Looking for the development of artistic style in children's artworlds

Abstract

We develop the proposition that children's drawing style is sustained and developed in "artworlds"-a symbolic reality constrained by social valuings of art and opportunities to do art, as well as children's personal themes and representational skills that change systematically over development and with artistic experience.Looking for the Development of Artistic Style in Children's ArtworldsIn this chapter we explore persistence and change in children's artistic style, specifically their style in graphic media. Style is a term with a rich set of meanings in both folk discourse and academic study. We do not offer an a priori definition of style but rather a promise to reveal a clearer conceptualization of it by situating our analysis in a social context called artworld (Becker, 1982;Parsons, 1988;Pufall, 1997). Artworlds are loosely structured social organizations within which people cooperate to create favorable conditions for producing works of art (Becker, 1982). These are social worlds that are mutually constructed by children and adults for the purpose of creating images or forms from a variety of media. These worlds emerge in different places and for different reasons. For example, artworlds of early childhood are realized at kitchen tables at home and easels in a classroom. Adults enter these worlds in different ways. Sometimes they merely promote them by urging children to draw, paint, or sculpt with the materials they provide but with little or no instruction about what it means to carry out those creative activities. In other cases they formally instruct children about the what and why of the adult artworld.Children participate in these worlds at several levels, giving them form and purpose. They explore the media and the various marks that different materials make as they are brushed or dragged across a surface. As children gain control over the media, they begin to explore personalWe are indebted to Lela Gandini for the scholarly contributions she made to the development of our studies of style, to Rebecca Whitin, Pamela Mavanski, and Ellen Kitchell, who assisted with this research, and to the Office of Admissions at Smith College, who supported their work through the STRlDE Program.NEW DIRECTIOUS mu CwLn Avn ADOI t j C t Y T DWELOPHENI. no YO. wmer zooo Q J O W~. B~S S .

Development in the Arts: Drawing and Music

“…Judges were also able to recognize new drawings by the same two children drawn at the same time as well as 9 months later. An even stronger demonstration that children have persistent drawing styles was reported by Pufall and Pesonen (2000) who found that adults who learned to recognize the style of three 5-year-olds could identify drawings by these children done 4 years later. But Watson and Schwartz (2000) showed that only about a third of the children in their sample showed a distinctive style, with younger ones (5-to 8-year-olds) showing greater distinctiveness than older children (9-to 10-year-olds).…”

Sociocultural contexts for the early development of semiotic production.

“…These contexts involve support and art-making materials, along with training techniques offered by others, pictorial models, and artistic norms shared by the broader community—all working in concert with the child's individual efforts (Golomb, 2002). Pufall and Pesonen (2000) discussed these contexts in terms of artworlds (Becker, 1982, cited in Pufall & Pesonen, 2000), or social environments that entail the people, physical spaces, and tools supporting artistic creation and provide artistic themes and styles.…”