above pp. 149-150. 170 except to serve as an example of what an author should not do. For this reason it is treated here.
Bate has taken the art of the cave man as the background of his story. More specifically the narrative is woven around the cave at Lascaux in France which Bate has used and re-created in his own illustrations. The blurb states that Mr. Bate "brings to this extra ordinary picture book years of study in the field of prehistoric art."
This writer does not find evidence of this, or at least the attitudes toward art historical scholarship which one who has studied years in the field should bring to the area. Never does he give any intimation of the hypothetical nature of his account, something which David
Macaulay and John Weeks were careful to make mention of in their introductory sections. Except in a few instances, his hypotheses are not based on any historical evidence. Bate has created his own theories and distorted history in order to make an exciting story.
This writer feels he owes it to his readers to acknowledge the bases on which his account was made so a child will not go away believing this book is based on fact.
When Cave Men Painted is filled with exaggerations in order to make it exciting. The language and illustrations create a "wild" quality. Exclamation marks and short sentences are sprinkled through out the text in order to create a sense of awe and excitement. For example when the young boy meets the "new" animal, the wooly rhino- cerous, supposedly the first human to see it, the author describes the account thus; 171
Suddenly, he stopped. A huge and terrible animal blocked his path. It had two long, sharp horns on the end of its nose- one behind the other. Its skin was heavy and wrinkled and hairy. Its eyes were small and black and unblinking. The boy trembled with fear. He had not seen paintings of this animal in the magic cave. (p. 6)
Language of this type is characteristic in this very far-fetched
account. The author assumes such important data as tribal organiza tion including a type of servitude, a type of painter succession, and the need to change art materials when a "new" animal was depicted on cave walls.
There is a place for fantasy in children's literature and an important place. It is not in a narrative that purports to be based on the life and art of a people who actually lived. Here the canons of historical fiction must be respected.
III. ART BIOGRAPHY
These are books which present some view of an artist's (or artists') work, life, thinking, and/or role in history.
The child's potential to imagine and identify with figures from past and present history at times seems limitless. Through the book, as Britton has observed, he can become spectator to his own past 17 lives, other men's lives, imagined futures, and impossible events.
Because artists' biographies present individuals of recognized stature who often exhibit the qualities of prowess, courage, humanity,
17 Britton, "Response to Literature," p. 111. 172
and wisdom which young people revere, they provide lives which can be
tempting objects for identification.
The value of biography in art appreciation is that it provides
an opportunity for the young person to become intimately acquainted with a particular individual(s), his times and his work— his back
ground, personality, motivations, loves and hates, the social and
economic and cultural context out of which he comes, the difficulties
he overcame, the reception he may or may not have had in his own
time— in other words many of the variety of elements that made him
and his art what it is in the broader picture of man's artistic
achievement. Acquaintance with and understanding of these elements helps build the foundation on which mature appreciation i" based. It also influences one's system of values and forms an important part of
cultural molding. Through art biographies children become acquainted with the cultural past and some of the people who made it what it is.
In this way they gain perspective on their own lives and times as they relate to what has gone before.
For children biography and history are often intermingled and their ideas of history built up from the figures they become acquainted with through literature.
A child approaches the facts of history by involving himself in the lives of people of past ages...It is by sharing their experiences that he moves towards an impersonal apprecia tion of historical issues.
18 Britton, quoted in Introduction, The Cool Web, p. 10. 173
Art biography where works by artists are often reproduced provides an
excellent opportunity for the child to appreciate the relationship between biography and history and the artist's place in that history.
The content as well as the forms of art arise out of his time and often
depict events, people, and concerns of his time. Many authors of art biography are clearly concerned with this relationship.
In addition, children are social beings and like learning about other people including artists. Adolescents, being particularly
self-conscious and curious about their own normality, can often find through biography standards against which to measure themselves. A particularly sensitive or artistic young person may find through art biography a model or individual with which he himself feels a kinship.
In a society where sports rather than the arts receive such priority, acquaintance through literature with artistic personalities may give some young people the motivation and courage to pursue activities in keeping with their own uniqueness rather than in succumbing to peer pressure which finds artistic inclination "sissyish" or "stupid."
Many children may never become acquainted with artists and aesthetic interests except through literature.
Sir Harold Nicolson has outlined three principles which any serious biographer should observe, and although these are incorporated in the criteria outlined in Chapter IV, they bear repeating in this context, and before looking at the four art biographies discussed below. They hold that biography must be:
(1) "history" in the sense that it must be accurate and
depict a person in relation to his times. 174
(2) It must describe an "individual" with all the grada
tions of human character, and not merely present a
type of virtue or vice.
(3) It must be composed as "a branch of literature," in
that it must be written in grammatical English and
with an adequate feeling for style.
In addition he holds that it should be written without extraneous
intent such as a commemorative instinct or didactic purpose, must be
constantly fortified by a fundamental respect and sympathy for and
knowledge of the person treated, must be written so that the person
ality of the author does not intrude markedly upon the personality
he is describing, must be written with some understanding of the rela
tive value of those who influenced the artist's life, and, importantly, must be written so that the imagination and self-assertiveness of the 20 author does not distort the truth.
Although there are varying degrees of liberty allowed dependent on vhether the work is authentic biography, fictionalized biography,
or biographical fiction, in general Nicholson's criteria are good to keep in mind in evaluating art biography for young people. Authentic biography, fictionalized biography, and biographical fiction are three kinds of biography which Huck cites as represented in children’s literature. Authentic biography is well researched and documented with only those statements known to have been made by the subject
■*-9Sir Harold Nicholson in ed., James L. Clifford, Biography as an Art, Selected Criticism 1560-1960, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 197. 20 Ibid., pp. 198-202. 175
included in the conversation. Although written mainly for adults,
this type is increasingly available for children. Fictionalized
biography makes use of the narrative rather than analytical approach,
and although grounded in thorough research gives the author more
freedom in dramatizing the events and personalizing the subject.
Biographical fiction consists entirely of imagined conversation and 21 reconstructed action. Art biography for children falls primarily
in the first two categories, but because many discussions of an
artist's life revolve around paintings or other works of an artist,
there is often not the same sense of continuity that prevails in a
straight biography where there is only text and perhaps a few illus
trations which illustrate the text.
Leon Edel in an essay on writing biography treats what this
author feels is a very important consideration in evaluating art biography. That relates to the psycho-analytic tendency of many
writers in the area. Artistic temperaments and personalities are
often of such fascination that some authors indulge in a game of psychoanalysis that is "frequently misguided and distorted." To
avoid this tendency, Edel encourages an author to examine why he
chose a particular person about whom to write, to know oneself before
trying to know another, and to keep a fine sense of objective inquiry.
He elaborates:
...Before such men— even the most minor— it is necessary to maintain a certain humbleness of spirit; that fine sense of objective inquiry,
^ H u c k , p. 557. 176
which both the biographer and the psychoanalyst should— but do not always— cultivate; and the constant awareness that we sit not in judgment to tell people what they should have been or how they should have lived their lives, but to arrive at an understanding of them through empathy, perception, analysis, awareness.22
A. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF:
A Child's Story of Vincent van Gogh by Laurin Luchner and George Kaye. Pictures by Vincent van Gogh, New York: Scroll Press, 1971, 32 pp.
and
Vincent van Gogh by Adeline Peter and Ernest Raboff, New York: Doubleday Co., 1974, 31 pp.
These are two books of about the same length designed to intro duce a young reader to the life and art of Vincent van Gogh. The
Peter and Raboff book has forty reproductions of van Gogh's paintings and drawings, the Luchner and Kaye book has only twenty. In addition the Peter and Raboff book has a drawing of Vincent van Gogh on the first page signed "Portrait of the Artist by Ernest Raboff."
Although both books would appear by the amount of visual material, the rather limited text, and the type of language used to be designed for the younger reader, even one in the early elementary years, they both fault on this point, the Peter and Raboff book to a much greater degree. This latter book devotes the entire first page to biographical data presented in encyclopedic fashion listing among the facts five
"artist friends" of van Gogh with whom, with the possible exception of
22 Leon Edel xn Biography as an Art, Selected Criticism 1560- 1960, p. 239. 177
Gauguin, few young people would be acquainted. Page two is devoted to yet another list, five quotes from van Gogh, all but one of the five clearly demanding more sophistication than that of elementary school age children. Most disconcerting to any reader and occurring through out the book is a change from black hand lettering of about 3/8" in height to lettering in different colors and sizes. The word color is printed in four different colors. It is difficult to understand why this was done from any point of view— emphasis, readability, or design interest. This design feature helps to contribute to the generally choppy appearance of the whole book and will cause many young readers to focus their attention on the multi-colored quality of the lettering rather than on what the words mean.
Peter and Raboff have also chosen to show many color reproduc tions and line drawings but in most cases the text refers to only one of those on the two facing pages. That is often discussed in some detail which will surely leave many young readers disappointed and prone to ask, "Why did they choose to show three and discuss only one?" Many times there is little obvious relation between what is shown on these two facing pages. For example on one page there is a color reproduction of "Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue
Gloves." On the facing page there is a discussion of that painting accompanied by a series of "Figure Sketches." The sketches are never mentioned in the text and bear little obvious relationship to the plucking of fruit which is discussed.
In addition to being poorly organized and generally choppy or disunified in appearance, the language used in the Peter and Raboff 178 book is often overly sentimental, employs awkward metaphors, and is patronizing in tone, sometimes even of "baby talk” type. In the
latter case, of Dr. Gachet, van Gogh's doctor during his final days, the authors state:
We know that the doctor cared for people. He worked day or night to mend his patients wherever he was needed.
Of the painting "Daisies and Anemones" the authors state that it is:
...a painting of carefully orchestrated colors. It is music for the eyes. Vincent van Gogh loved music and knew that colors vibrate making visual melodies like notes plucked on guitar strings. Each bright blossom and every petal and pollened stalk send off shimmering waves of light.
Such metaphorical use does not have much meaning for young children, but sounds like a patronizing Dutch uncle trying to get children to like what he likes. They can detect the trick and its didactic intent beneath the romantic phrasing.
Of "Gauguin's Chair," Peter and Raboff state, "The chair's arms seem to be reaching out to welcome us." This interpretation of artist intent, which humanizes inanimate objects in art works in order to interest children, is not uncommon in art history/appreciation books, a technique taken from story and fable. Unfortunately it does not serve the truth with which the artist is concerned, focuses the child's awareness and attention on aspects not intended by an artist but arbi trarily chosen by the interpreter, often colors the viewer's perspec tive so he is unable to esqplore on his own, and also makes him feel that he should look for a story behind every art work. The adult viewer who must find a story in every work of art in order to make it 179 valid is nursed on just such interpretations. When he comes to abstract art, he is left afloat. The story aspect of art is also reinforced when of "The Harvest" the authors assert that the various representative elements in the painting "are arranged for us to read
t like sentences." Generalizations of this nature should be avoided or the child will be confused as to what is the nature of art. He will wonder how to read modern abstract art "like sentences."
Fortunately some quotes of van Gogh clearly and simply stated give the reader some relief from the contrived, sentimentalized, patronizing quality of the language used in this book. They cannot save it however and the book leaves much to be desired in respect to the criteria established here.
Luchner and Kaye's A Child's Story of Vincent van Gogh while not without fault, meets more of the criteria. There are only half as many reproductions as in the Peter and Raboff book, all are reason ably clear, distributed well throughout the book, and all are discussed in some way with an attempt to involve the reader. Questions are asked of him and observations made in which he is invited to share and wonder. There is some author interpretation which could be eliminated, but in general Luchner and Kaye have avoided becoming overly interpretive. Some of the questions and metaphorical language used to interest a child and help him capture a "sense" of the artist and his work are good, as when they describe the technique used by van Gogh in painting a cypress tree.
See how his little brush strokes of color move over, up and around his painting. They play a game of follow-the-leader and do a dance around the star and moon. 180
This type of metaphor will help a child grasp and empathize with van Gogh's quality of movement or rhythm, an essential to any under
standing of van Gogh.
Other questions however seem irrelevant and not thought out in terms of how a child's search for answers will contribute to his growth in art appreciation. One tests his memory about what he saw in a corner of a reproduced painting seventeen pages before. Mr. Kaye's background as a teacher has made him aware of pedagogical methods.
Whether he has thought through the implications of all of them as they relate to art appreciation growth appears doubtful. Some are the characteristic textbook type. Some even ask the child to play a psychological guessing game:
What can you tell about Vincent when you study his portrait? Does he seem happy or sad? Is he handsome or funny looking?
The gross fault this writer finds with this book is its form.
The authors, obviously aware of the appeal narrative has for young children, decided to present the material as a day in van Gogh's life— from morning to evening. The paintings shown are described as images he sees on a day's painting journey— first a church, then a bridge, a "lovely scene," a sower, and so on until he takes an evening walk and paints a night scene with restaurant.
In what seems to be an apologetic explanation for this form, the authors at the beginning of the book tell the "youngreaders":
Although the story is written as though it takes place in only one day, Vincent van Gogh did not paint all the pictures in this book in only one day. He painted them over many, many months. 181
This explanation is placed on a page before and apart from the story itself and most children will probably skip it and delve right into the story. In this story the authors freely take from several years of van Gogh's painting activity and that which occurred in different places. The first thing the artist sees and paints after he leaves his neat yellow house in Arles (painted in May, 1888) is the church at Auvers which he painted in June 1890 just a month before his death.
Even if one were to excuse this as license allowed an art biographer, and this author cannot support this view, the impression created by the "running account" quality of organization creates an incorrect impression of the artist's activity. Van Gogh was known to become very involved in a painting, losing and even abandoning himself to it.
The impression here however is that he spent his day "on the move," hopping from one different area and topic to another, ripping off one painting after another. The sense of van Gogh's absorption is sacri ficed to this day's journey form which the authors have chosen in an effort to interest children and familiarize them with some of van
Gogh's better known paintings and subject matter. This writer feels that the authors should have searched for another format which would not have sacrificed the truth in this way, but still have captured and held children's interest.
Despite this important fault and others mentioned, a young reader when he finishes Vincent van Gogh will have become acquainted with him in an intimate way. They will know that he loved nature, color, particularly yellow, ordinary things, activities of people, sunshine and light— loves which most children will understand and 182
share.
B. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF;
The Double Adventure of John Singleton Copley, First Major Painter of the New World by James Thomas Flexner, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969, 169 pp.
and
Copley, A Biography by Elizabeth Ripley, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1967, 72 pp.
These books are clearly designed for junior high and high
school age young people with interest in American art and colonial
history. Both succeed in creating a picture of Copley's life and the
historical and cultural context out of which the artist came and to
which he responded. Both Ripley and Flexner are accomplished historians
and biographers with an understanding of and sympathy for Copley's
role in the history of American and English art. The artist's life
and time were well researched by both authors and quotes from Copley
and members of his family as well as from contemporary figures are
frequently and, in most cases, carefully and meaningfully woven into
the text. The Flexner book which is "recast" from his book John
Singleton Copley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948) and the section on
Copley in his book America's Old Masters (New York: Viking Press,
1939; paperback, Dover, 1967) is considerably longer than Ripley's with one hundred and fifty-six pages, only eleven of which are devoted
to reproductions of the artist's works, one per page, all black and white with dimensions of 4 V x 5 "-6*5" depending on the original ratio.
The reproductive quality is rather dark and the contrast too high; 183
those works with many figures, like "The Collapse of the Earl of
Chatham in the House of Lords 17 July 1778" are too small to see
satis factorily.
The Ripley book has sixty-three pages of content apart from
bibliography, table of contents, list of illustrations, and index,
thirty-two devoted to text. There are thirty-six reproductions of
Copley's work all arranged on pages opposite the text. Only three
pages have more than one reproduction, two have two, and one has three.
In all cases there is a clear reason why the choice was made and the works relate in some way. The Ripley book while less than half the
length of Flexner's, has a larger page size, 10" x 7 7/8" as opposed
to 8 1/8" x 5 1/4" for the Flexner book. The larger size allows for
a larger reproduction and this certainly enhances the appearance and readability of the Ripley. In every case the text facing a reproduc tion relates in some way to it. In most cases some type of descrip tion is made either about the sitter shown in a portrait, Copley's relationship to the sitter or scene, or how the painting relates to
Copley's style or to the history of the time. The number of reproduc tions in the Ripley book, thirty-six versus only eleven for the Flexner book makes it a more satisfying art biography. Flexner repeatedly describes works of the artist which are not reproduced, a very dis concerting experience if one does not know the work and cannot call it up from his visual repertory. If one reads the Flexner, and there is much material worth reading in the book, it would help to have a book of reproductions of the artist's work close by to view when the work is discussed in the text. This would avoid a sense of 184 frustration at not being able to see what's being described. For this and a number of other reasons, this writer found the Ripley a much more satisfying experience. It also meets more of the criteria set up in the preceding chapter. Her other biographies of artists among them those of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Durer, Picasso, and
Winslow Homer are of the same high quality and this writer feels they are the best biographies of artists available for the young reader of junior high and high school age.
In addition to Ripley's obvious research into, knowledge of, and feeling for the artist and his cultural, political, economic, and family context as well as the number of carefully chosen reproductions, her writing style is clear and direct. She does not overwhelm the reader with words and data, but carefully selects from the artist's personal life that which would interest a young reader and give him a better understanding of the artist's style, his personal values, influences from other artists, his patrons, and his family, his ambi tions and his character. Copley's role in the American Revolution and his Yankee sympathies during his English period are clearly brought out and quotes from the artist interspersed giving one a more intimate "sense" of the painter. Attitudes toward portraiture by the
English and American public in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also contribute to widening the reader's understanding of the period. There is a quote from John Adams whose portrait by Copley made in England after the American Revolution Ripley has reproduced.
Adams describes his reaction to the art of portraiture— "A luxury tool of the upper classes.".... a "Piece of Vanity." (p. 54) 185
The book is well organized, presenting the material historically
with the facing pages of text and reproduction allowing the reader to
look without being overwhelmed. The text is often less than a page,
the remaining area of white page helping one to focus on the repro
duced work(s) which is always placed on the right side of the page.
The sense of pace is very conducive to reflection and contemplation,
habits essential to meaningful art experience. Ripley avoids inter
pretation except in a few instances, one of which is in an explanation
she provides for the attitude of Paul Revere in Copley's 1768-70 portrait, "...he sat at his work table wondering how he would decorate
the piece of silver just completed." In most cases however she main
tains a very objective stance describing, but not interpreting, what
is there in the painting, and leaving it to the viewer-reader to do
the "filling in." The one disappointment this writer has with the
book is the lack of any color reproductions. It is hard to "experi
ence" Copley in black and white. This book does however do an excel
lent job in providing one with the motivation to see the originals.
The Flexner biography suffers as a biography for the younger
reader in a number of respects. The fact that it was "recast" for
the younger reader from books addressed to the adult reader rather
than written originally for him bespeaks of the temptation for a writer of adult biography and history to think he can make some cuts,
change a few emphases here and there, and make a book suitable for a younger audience. This recasting does not work in this case for a number of reasons. The first is that a good background in art history
and art vocabulary is presumed of the reader, a background that takes 186
many years to accumulate. Flexner describes the styles of minor
artists of the eighteenth century like Badger and Greenwood, and yet does not reproduce any work of these artists. Also many Copley works
are described without reproduction, a very frustrating characteristic of this book. Note the paragraph below:
The head Copley put into the Welsteed en graving had been in Badger's style. The com panion canvases of a fashionable young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Mann, render conventional compositions based on English prints in a style that seems a mingling of Smibert and Feke, with just a touch of Greenwood, (p. 35)
Here an art historian's concern with style is brought out in full force, but neither the Welsteed engraving, the portraits of Mr. and
Mrs. Joseph Mann, an eighteenth century English engraving, or a paint ing by Smibert, Feke, or Greenwood is reproduced. What is a reader without experience in eighteenth century painting to get out of this paragraph but a confusing and frustrating experience of not knowing what it means because of lack of background?
On this point Olivia Coolidge, author of many biographies for young people said:
...I have often been tempted to envy those who, writing for adults, can blithely assume that anyone interested enough to read their books will have a certain amount of background knowledge. A young-adult biography is designed for people who want to read straight through it, picking up all the background that they need along the way. They do not wish to be inter rupted by footnotes or puzzled by the appear ance of a character with an unpronounceable Indian name who may or may not have appeared fifty pages before.23
2^Olivia Coolidge, "My Struggle with Facts," Wilson Library Bulletin, October, 1974, p. 150. 187
Another habit of Flexner is to move back and forth between a discussion of the artist's earlier work and life and his later work and life. If one is aware of them before reading the biography, this is fine, but without this background, the experience is very disturb ing. Flexner also makes reference to nineteenth century romantic painting which also calls for some additional background.
Flexner is a writer with clear preferences and opinions regard ing eighteenth century painting, and a preference for American por traiture over British portraiture of the period. They come through clearly in his writing. He is also very interpretive, often using exaggerations in his descriptions and comparisons to force his view.
For example, of the colonial merchant Epes Sargent's hands (A repro duction of the painting of Mr. Sargent in which they appear is not shown in the book.): "They are almost obscenely full of blood and life." He continues: "The face, too, communicates more truth than beauty" (p. 48).
Worse however is Flexner's step-by-step record of the supposed reaction of a spectator to Copley's painting of the twelve year-old
"Midshipman Augustus Brine" painted in 1782:
The spectator's reaction as he studies this canvas develop like a serial story. Your first emotion is irritation, although you are not quite sure what annoys you. Closer study, however, makes annoyance give way to admiration....
"I must have misjudged this portrait," you say to yourself. "It is brilliantly painted." But when you step back again to get a general view, your annoyance returns. Suddenly you realize what is wrong; the picture is fundamentally insincere. The romantic grotto and the boy's pose before it 188
are alien to Copley's temperament. The face, although more brightly colored than nature, gives a startling impression not only of aris tocratic disdain, but also of the artist's strong feeling of dislike. All the superlative ability with which Fate had endowed the painter could not hide his lack of belief in what he was doing. (pp. 132-133)
Flexner is not only indulging in the common sins of writers of
art history/appreciation books, over-interpretation and psychological
esqolanation of the artist's motives for a depiction, but he is also
providing a step-by-step account of how a spectator reacts to it.
Unfortunately too many young people, without background, would feel
they had to fit into Flexner's formula.
Despite obvious flaws which this book has, if a reader can wade through sections he is unable to understand because he lacks the
background, there are some excellent parts to the book. The American
Revolution and Copley's relationship to it is well told; the battle of eighteenth century styles and their patrons and critics which Copley felt and struggled with is discussed in a clear and interesting way;
Copley's good as well as less desirable personal qualities are brought out; and quotes from letters of Copley, his family, and his contemporaries help provide for a vivid picture of the artist and his time. Flexner is not a bad writer, but has failed to take into account the background of his audience or the role his book might or might not have in enhancing their art appreciation. 189
IV. PICTURE BOOKS
These are books which strive, often implicitly, to effect awareness of some aspect of the visual world, art. the artist, the creative process, and/or the art experience.
The explosion in the publication of picture books and its rela tionship to the demand for more visual material in children's liter ature has been mentioned earlier, as has whether the proliferation of such books will necessarily "result in future adults with informed and 24 discriminating visual tastes." The fact is that there are a number of such books and most children will likely come in contact with many of them.
One could easily devote another dissertation to an investigation and evaluation of such books— how the visual and verbal relate, the quality of the art work, whether certain books are more desirable than others for certain purposes, and a number of other points. Here, however, this author wishes only to call attention to the potential which certain picture books with visual as well as verbal material and which can be fictional or non-fictional in form can help effect the types of awareness and understanding essential to art appreciation.
For purposes of analysis only this author will divide such books into three categories although in fact there can be much overlapping among them.
2^See above Chapter V, pp. 152-153. (1) Visual Awareness Books
The "concept books" which relate specifically to the
visual elements and which have been treated here under
general art history/appreciation books could be placed
in this category. Also included would be books on the
seasons, such as Lehoczky and Holl's The Wonderful Tree,
A Story of the Seasons and Janina Domanska's Spring Is
and books on the wonders of nature such as Robert
McCloskey's Time of Wonder and Edith and Clement Hurd's
The Day the Sun Danced. Books which use poetic or poetic
prose text and treat natural beauty, those such as Byrd
Baylor and Peter Parnell's The Way to Start a Day and
Richard Lewis and Ezra Jack Keats' In a Spring Garden,
and Natalia Belting's The Sun is a Golden Earring would
also be included in this category. This author maintains
that awakening and developing sensitivity to the visual
world is the foundation upon which mature art appreciation
is built. This type of book by encouraging readers to see
and feel and delight in nature and all its manifestations
serves this end.
(2) Books which deliberately use art styles of a time, culture,
or artist to create a visual background or complement to a
story.
There seems to be a growing number of such books, many but
not all of which are folk tales. Gerald McDermott's 191
Arrow to the Sun uses nineteenth century American Indian
design as a basis upon which to create his own illustra
tions. Gail E. Haley in A Story, A Story uses bright
bold patterns based on African art for her illustrations.
Angela Conner in illustrating Gwendolyn Reed's When the
Assyrians Came Down from the Trees bases her designs on
ancient Assyrian Palace reliefs.
A good case can be made for exposing a young child to the
art of another time and culture in this way. He comes to
realize that "visual language" differs from place to place
and from time to time. Such illustrations may help him to
"sense" this language in a way which the verbal cannot
provide.
(3) Books whose story relates in some way to the understanding
and awareness essential to the visual arts. It is beoks of
this type that this author wishes to evaluate.
A. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF;
Crow Boy by Taro Yashima, New York: The Viking Press, 1955, 38 pp.
and
Plenty to Watch by Mitsu and Taro Yashima, New York: The Viking Press, 1954, 39 pp.
One implicit aim of both these books is to develop perceptive and sensitive young people. The first, Crow Boy, is the story of a young Japanese boy, Chibi, who is afraid of his classmates and hence ridiculed by them. A new teacher, Mr. Isobe, befriends the young boy 192
and discovers how rich, perceptive, and sensitive he is— an observer of the seasons, the patterning on the ceiling and desktops, insects
and plants and a listener to the sounds of life around him including the crows' voices which he can mimic and does before the last school assembly. It is only at this final sixth grade assembly that the
children come to realize what they have missed in not befriending
Chibi much earlier.
This book is beautifully and sensitively organized and illus trated and the text rich in meaning and significance. It is kept simple and clear with no more than a few sentences for each illustra tion, in most cases only one.
Louise Rosenblatt has said that in books young people:
...are meeting extremely compelling images of life that will undoubtedly influence the crystallization of their ultimate attitudes, either of acceptance or rejection....
Literary works...offer...some approach to life, some image of people working out a common fate or some assertion that certain kinds of experiences, certain modes of feeling, are valuable.^
The author of Crow Boy has made it clear what experiences he feels valuable and done so in a story and with characters with which young children can identify and sympathize.
Plenty to Watch also makes clear what the authors feel are experiences to be valued, but does so in the context of a story about
Japanese life which the Yashimas remember from their own small village.
25Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, 3rd edition, (New York: Noble and Noble Publishers, Inc., 1976), p. 20. 193
The book is an inventory of what people did and what one saw in the
Japan of their childhood, but like Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Yashimas make the inventory fascinating for the young reader, describing and explaining in ways which will interest children. The book, like Crow
Boy, is well and profusely illustrated and the text kept to a minimum.
The value placed on what many children see as "ordinary" or "common place" is important to this book. Like Crow Boy it encourages looking, listening, and loving the richness of both the animate and inanimate worlds around us, and of realizing these experiences as essential to human life— and art.
B. A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF:
Henri's Hands for Pablo Picasso by Helen Kay, Illustrated by Victor Ambrus, London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965, 61 pp.
and
Abel's Island written and illustrated by William Steig, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976, 119 pp.
These books although both well illustrated are really not clas sified as picture books in the strict definition. They are longer and have considerably more text. This author, however, wishes to consider them here because they are examples of category "3" and are perhaps addressed to a slightly older child, although this could be disputed.
Henri's Hands for Pablo Picasso is a delightful story of a young boy living in the village of Villauris in Southern France where the artist Picasso lived for ten years and revitalized the pottery industry.
Although Picasso appears briefly in the story, the main character is
Henri, who is pulled between his father's desire that he become a 194 baker like himself and his grandfather's desire that he become a potter like he once was. The story is an exciting struggle with the boy in the middle having to make important decisions. Kay's text and
Ambrus' illustrations make the story a fascinating one. Henri finds delight in both shaping dough and shaping clay and the reader comes to realize the similarity and differences between the two processes:
Henri did just what Grande-pere told him. He took a blob of clay and turned the wheel. Clay was harder to work than dough. It kept falling down all the time. Together they worked it up, up, up as the wheel turned. Finally, it stayed. Henri's vase stood by itself— round and smooth and shapely. "I made a vase!" he cried, clap ping his hands. (p. 37)
The author also gives the reader a sense of the delighted response one would expect on seeing a pot on which Picasso had painted one of his familiar faces:
"I must go," he told Grand-pere. But today, Henri left singing. Whoever heard of a face on the bottom of a casserole? (p. 37)
This book is an excellent one for sensing the joy often felt in creative work, for realizing the pride and satisfaction which comple tion of an art object will bring, as well as sensing what the presence of an artist like Picasso could mean to a small French village. The book is fiction, but woven around the fact of Picasso's presence in
Villauris and his revitalization of a lost craft.
Abel's Island is basically a book of self-discovery and self- evaluation, of assessing the importance of others, of being alone, of struggle. In this search Steig has the mouse Abel, lost on an island, discover the place of nature and art in man's life: 195
Living in the heart of nature, he began to realize how much was going on in the seeming stillness. Plants grew and bore fruit, branches proliferated, buds became flowers, clouds formed in ever-new ways and patterns, colors changed. He felt a strong need to participate in the designing and arranging of things. The red clay from which he had fashioned pots and dishes inspired him to try his hand at making something just for its own sake, something beautiful....
He made a life-size statue of Amanda. Though it didn't really resemble her, it did look like a female mouse. He was amazed at what he had wrought. Good or bad, it was sculpture. It was art. He tried again and again, profiting from his mistakes, and finally he felt he had a likeness of his wife real enough to embrace. (p. 54)
There are little truths sprinkled throughout the text which relate to what has been defined as essential to the nature of art and to the creative process, whatever the medium through which it finds expression.
Abel also kept busy taking it easy. Only when taking it easy, he's learned, could one properly do one's wondering. (p. 60)
There is also the response of the frog Gower on seeing a statue Abel had made of him:
"It's me all right," Gower said. "It's more me than what I see in the mirror. It's what I see when I imagine how I look. It's a work of art, that's what it is!" (p. 92)
Although many children will not grasp the full significance of these truths, seeds will be sown which can be nurtured providing the beginnings of a foundation essential to the mature art appreciation advanced in this dissertation. The lively illustrations by the author enrich the book and make the truths more recognizable. CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
Concluding Remarks and Recommendations
It is hoped that this study will make some contribution to both
the field of art education and the field of children's literature.
By setting apart books aiming to effect art appreciation, this author
hopes that a more critical posture will be taken toward them by
people in positions of responsibility for their selection and evalua
tion. There is a great need for more informed criticism of these
books to guide teachers, parents, and other interested parties.
Comparative evaluations and reviews such as those presented in Chapter
Five this writer feels will help refine one's ability to discriminate
between those books more and less valuable in art appreciation
development.
By organizing the study in the manner exhibited here, with a
lengthy examination of what art appreciation involves and how it is
developed, this writer hopes to convince many of the value of art
appreciation and the potential role that books can play in effecting
it. The availability of good art history/appreciation books is
important and should be recognized as such. They are a resource often I untapped by teachers and others in positions of responsibility for
196 197
children's education.
By bringing many types of art-related books together under one
"banner," this writer also hopes to call attention to the variety of
experiences and learnings which feed art appreciation development.
There are experiences of many types, but all important are the child's
experiences with the visual world including those with the art objects
themselves. "Learnings" in the areas of the creative process, an
artist's life, and the art of an historical period are all important
to the development of art appreciation. A realization of this should help a teacher grasp a sense of the multi-faceted aspect of the area
and realize the need for including various types of experiences as well as books in an art appreciation program.
Certainly a very important goal on the part of this writer in
this study is to put forth art appreciation as a process which involves both knowledge and experience "of" as well as "about," and that the "about" serves the "of." She is very disturbed by what she sees as a growing tendency to stress the "about" at an early age and hopes that evidence put forth in the study of the deleterious effects of doing this will help halt the movement of the "about" forces who, with some banner like "the need to develop cognitive skills," emascu late art— destroy the delight and enjoyment. There is a role and a very important one for "criticism" and "evaluation" in developing art appreciation, but one must see it in the context of the whole develop mental process. By setting up the three-stage model and treating pedagogical considerations, this author hopes to have succeeded in making the role of criticism, evaluation, and other types of analysis 198 in the art development process much clearer.
This writer also hopes she has made clear the individual nature of the art experience and the need for flexibility in training art appreciation. Avoidance of ready-made solutions to art related prob lems, and the "right" and "wrong" answer syndrome in art is so essen tial. A child in developing art appreciation must be given the oppor tunity to "try on" others' viewpoints, and art history/appreciation books are one way he can do that. Therefore this writer recommends children be given books with different perspectives and varying points of view advanced.
This writer sees a great need for an understanding of art appreciation on the part of school teachers, particularly elementary classroom teachers. Too often their own experience with the visual arts is limited to a single "methods" course where they are never made aware of the nature of art or the art experience. Unfortunately "art" for them is synonymous with "thing-making." Books of the type treated here may be known to them, but they do not see their significance in children's education. This is an area where quality in-service train ing has a place and can make a contribution. This writer also sees the possibility of workshops in art appreciation, and introducing literature of the type treated here at the sessions.
Although many recommendations are stated or implicit in the pre ceding remarks, below is a list which this author wishes to put forth, recommendations which arise out of consideration of the findings in this study. 199
(1) Both elementary classroom and art specialist teachers as
well as children's librarians, writers, publishers, and
other interested parties should be made aware of the
relationship of the process of art appreciation and the role
the art history/appreciation book can play in that process.
They should also be made aware of what role they personally
can play to help effect the types of learnings essential
to art appreciation growth. This author would like to
recommend that the information contained in this study be
made available to these parties either through access to
the dissertation itself or through articles based on it.
(2) Good art history/appreciation books should be made avail
able and known to young people. Too often such books
remain on library shelves untouched except by those who
purposefully seek them out. Attractive displays, teacher
and parent encouragement, a special art/artist day(s),
special art corners and discussion periods in a classroom,
visits to museums and galleries, use of these books along
with others in other subject areas such as history or
literature, are a few ways to introduce them and make them
more widely known.
(3) A college or university level course could be taught using
the material in the dissertation as a core around which to
build student awareness of art appreciation, an awareness
of a child's development in art appreciation, an understand
ing of the role(s) books can play in effecting growth in the 200
area, and an awareness of the need to develop a critical
posture toward such literature.
(4) Representatives of the standard book reviewing organs for
children's literature and art history/appreciation books—
writers, publishers, and editors— should be made aware of
the findings of this study and the criteria established for
art history/appreciation books for the younger reader. Only
those knowledgeable in the area of a book's subject, the
criteria for good children's art history/appreciation books,
and children's growth in art appreciation should be chosen
to author and review this literature. Attempts should also
be made to train more informed critics of this type of
literature.
(5) A teacher, parent, or other person interested in the arts
should openly exhibit this interest when with children.
In this way he serves as a model, inviting children to
participate in or share their interest and enthusiasm.
Art history/appreciation books can be shared by reading
and discussing them together, and by using them before
and after museum or gallery visits to learn more about an
artist's work, a concept, etc.
(6) Because of the wide variety of children's interests and
preferences, the variety of learnings which feed art
appreciation growth, and the individual or idiosyncratic
ways different children approach the world, a wide variety
of types of art history/appreciation literature should be 201
made available to young people. They should also be pro
vided with books with different perspectives or points of
view.
(7) It would be helpful to the art appreciation field in
general were art teachers in junior and senior high school to
use selected art history/appreciation books for discussion
and review. This could be part of one's training in art
criticism and evaluation, extending it to the literature
in the field.
Suggestions for Further Study
This author has drawn material from a number of different areas— philosophy, psychology, art and literary criticism, and children's literature— in this study. It is a synthesis which was necessary to develop the criteria upon which to judge art history/appreciation books. It should provide the groundwork for looking at books in the four categories outlined within in greater depth as well as in field- testing books in these categories with children of different ages and in different settings or situations.
It has often been said that picture books provide children with their first exposure to "art," yet no systematic study has been con ducted to try to determine just what it is that children see or sense in their picture books, and if indeed they help effect art appreciation as claimed. More work should be done to evaluate picture books as to their merit as "art," and see if and why children and adults find similar or like values in them. 202
There are types of art history/appreciation books which this
author has only touched upon, and some books such as those treating
certain art techniques, media, or forms which she has not attempted
to treat. These should be studied to determine their value in art
appreciation growth, as well as to set up special criteria upon which they should be judged. Field-testing these books would also be valuable to the field. "Recommended Lists" should only be made from an informed critical posture.
More work needs to be done in the area of the relationship of the visual and the verbal in a child's development in general, as well as in his development in both visual art and literary art. The findings of such studies should be made known to curriculum developers for use in their own studies.
This author would suggest a study to determine the value of con cept and visual awareness books in art appreciation at various ages and stages of development. They are a very common type of book for those at all stages, yet this author has found no evidence that their value has been studied in any systematic way.
Lastly the field of art appreciation in general needs more sys tematic study, studies which use the tools of contemporary research to determine many of the variables which affect such things as why one child becomes a "mature appreciator" while another does not. BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Books and Articles.
Anderson, Harold H. (ed.). Creativity and its Cultivation, Addresses Presented at the Interdisciplinary Symposia on Creativity, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1959.
Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
______. "Gestalt and Art." In Psychology and the Visual Arts, Selected Readings. Ed. James Hogg. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969, pp. 257-262.
______. "The Myth of the Bleating Lamb." In Rudolf Arnheim. Toward a Psychology of Art, Collected Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966, pp. 136-150.
______. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
______. "What is Art For?" In Aesthetics and Problems of Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 231-242.
Beadle, Muriel. A Child's Mind, How Children Learn During the Criti cal Years from Birth to Age Five. Illus. E. John Pfiffner. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1971.
Beardsley, Monroe C. "Aesthetic Theory and Educational Theory." In Aesthetic Concepts and Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, pp. 3-20.
______. "On Creation of Art." In Aesthetics and Criticism in Art Education, Problems in Defining, Explaining, and Evaluating Art. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966, pp. 151-170.
Bee, Helen. The Developing Child. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.
203 204
Beittel, Kenneth R. Alternatives for Art Education Research. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1973.
______. "The Teaching of Art in Relation to Body-Mind Integration and Self-Actualization in Art." Art Education XXXII (November 1979), pp. 18-20.
Biber, Barbara. "Premature Structuring as a Deterrent to Creativity." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry XXXIX (1959). pp. 280-290.
Brittain, W. Lambert. Creativity, Art and the Young Child. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1979.
Britton, James. "Response to Literature." In The Cool Web, the Pattern of Children's Reading. Ed. Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow, and Griselda Barton. New York: Atheneum, 1977, pp. 106-111.
______. "The Third Area Where We are More Ourselves." In The Cool Web, the Pattern of Children's Reading. Ed. Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow, and Griselda Barton. New York: Atheneum, 1977, pp. 40-47.
______. "What's the Use? A Schematic Account of Language Function." Educational Review XXIII (1971), pp. 205-219.
Broudy, Harry S. "The Case for Art Education." In Readings in Art Education. Ed. Elliot W. Eisner and David W. Ecker. Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell Publishing Co., 1966, pp. 460-463.
______. Enlightened Cherishing, an Essay on Aesthetic Education, the 1972 Kappa Delta Pi Lecture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
______. "Impression and Expression in Artistic Development." In The Arts, Human Development, and Education. Ed. Elliot W. Eisner. Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1976, pp. 87-97.
______. "The Structure of Knowledge in the Arts." In Aesthetics and Criticism in Art Education, Problems in Defining, Explaining and Evaluating Art. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1966, pp. 23-45.
______. "Tacit Knowing and Aesthetic Education." In Aesthetic Con cepts and Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, pp. 77-106.
Bruner, Jerome. "The Course of Cognitive Growth." American Psychol ogist XIX (January 1964), pp. 1-15. 205
Burton, Hester. "The Writing of Historical Novels." In Children and Literature, Views and Reviews. Ed. Virginia Haviland. Glen view, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1973, pp. 299-304.
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. Trans. Susanne K. Langer. New York: Harper and Bros., 1946.
Cecil, Lord David. The Fine Art of Reading. Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 1957.
Child, Irvin L. "Esthetics." Annual Review of Psychology XXIII (1972), pp. 669-694.
______and Schwartz, Rosaline S. "Exploring the Teaching of Art Values." Journal of Aesthetic Education I (Autumn 1966), pp. 41-54.
______and Schwartz, Rosaline S. "Exposure to Better and Poorer Art." Journal of Aesthetic Education II (January 1968), pp. 111-124.
______, Hensen, Jens A., and Hornbeck, Frederick W. "Age and Sex Differences in Children's Color Preferences." Child Development XXXIX (1968), pp. 237-247.
Chukovsky, Kornei. From Two to Five. Translated and edited by Miriam Morton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
Cianciolo, Patricia Jean. "Criteria for the Use of Trade Books in the Elementary School Program." Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1963.
Ciardi, John. "Esthetic Wisdom." In Aesthetic Education Today: Problems and Prospects, Proceedings of Spring Conference of the Institute for the Study of Art in Education, The Ohio State University, May 4-5, 1973.
Clifford, James L. (ed.). Biography as an Art, Selected Criticism 1560-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Coming to Our Senses, the Significance of the Arts for American Educa tion. By the Arts, Education and Americans Panel. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.
Coolidge, Olivia. "My Struggle with Facts." Wilson Library Journal XLIX (October 1974), pp. 146-151.
Cox, Richard. "Art History Through the Night Kitchen." Art Teacher VII (Winter 1977), pp. 24-27. 206
Cullinan, Bernice E. Literature for Children, Its Discipline and Content. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1971.
Development of Taste in Literature. Champaign, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1962.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Putnam, 1934.
______. John Dewey on Education, Selected Writings. Ed. with an Introduction by Reginald D. Archambault. New York: The Modern Library, 1964.
Di Vesta, Francis J. Language, Learning, and Cognitive Processes. Monterey, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1974.
Early, Margaret. "Stages of Growth in Literary Appreciation." The English Journal XLIX (March 1960), pp. 161-167.
Ecker, David W. "Analyzing Children's Talk About Art." Journal of Aesthetic Education VII (January 1973), pp. 58-73.
Edel, Leon. Essay in Biography as an Art. Selected Criticism 1560- 1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 226-239.
Egoff, Sheila, Stubbs, G.T., and Ashley, L.F. (ed.). Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Einstein, Albert. "Letter to Jacques Hadamard." In The Creative Process, a Symposium. Ed. Brewster Ghiselin. New York: New American Library, 1964.
Eisner, Elliot W. Educating Artistic Vision. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1972.
______. (ed.). The Arts, Human Development and Education. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corp., 1976.
______. (ed.). Reading, the Arts, and the Creation of Meaning. Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association, 1978.
______and Ecker, David W. (ed.). Readings in Art Education. Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell Publishing Co., 1966.
Feldman, Edmund Burke. "Art Criticism and Reading." In Reading, the Arts and the Creation of Meaning. Ed. Elliot Eisner. Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association, 1978, pp. 141-157.
______. Becoming Human Through Art; Aesthetic Experience in the School. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970. 207
Fenwick, Sara Innis. (ed.). A Critical Approach to Children's Liter ature, The 31st Annual Conference of the Graduate Library School/ August 1-3, 1966. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967.
Field, Dick. "Art and Art Education," In The Study of Education and Art. Ed. Dick Field and John Newick. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 137-163.
______and Newick, John (ed.). The Study of Education and Art. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
Fisher, Margery. Matters of Fact. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1972.
FitzGerald, Frances. "Onward and Upward with the Arts, Rewriting American History." Three-part series in The New Yorker: February 26, 1976, pp. 41-77; March 5, 1979, pp. 40-91; and March 12, 1979, pp. 28-106.
Franck, Frederick. The Zen of Seeing, Seeing/Drawing as Meditation. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Fromm, Erich. "The Creative Attitude." In Creativity and its Culti vation. Ed. Harold H. Anderson. New York: Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 44-54.
Frye, Northrop. The Educated Imagination. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1964.
Gardner, Howard. The Arts and Human Development, a Psychological Study of the Artistic Process. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973.
______. "Children's Sensitivity to Painting Styles." Child Development XL (1970), pp. 813-821.
______. "Senses, Symbols, Operations: an Organization of Artistry." In The Arts and Cognition. Ed. David Perkins and Barbara Leondar. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 88-117.
______. "Sifting the Special from the Shared: Notes toward an Agenda for Research in Arts Education." Journal of Aesthetic Education XI (April 1977), pp. 31-43.
______; Winner, Ellen; and Kircher, Mary. "Children's Conceptions of the Arts." Journal of Aesthetic Education IX (July 1975), pp. 60-77. 208
______; Howard, Vernon; and Perkins, David. "Symbol Systems: A Philosophical, Psychological and Educational Investigation." In Media and Symbol: The Forms of Expression. Communication. and Education, the 73 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. Ed. David Olson. Chicago: Univer sity of Illinois Press, 1974, pp. 27-55.
Georgiou, Constantine. Children and their Literature. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1969.
Ghiselin, Brewster, (ed.). The Creative Process, a Symposium. New York: New American Library, 1964.
Gibson, Eleanor J. Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968.
Gotshalk, D.W. Art and the Social Order. New York: Dover Publica tions, 1962.
Haviland, Virginia, (ed.). Children and Literature. Views and Reviews. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1973.
Hazard, Paul. Books, Children and Men. 4th ed. Trans. Marguerite Mitchell. Boston: The Horn Book, Inc., 1963.
Hogg, James, (ed.). Psychology and the Visual Arts. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969.
Huck, Charlotte S. Children's Literature in the Elementary School. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.
______. "Literature as the Content of Reading." Theory into Practice XVI (December 1977), pp. 363-371.
Hurlimann, Bettina. "Illustration and the Emotional World of the Child." Bookbird VII (1969), pp. 57-61.
Issues in Children's Book Selection, A School Library Journal/Library Journal Anthology. Introduction by Lillian Gerhardt. New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1973.
Jan, Isabelle. On Children's Literature. Ed. Catherine Storr. Translated by Allen Lane. Preface by Anne Pellowski. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.
Kellogg, Rhoda. Analyzing Children's Art. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1969.
Kreitler, Hans and Kreitler, Shulamith. Psychology of the Arts. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972. 209
Lanes, Selma G. Down the Rabbit Hole, Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature. New York: Atheneum, 1976.
Langer, Susanne. "Cultural Importance of the Arts." In Aesthetics and Problems of Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: Univer sity of Illinois Press, pp. 86-96.
______. Feeling and Form, A Theory of Art. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.
______. Philosophy in a New Key, A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.
______. Problems of Art, Ten Philosophical Lectures. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957.
Lark-Horovitz, Betty. "On Art Appreciation of Children: Preference of Picture Subjects in General." Journal of Educational Research XXXI (September 1937), pp. 118-137.
______, Lewis, Hilda and Luca, Mark. Understanding Children's Art for Better Teaching. 2nd ed. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1973.
Leight, Robert L. (ed.). Philosophers Speak of Aesthetic Experience in Education. Danville, Illinois: The Interstate Printers and Publishers, Inc., 1975.
Lewis, C.S. "On Three Ways of Writing for Children." In Only Con nect: Readings on Children's Literature. Ed. Sheila Egoff, G.T. Stubbs, and L.F. Ashley. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Lively, Penelope. "Children and Memory." In Crosscurrents of Criti cism, Horn Book Essays, 1968-1977. Ed. Paul Heins* Boston: The Horn Book, Inc., 1977, pp. 51-57.
Logan, Frederick. Growth of Art in American Schools. New York: Harper and Bros., 1955.
______. "Up Date '75, Growth of American Art Education." Studies in Art Education XVII (1975), pp. 7-16.
Lowenfeld, Victor and Brittain, W. Lambert. Creative and Mental Growth. 4th ed. New York: Macmillan Co., 1964.
MacDonald, Stuart. The History and Philosophy of Art Education. London: University of London Press, 1970. 210
Machotka, Pavel. "Aesthetic Criteria in Childhood: Justifications for Preference." Child Development XXXVII (December 1966), pp. 877-885.
Madeja, Stanley (ed.). Arts and Aesthetics: an Agenda for the Future. First Yearbook on Research in Arts and Aesthetic Education. St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc., 1977.
Malraux, Andre. The Voices of Silence. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1953.
Marantz, Kenneth. "The Picture Book as Art Object: A Call for Balanced Reviewing." Wilson Library Journal LII (October 1977), pp. 148-151.
______. "The Work of Art and the Object of Appreciation." In Improving the Teaching of Art Appreciation. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education, Bureau of Research, Cooperative Research Project V-006, School of Art, The Ohio State University, Final Report, pp. 147-178.
______. (comp.) A Bibliography of Children's Art Literature. Washington, D.C.: National Art Education Association, 1965.
Manzella, David. Educationists and the Evisceration of the Visual Arts. Scranton, Pa.: International Textbook Co., 1963.
Maslow, Abraham H. "Creativity in Self-Actualizing People." In Creativity and its Cultivation. Ed. Harold H. Anderson. New York: Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 83-95.
______, Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Bros., 1954.
______. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Co., 1968.
Meek, Margaret; Warlow, Aidan; and Barton, Griselda. The Cool Web, The Pattern of Children's Reading. New York: Atheneum, 1978.
Meltzer, Milton. "Where do all the Prizes Go? The Case for Non fiction." In Crosscurrents of Criticism. Horn Book Essays. 1968-1977. Ed. Paul Heins. Boston: The Horn Book, Inc., 1977, pp. 51-57.
Mendenhall, J.E. and Mendenhall, M.E. The Influence of Familiarity upon Children's Preferences for Pictures and Poems. New York: Bureau of Publications of Teacher's College, Columbia Univer sity, 1933. 211
Metzger, Wolfgang. "The Influence of Aesthetic Examples." In Educa tion of Vision. Ed. Gyorgy Kepes. New York: George Braziller, 1965, pp. 16-26.
Mickinock, Rey. "The Plight of the Native American." In Issues in Children's Book Selection, A School Library Journal/Library Journal Anthology. Ed. and Introduction by Lillian Gerhardt. New York: R.R. Bowker Co., 1973.
Morgan, Douglas N. "Must Art Tell the Truth?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXVI (1967-68), pp. 17-27.
Munro, Thomas. Art Education, Its Philosophy and Psychology, Selected Essays. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956.
Murphy, Gardner. "The Process of Creative Thinking." Educational Leadership XIV (October 1956), pp. 15-18.
Mussen, Paul; Conger, John; and Kagan, Jerome. Child Development and Personality. 4th ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
National Assessment of Educational Progress. Attitudes Toward Art. Selected Results from the First National Assessment of Art. Report 06-A-03. Denver: National Center for Education Statistics, May 1978.
National Assessment of Educational Progress. Knowledge About Art. Selected Results from the First National Assessment of Art. Report 06-A-02. Denver: National Center for Education Statistics, January, 1978.
Nicholson, Sir Harold. Essay in Biography as an Art, Selected Criticism 1560-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 197-205.
Nidorf, L.J. and Argabrite, A.H. "Aesthetic Communication: I. Mediating Organismic Variables. J. Gen. Psychology LXXXII (1970), pp. 179-193.
Novosel-Beittel, Joan. "On Meditative Thinking in the Creation of Art." Art Education XXXII (November 1979),ppp. 6-7.
Olson, David and Bruner, Jerome. "Learning through Experience and Learning through Media." In Media and Symbol: The Forms of Expression, Communication, and Education, The 73 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Ed. David Olson. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1974, pp. 125- 150.
Osborne, Harold. "The Act of Appreciation or Appreciation as Perci- pience." In Aesthetics and Problems of Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 445- 472. 212
______« The Art of Appreciation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Paivio, A. Imagery and Verbal Processes. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971.
Pappas, George (ed.). Aesthetics and Criticism in Art Education. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1970. —
Pepper, Stephen C. The Work of Art. Bloomington, Indiana: The Indiana University Press, 1955.
Perkins, David. "Talk About Art." In Arts and Aesthetics: An Agenda for the Future. Ed. Stanley S. Madeja. St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc., pp. 279-304.
______and Leondar, Barbara (ed.). The Arts and Cognition. Balti more: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Piaget, Jean and Inhelder, Barbel. The Psychology of the Child. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1969.
Pickford, R.W. Psychology and Visual Aesthetics. London: Hutchin son Educational Ltd., 1972.
Polyani, Michael. "Knowing and Being." In Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polyani. Ed. Marjorie Grene. Chicago: The Univer sity of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 124-137.
______. "The Logic of Tacit Inference." In Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polyani. Ed. Marjorie Grene. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 138-158.
Pritchett, V.S. The Cab at the Door. London: Chatto and Windus, 1968.
Read, Herbert. Education through Art. New York: Pantheon Books, 1945.
Reid, Louis Arnaud. "Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education." In The Study of Education and Art. Ed. Dick Field and John Newick. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 164-186.
______. "Knowledge and Aesthetic Education." In Aesthetics and Problems of Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 445-472.
______. Meaning in the Arts. New York: Humanities Press, 1969.
. Philosophy and Education, an Introduction. London: Heinemann, 1962. 213
Rosenblatt, Louise. Literature as Exploration. 3rd ed. New York: Noble and Noble Publishers Inc., 1976.
Schlager, Norma. "Predicting Children's Choices in Literature: A Developmental Approach." Children's Literature in Education IX (Autumn 1978), pp. 136-142.
Shahn, Ben. The Shape of Content. New York: Vintage Books, 1957.
Singer, Dorothy and Singer, Jerome. "Is Human Imagination Going Down the Tube?" Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 1979, p. 56.
Sloan, Glenna Davis. The Child as Critic, Teaching Literature in the Elementary School. New York: Teacher's College Press, Columbia University, 1975.
Smith, Frank. Understanding Reading, a Psycholinquistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rine- hard and Winston, 1978.
Smith, James Steel. A Critical Approach to Children's Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1967.
Smith, Lillian. The Unreluctant Years. Chicago: American Library Association, 1953.
Smith, Ralph A. "Aesthetic Criticism: The Method of Aesthetic Edu cation." In Concepts in Art and Education, An Anthology of Current Issues. Ed. George Pappas. New York: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 404-422.
______and Smith, C.M. "The Artworld and Aesthetic Skills: A Context for Research and Development." In Arts and Aesthetics: An Agenda for the Future. Ed. Stanley S. Madeja. St. Louis: CEMREL, Inc., 1977, pp. 305-315.
______and Smith, C.M. "Justifying Aesthetic Education." In Aesthetics and Problems of Education. Ed. Ralph A. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 126-143.
______. (ed.). Aesthetic Concepts and Education. Urbana: Univer sity of Illinois Press, 1970.
______. (ed.). Aesthetic Education Today: Problems and Prospects, Proceedings of Spring Conference of The Institute for the Study of Art in Education. The Ohio State University, May 4-5, 1973.
______. (ed.). Aesthetics and Criticism in Art Education, Problems in Defining, Explaining, and Evaluating Art. Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1966. 214
Stoddard, George D. "Creativity in Education." In Creativity and its Cultivation. Ed. Harold H. Anderson. New York: Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 181-202.
Stone, Joseph L. and Church, Joseph. Childhood and Adolescence, A Psychology of the Growing Person. 4th ed. New York: Random House, 1979.
Sutherland, Zena. Children and Books, 5th ed. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1977.
Taylor, Joshua. Learning to Look. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Taylor, Harold. "Music as a Source of Knowledge." Music Educator's Journal LI (1964), pp. 36-152.
Travers, John F. Introduction to Child Development, The Growing Child. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977.
Voillaume, H. "Les Activit^s Picturales des Enfants et les Reactions Comparees des Enfants et des Adultes devant les Oeuvres d'Enfants. Psycho1. Franc. X (1965), pp. 178-187.
Walsh, Jill Paton. "History is Fiction." In Crosscurrents of Criti cism, Horn Book Essays, 1968-1977. Ed. Paul Heins. Boston: The Horn Book, Inc., 1977, pp. 219-225.
White, Mary Lou. Children's Literature, Criticism and Response. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1972.
Whitehead, A.N. "The Aims of Education." In The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: Free Press, 1967, pp. 29-41.
______. "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline." In The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: Free Press, 1967, pp. 29-41.
Winnicott, D.W. Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971.
Witkin, Robert. The Intelligence of Feeling. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974.
Woodruff, Ashael. "Concept Formation and Learning Unit Design." In Conceptual Models in Teacher Education— An Approach to Teaching and Learning. Washington, D.C.: The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 1967, Ed. John R. Verduin, pp. 102-114. 215
Woods Don. "Reading Pictures and Words: A Critical Review." Review of Research in Visual Arts Education IX (Winter 1978), pp. 1-38.
♦ 216
B. Children's Books
1. Books Evaluated
Alden, Care11a. From Early American Paintbrushes, Colony to New Nation. New York: Parents' Magazine Press, 1971.
Bate, Norman. When Cave Men Painted. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963.
Borten, Helen. Do You See What I See? New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959.
Flexner, James Thomas. The Double Adventure of John Singleton Copley. First Major Painter of the New World. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969.
Gatto, Joseph A. Color and Value. Worcester, Mass.: Davis Publica tions, 1974.
Glubok, Shirley. The Art of Colonial America. Designed by Gerard Nook. New York: Macmillan Co., 1970.
Hoban, Tana. Is it red? Is it yellow? Is it blue? New York: Macmillan Co., 1970.
______. Shapes and Things. New York: Macmillan Co., 1970.
Kay, Helen. Henri's Hands for Pablo Picasso. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965.
Kennet, Frances and Measham, Terry. Looking at Paintings. Illus. by Malcolm Livingstone. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1978.
Luchner, Laurin and Kaye, George. A Child's Story of Vincent van Gogh. New York: Scroll Press, 1971.
Macaulay, David. Pyramid. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1975.
O'Neill, Mary. Hailstones and Halibut Bones. Illus. by Leonard Weisgard. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1961.
Peter, Adeline and Raboff, Ernest. Vincent van Gogh. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1974.
Price, Christine. Made in Ancient Egypt. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1970. 217
______. Made in the Middle Ages. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1961.
Ripley, Elizabeth. Copley, A Biography. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippin- cott Co., 1967.
Steig, William. Abel's Island. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976.
Weeks, John. The Pyramids. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1977.
Yashima, Taro. Crow Boy. New York: The Viking Press, 1955.
______and Yashima, Mitsu. Plenty to Watch. New York: The Viking Press, 1954.
2. Books Cited
Baylor, Byrd. The Way to Start a Day. Illus. by Peter Parnall. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977.
Belting, Natalia M. The Sun is a Golden Earring. Illus. by Bernards Bryson. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962.
Domanska, Janina, (Illust.). Spring Is. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1976.
Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1943.
Haley, Gail E. A Story, A Story. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
Holl, Adelaide. (Text). The Wonderful Tree. A Story of the Seasons. From a story by Gyorgy Lehoczky, Illus. by Gyorgy Lehoczky. New York: Golden Press, 1974.
Hurd, Edith Thacher. The Day the Sun Danced. Illus. by Clement Hurd. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1965.
Lewis, Richard, (ed.). In a Spring Garden. Illus. by Ezra Jack Keats. New York: The Dial Press, 1965.
McCloskey, Robert. Time of Wonder. New York: The Viking Press, 1957.
McDermott, Gerald. Arrow to the Sun. New York: Viking Press, 1974.
Reed, Gwendolyn. When the Assyrians Came Down from the Trees. Illus. by Angela Conner. New York: Lee and Shepard Co., Inc., 1969.