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School of Performing and Visual

Arts
Indira Gandhi National Open
University

MVA 026
Understanding Aesthetics and
Art Education

BLOCK

4
NATURE AND SCOPE OF ART EDUCATION

UNIT 1
Concept of Art Education

UNIT 2
Knowing Art Education

UNIT 3
Artistic Expressions of Child

UNIT 4
Scope of Art Education
Introduction to Block

Dear Learner,
In this block you will be introduced to the development of the process of acquiring a holistic
knowledge for communication and survival from pre-historic to historic period of human
kind. The Block will make you understand how art plays an important role in learning apart
being a visual treat. The Units in the block will elaborately discuss the concept and
psychology of art as education. The different stages of progressive development of art in a
child are being explained along with the futuristic scope of art is being discussed for
professional, skill and livelihood.
In this Unit 1 of Block 4 of Course MVA-026: Understanding Aesthetics and Art Education,
you will be introduced that how human got acquainted with learning process and a mean to
communicate with others. How they expressed and communicated using art. This unit will
further explain the different theories and setup of formal education system. It will also
explain the corresponding relation of art with other curricular areas, its relevance in
curriculum and institutionalization of education and system.
In first Unit, you will be introduced that how human got acquainted with learning process
and a mean to communicate with others. How they expressed and communicated using art.
This unit will further explain the different theories and setup of formal education system. It
will also explain the corresponding relation of art with other curricular areas, its relevance in
curriculum and institutionalization of education and system.
After going through Unit 2 of Block 4 you will understand the meaning of art and the various
characteristics. In this unit you will get to know art theories of various philosophers including
Plato‘s theory on art. You will be explained the role of art as function and as its visual
perception. We will also examine art education as planned approach for learning.
In unit 3 you will understand the importance of Art Education and its role for the artistic
development of Child. In this unit you will understand Child art and theories related to it.
This unit elaborates the different stages of progressive development of art in a child and
diverse theories related to them. It will also explain the theory of Schema or no schema under
the consideration of size, dimension and biological principles.
After completing Unit 4 of Block 14 of the course Understanding Aesthetics and Art
Education (MVA 026), you will have a better understanding of the possibilities in Art
Education and its role in how creative knowledge combined with skill development can be a
source of income. Art has flourished under the patronage of royals and the rich since the
historic period. Artists were commissioned to make the piece of art according to the patron's
wishes and desires. The royal patronage has faded in recent times due to changes in
administration to administer countries, but the powerful and wealthy continue to commission
art. The rise of technology in the twentieth century liberated art from the royal courts. This
course will teach you about the various options for a future profession in art in the fields of
education, the private sector, and print and non-print media. You will also learn about the
economic impact that art and related specialisations have on society.
CURRICULAM DESIGN COMMIITTEE
1. Prof. Anupa Pande, National Museum 5. Prof. S. N. Vikas, College of Fine Arts,
Institute, National Museum, Janpath, New JNAFA University, Hyderabad,
Delhi Telangana
2. Prof. B. S. Chauhan, College of Art, 20- 6. Dr. Lakshaman Prasad, School of
22, Tilak Marg, New Delhi Performing and Visual Arts, IGNOU,
3. Prof. Kiran Sarna, Department of Visual New Delhi
Arts, Banasthali University, Banasthali, 7. Dr. Mohd. Tahir Siddiqui, School of
Rajasthan Performing and Visual Arts, IGNOU,
4. Prof. Madan Singh Rathore, Department New Delhi
of Visual Arts, M. L. Sukhadia Chairperson & Convener
University, Udaipur, Rajasthan Prof. Sunil Kumar, School of Performing
and Visual Arts, IGNOU, New Delhi

PROGRAMME COORDINATOR(S) BLOCK PREPARATION TEAM

Dr. Mohd. Tahir Siddiqui, SOPVA, IGNOU, Contributor(s)


New Deli Unit 1 Dr. Rimsy Chopra
Unit 2 College of Art, Delhi
Unit 3
EDITORIAL TEAM &
Unit 4
Content Editor Format
Prof. Sunil Kumar, School of Performing and Visual Arts, IGNOU, New Delhi
Format Editor
Prof. Sunil Kumar, School of Performing and Visual Arts, IGNOU, New Delhi

PRODUCTION

@ Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2021


ISBN-
All right reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.
Further information about the School Of Performing and visual Arts and the Indira Gandhi National
Open University courses may be obtained from the University’s office at Maidan Garhi, New Delhi-
110068 or website: www.ignou.ac.in
Printed and published on behalf of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi by Registrar,
MPDD, IGNOU, Maidan Garhi, New Delhi.
UNIT 1 CONCEPT OF ART EDUCATION
Contents

1.1 Objectives
1.2 Learning outcomes
1.3 Introduction
1.4 Education: the learning
1.5 Theories on Education
1.5.1 Cognitive learning theory
1.5.2 Behaviourism learning theory
1.5.3 Constructivism learning theory.
1.5.4 Humanism learning theory
1.5.5 Connectivism learning theory

1.6 Institutionalization of Education


1.7 Art and Education
1.8 Art as learning
1.9 Let us Sum Up
1.10 Check Your Progress
1.11 Reference and Suggested Readings
__________________________________________________________________________

1.1 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit we will be able to


 develop understanding of the learning process in the human being.
 develop historical perspective of communication skill through art.
 develop the concept of art and education.
 Understand that how education became formal from non-formal and institutionalized.

1.2 LEARNING OUTCOMES

After having studied this unit, you will be able to:


 Describe the different methods of acquiring knowledge from ancient period.
 Explain the different theories of education.
 Understand and Relate Art as a learning process.
 Able to outline the history and beginning of expression for communication.
 Determine the development of education system.
 Analyse the development of art as a cognitive curricular area.

1.3 INTRODUCTION

Learning is an approach in which the learner builds up his or her own knowledge by
observing and doing individually and in group. The true knowledge is supposed to be
acquired by observing, understanding and interacting or sharing. Since primitive pre-literate
societies, knowledge was achieved through demonstration and copying as the young learned
from their elders.
The Bhimbetka rock shelters believed to be of the Mesolithic period, exhibit the creative
works as expressions for communication that traces the earliest human life in India. Similar
kinds of evidences are available across the globe. A number of analyses suggest that some of
these shelters were inhabited by humans for more than 100,000 years. Executed mainly in red
and white with the occasional use of green and yellow, the paintings depict the lives and
times of the people who lived in the caves, including scenes of childbirth, communal dancing
and drinking, religious rites and burials, as well as indigenous animals, the purpose may
remain to communicate, spread knowledge to educate the next generations. The creative
expression played a great role in learning. The human took inspiration from nature and their
magical expression strengthened communication. They freely drew on available surface to
convey their message. The better way of their artistic representation can be witnessed in the
form of visual presentation a sequences for a story or narrative.

The other way is the traditional method where the traditional knowledge was expressed
through stories, legends, folklore, rituals, and songs, without the need for a writing system.
Tools to aid this process include poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration. These
methods were illustrative or orality. The stories thus preserved are also referred to as part of
an oral tradition. In ancient India, the Vedas were learnt by repetition of various forms of
recitation. By means of memorization, they were passed down through many generations.
Story-telling continued from one generation to the next. The mode of communication from
gesture or sound developed into symbols. Besides painting on the walls, they also used piling
up of stones as reminder of an incident, story or something they wanted to communicate
information or knowledge to next generation. These cairns also served a purpose of
landmark, which still is in practice as seen on the road sides. The word cairn comes from
the Scottish Gaelic: càrn. Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes,
from prehistoric times to the present.

1.4 EDUCATION: THE LEARNING

The ability to learn is innate possession of humans and animals and there is also evidence for
some kind of learning or adoption in some plants. Some learning is immediate, induced by a
single event e.g. a sudden shock, but much skill and knowledge accumulates from repeated
experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime. Human learning begins
well before birth and continues until demise as a consequence of ongoing interactions
between person and environment. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious
awareness. There is evidence for human learning initially from parents and later through
playing.
As stated earlier the Learning is a process of acquiring new understanding and knowledge.
The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines and robotics. This
process is also found in certain plants. The learning in human learning starts at birth and
continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their
environment. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. Habitation
played an important role and changed the process of learning and learning became
institutionalised and structured. As cultures began to extend their knowledge expended
beyond skills which was readily learned through imitation. Now new information needed to
be taught hence formal education developed. This Education became the process of
facilitating learning for the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits.
Educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion and directed
research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, however learners
can also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and
any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be
considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

Education has been described as the initiation of the pupil into a world that the adult believes
to be worthwhile. However, this could be described as a philosophical statement; the
psychologist might say that education is a process of being able to come to terms with
oneself in relation to the environment; the sociologist might say that education is a reaction
of individuals and groups within a place that we call a school. This unit presents various
accepted wisdom about the background and origin of acquiring knowledge through formal
and non-formal means of learning. There are several views expressed by various scholars
based on historical evidences and as well as written texts. It is interesting to note that there
are universal processes of intellect enrichment.

Knowledge is a process of getting awareness, or understanding of someone or something,


such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or
education by perceiving, discovering, or learning. The ability to learn is innate possession of
humans and animals and there is also evidence for some kind of learning or adoption in some
plants. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event e.g. a sudden shock, but much
skill and knowledge accumulates from repeated experiences. The changes induced by
learning often last a lifetime. Human learning begins well before birth and continues until
demise as a consequence of ongoing interactions between person and environment. Learning
may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. There is evidence for human
learning initially from parents and later through playing.

Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes. During learning the


involvement of mind for processing of thinking and reasoning to perceive is termed as
cognitive ability or learning. The word cognition comes from the Latin verb cognosco,
‗know‘; meaning ‗to conceptualize‘ or ‗to recognize‘. Cognition is a word that dates back to
the 15th century, when it meant ―thinking and awareness‖. With acquired perceived
knowledge the grown learner look forward for formal education from the school.
1.5 THEORIES ON EDUCATION

Learning theories are abstract frameworks that describe how students absorb, process, and
retain knowledge during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as
well as prior experience, all play a part in how understanding, or a world view, is acquired or
changed and knowledge and skills retained. Plato (428 BC–347 BC) proposed the question:
How does an individual learn something new when the topic is brand new to that person?
This question may seem trivial; however, think of a human like a computer. Plato answered
his own question by stating that knowledge is present at birth and all information learned by
a person is merely a recollection of something the soul has already learned previously, which
is called the Theory of Recollection or Platonic epistemology.

Plato says that if one did not previously know something, then they cannot learn it. He
describes learning as a passive process, where information and knowledge are ironed into the
soul over time. However, Plato's theory elicits even more questions about knowledge: If we
can only learn something when we already had the knowledge impressed onto our souls, then
how did our souls gain that knowledge in the first place? Plato's theory can seem convoluted;
however, his classical theory can still help us understand knowledge today. John
Locke (1632–1704) offered an answer to Plato's question as well. John Locke offered the
"blank slate" theory where humans are born into the world with no innate knowledge. He
recognized that something had to be present, however. This something, to John Locke,
seemed to be "mental powers". Locke viewed these powers as a biological ability the baby is
born with, similar to how a baby knows how to biologically function when born. So as soon
as the baby enters the world, it immediately has experiences with its surroundings and all of
those experiences are being transcribed to the baby's "slate".
According to Gestalt theory, instead of obtaining knowledge from what's in front of us, we
often learn by making sense of the relationship between what's new and old. Because we
have a unique perspective of the world, humans have the ability to generate their own
learning experiences and interpret information that may or may not be the same for someone
else. Gestalt psychologists criticize behaviourists for being too dependent on overt behaviour
to explain learning. They propose looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt
views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labelled cognitive
theories. Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: that the memory system is
an active organized processor of information and that prior knowledge plays an important
role in learning. Gestalt theorists believe that for learning to occur, prior knowledge must
exist on the topic. When the learner applies their prior knowledge to the advanced topic, the
learner can understand the meaning in the advanced topic, and learning can occur. Cognitive
theories look beyond behaviour to consider how human memory works to promote learning,
and an understanding of short term memory and long term memory is important to educators
influenced by cognitive theory. They view learning as an internal mental process
including insight, information processing, memory and perception, where the educator
focuses than the environment.
Another theory the Constructivism founded by Jean Piaget, emphasizes the importance of the
active involvement of learners in constructing knowledge for themselves. Students are
thought to use background knowledge and concepts to assist them in their acquisition of
novel information. On approaching such new information, the learner faces a loss of
equilibrium with their previous understanding, and this demands a change in cognitive
structure.
Another Theorist Wilhelm Wundt emphasized the notion of what he called introspection:
examining the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be
careful to describe his or her feelings in the most objective manner possible in order for
Wundt to find the information scientific. Though Wundt's contributions are by no means
minimal, modern psychologists find his methods to be quite subjective and choose to rely on
more objective procedures of experimentation to make conclusions about the human
cognitive process.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the
function and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in
which he constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of non-existent words, for instance EAS.
He then examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose
non-words as opposed to real words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on
what the words might symbolize, thus enabling easier recollection of them. Ebbinghaus
observed and hypothesized a number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn
and recall the non-words he created. One of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of
time between the presentation of the list of stimuli and the recitation or recall of same.
Ebbinghaus was the first to record and plot a ―learning curve‖ and a ―forgetting curve‖. His
work heavily influenced the study of serial position and its effect on memory, discussed in
subsequent sections.
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was an influential American pioneer in the realm of
psychology. Her work also focused on the human memory capacity. A common theory,
called the recency effect, can be attributed to the studies that she conducted. The recency
effect, also discussed in the subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to
be able to accurately recollect the final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Calkin's
theory is closely related to the aforementioned study and conclusion of the memory
experiments conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus.
William James (1842–1910) is another pivotal figure in the history of cognitive science.
James was quite discontent with Wundt‘s emphasis on introspection and Ebbinghaus' use of
nonsense stimuli. He instead chose to focus on the human learning experience in everyday
life and its importance to the study of cognition. James' most significant contribution to the
study and theory of cognition was his textbook Principles of Psychology that preliminarily
examines aspects of cognition such as perception, memory, reasoning, and attention.

Five There are five educational learning theories that educators utilizes to help them enhance
their classroom and make it a better learning environment for all learners.
1.5.1 COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

Mental processes are an important part in understanding how we learn. The cognitive
learning theory looks at the way people think. The cognitive theory understands that learners
can be influenced by both internal and external elements. Plato and Descartes are two of the
first philosophers that focused on cognition and how human beings to think. Many other
researchers looked deeper into the idea of how we think, spurring more research. Jean Piaget
is a highly important figure in the field of cognitive psychology, and his work focuses on
environments and internal structures and how they impact learning. The cognitive theory has
developed over time, breaking off into sub-theories that focus on unique elements of learning
and understanding. At the most basic level, the cognitive theory suggests that internal
thoughts and external forces are both an important part of the cognitive process. And as
students understand how their thinking impacts their learning and behaviour, they are able to
have more control over it.

The cognitive learning theory impacts students because their understanding of their thought
process can help them learn. Teachers can give students opportunities to ask questions, to
fail, and think out loud. These strategies can help students understand how their thought
process works, and utilize this knowledge to construct better learning opportunities.

1.5.2 BEHAVIOURISM LEARNING THEORY


The behaviourism learning theory is the idea that how a learner behaves is based on their
interaction with their environment. It suggests that behaviours are influenced and learned
from external forces rather than internal forces. Psychologists have been working on the idea
of behaviourism since the 19th century. Behavioural learning theory is the basis for
psychology that can be observed and quantified. Positive reinforcement is a popular element
of behaviourism—classical conditioning observed in Pavlov‘s dog experiments suggests that
behaviours are directly motivated by the reward that can be obtained.

1.5.3 CONSTRUCTIVISM LEARNING THEORY


The constructivism learning theory is based on the idea that learners actually create their own
learning based on their previous experience. Students take what they are being taught and
add it to their previous knowledge and experiences, creating a unique reality that is just for
them. This learning theory focuses on learning as an active process, personal and unique for
each learner.

1.5.4 HUMANISM LEARNING THEORY


Humanism is very closely related to constructivism. Humanism directly focuses on the idea
of self-actualization. Everyone functions under a hierarchy of needs. Self-actualization is at
the top of the hierarchy of needs—it is the brief moments where one feel all of their needs are
met and that one the best possible version of oneself. Everyone is striving for this, and our
learning environment can either move toward meeting our needs or away from meeting our
needs.
1.5.5 CONNECTIVISM LEARNING THEORY
Connectivism is one of the newest educational learning theories. It focuses on the idea that
people learn and grow when they form connections. This can be connections with each other,
or connections with their roles and obligations in their life. Hobbies, goals, and people can all
be connections that influence learning.

1.6 INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF EDUCATION

As various writing scripts or systems developed across the world in ancient civilizations, in
India the earlier oral tradition of transition gave way to the written words. Sanskrit arose in
South Asia as sacred language of Hindu philosophy of ancient India as Indo-Aryan scripture
during 2nd millennium BCE- 600 BCE known as Vedic period. The historic text of Buddhism
and Jainism refined to classical Sanskrit during 700 BCE – 1350 BCE. Later text are written
in other scripts like Brahmic and Devanagri.

Image 1: Jain astronomical work Suryaprajnapti Sutra on paper, Western India, ca. 1500, in Devanagri script.
Source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/63/1b/b8/631bb8b663a5104f4a96d8722b5feaef.jpg

In India the highly formalized methods of learning at Gurukula (गुरुकु ल) was taking place.
Gurukula is a type of residential schooling system in ancient India with shishya (students)
living near or with the guru, in the same house. The guru-shishya tradition is a sacred one
in Hinduism and appears in other religious groups in India, such as Jainism,
Buddhism and Sikhism. The word Gurukula is a combination of the Sanskrit word guru
(teacher or master) and kula (family or home).

The Gurukula system of education has been in existence since ancient times. The Gurukula's
were supported by public donations. This was followed by the many following Vedic
thoughts making Gurukula one of the earliest forms of public school centers. This system
helped inspire the establishment of large teaching institutions such as Taxila, Nalanda, and
Vikramashiola which are often characterized as India's early universities. Nalanda flourished
under the patronage of the Gupta Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries and later under Harsha,
the emperor of Kannauj.

Image 2: The Mohra Muradu monastery at Taxila, 2nd CE, Kushan period, now modern-day Pakistan.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/MohraMuraduMainStupa.JPG.

At its peak, the school attracted scholars and students from near and far with some travelling
from Tibet, China, Korea, and Central Asia. Much of our knowledge of Nalanda comes from
the writings of pilgrim monks from East Asia such as Xuanzang and Yijing who travelled to
the Mahavihara in the 7th century. All students at Nalanda studied Mahayana as well as the
texts of the eighteen (Hinayana) sects of Buddhism. Their curriculum also included other
subjects such as the Vedas, logic, Sanskrit grammar, medicine and Samkhya.
Image 3: Remains of Nalanda Mahavihara, 3rd century BCE-13th century CE, Bihar
Source: https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/thumbs/site_1502_0010-750-0-20160616154106.jpg

Nalanda was very likely ransacked and destroyed by an army of the Mamluk Dynasty of the
Delhi Sultanate under Bakhtiyar Khilji in c. 1200 CE. While some sources note that the
Mahavihara continued to function in a makeshift fashion for a while longer, it was eventually
abandoned and forgotten until the 19th century when the site was surveyed and preliminary
excavations were conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Nalanda continued to be the seat of learning during the Mauryan, Gupta and Pala Dynasties.
The post-Gupta period saw a long succession of kings who continued building at Nalanda
―using all the skill of the sculptor‖. At some point, a king of central India built a high wall
along with a gate around the now numerous edifices in the complex. Another monarch
possibly of the Maukhari dynasty) named Purnavarman who is described as ―the last of the
race of Ashoka –raja‖, erected an 80 ft (24 m) high copper image of Buddha to cover which
he also constructed a pavilion of six stages. Shakraditya is identified with the 5th-century CE
Gupta emperor, Kumaragupta I (r. c. 415 – c. 455 CE), whose coin has been discovered at
Nalanda.
The subjects taught at Nalanda covered every field of learning, and it attracted pupils and
scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Persia and Turkey. The library not only
collected religious manuscripts but also had texts on such subjects as grammar, logic,
literature, astrology, astronomy, and medicine. The Nalanda library must have had a
classification scheme which was possibly based on a text classification scheme developed by
the Sanskrit linguist, Panini.
In west, after the fall of Rome CE 476, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of
literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early
Middle Ages as centers of advanced education. Some of these establishments ultimately
evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europe's modern universities.
Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The
city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, became the successor to Athens as the
intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the
3rd century BCE.

Image 4: Plato‘s academy, mosaic, Pompeii, Naples, 100 BC to 100 AD


Collection: National Archaeological Museum of Naples

During the Middle Ages, Islamic science and mathematics flourished under the Islamic
caliphate which was established across the Middle East, extending from the Iberian
Peninsula in the west to the Indus in the east and to the Almoravid Dynasty and Mali
Empire in the south. The below mentioned Jame Mosque was built in the 15th century and
some rooms were added for educational purposes in the yard of the Mosque. In the
nineteenth century, the cells of the Mosque were destroyed due to expansion of A. Zeynalli
Street and road construction and just one of them remained in order to be used as a mosque
madrassa.
Image 5: Juma Mosque,12th c., (rebuilt 1899), Baku, Azerbaijan
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Juma_Mosque_of_Baku.jpg

The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and
appreciation of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg
developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The
European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts and
sciences spread out across the globe. With the advent of Islam in India the traditional
methods of education increasingly came under Islamic influence. Pre-Mughal rulers such as
Qutab-ud-din Aybak and other Muslim rulers initiated institutions which imparted religious
knowledge. Scholars such as Nizamuddin Auliya and Moinuddin Chishti became prominent
educators and established Islamic monasteries.
Image 6: Portrait of a young scholar, Mughal miniature by Mir Sayyid Ali, ca. 1550.

Islamic institution of education in India included traditional madrassas and maktabs which
taught grammar, philosophy, mathematics, and law influenced by the Greek traditions
inherited by Persia and the Middle East before Islam spread from these regions into India.
The education system under the rule of Akbar adopted an inclusive approach with the
monarch favouring additional courses: medicine, agriculture, geography, and texts from other
languages and religions, such as Patanjali‘s work in Sanskrit

The Mughals, in fact, adopted a liberal approach to sciences and as contact with Persia
increased the more intolerant Ottoman school of maqul education came to be gradually
substituted by some relaxed maqul school. By the fall of Mughal Empire in India the
indigenous system was replaced by another education system, introduced from early time to
British colonial era. British education became solidified into India as missionary schools
were established during the 1820s. New policies in 1835 gave rise to the use of English as the
language of instruction for advanced topics.

1.7 ART AND EDUCATION

In the setup of formal education system the knowledge is imparted through a set of curricular
areas and each has a defined curriculum. Similar to disciplines like science and mathematics,
art is a domain for skilled expression and creation. Art is the process or product of
deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to intellect, sense or emotion adding to
knowledge. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of
expression, including dance, music, theatre and literature. The meaning of art is explored in a
branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

During the Romantic period (1800-1890), art came to be seen as ―a special faculty of the
human mind to be classified with religion and science‖. Though the definition of what
constitutes art is debated and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of
imaginative or technical skill stemming from human and creation. The nature of art and
related concepts, such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy
known as aesthetics. Few modern scholars have been more divided than Plato and Aristotle
on the question concerning the importance of art, with Aristotle strongly supporting art in
general and Plato generally being opposed to its relative importance. Several dialogues in
Plato tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not
rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness like drunkenness,
eroticism, and dreaming in the Phaedrus (265a–c), and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw
Homer's great poetic art and laughter as well.

For some scholars, such as Kant, the sciences and the arts could be distinguished by taking
science as representing the domain of knowledge and the arts as representing the domain of
the freedom of artistic expression. Later a more recent, sense of the word art as an
abbreviation for creative art or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. Fine art refers to a
skill used to express the artist's creativity, or to engage the audience's aesthetic sensibilities,
or to draw the audience towards consideration of more refined or finer work of art. Art as we
generally understand is a European invention barely two hundred years old. In India the word
kala appears in Rigveda ―यथा कलाां यथा शफां मथऋणां स नयामसस‖ (8.47.16) and later in Natyashastra
―न तज्झानां न तसछिल्पां न सा सिधा न सा कला‖ ( ..there is nothing like knowledge, nothing like
architecture, nothing like education, nothing like art). The word art (कला) has a mention and
numbers in various Indian literatures like 86 in Lalit Vistar, 64 in Kamasutra of Vatsyayan,
72 in Prabandhkosh and 64 in Jain and Budha manuscripts.

When we traces the evidences of creative expressions we find numerous examples produced
in preliterate, pre-historical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history,
and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of
record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another culture that has, and that makes
some record of major historical events. Some archaeologists have interpreted certain Middle
Paleolithic artifacts as early examples of artistic expression.
Image 7: A lying antelope or gazelle, Rock carving, 5000-3900 BP, Tin Taghirt Algeria.
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Sleeping_Antelope_Tin_Taghirt.jpg

Image 8: A man with a bird head and bison, Palaeolithic, Lascaux Caves, France
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lascaux_01.jpg
Further, depictional art from the Upper Palaeolithic period broadly 40,000 to 10,000 years
ago includes cave painting at Chauvet, Altamira, Pech Merle, and Lascaux) and portable art:
Venus figurines like the Venus of Willendorf, as well as animal carvings like the Swimming
Reindeer, Wolverine pendant of Les Eyzies, and several of the objects known as bâtons de
commandment.

Image 9: Bradshaw rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley, Western Australia

From earliest times, the natives of Australia, often known as Aborigines, have been creating
distinctive patterns of art. They are usually dated to be around 17,000 years old, and there
have been suggestions they are as much as 70,000 years old Much of Aboriginal art is
transitory, drawn in sand or on the human body to illustrate a place, an animal totem, or a
tribal story. Early surviving artworks of the Aborigines are mostly rock paintings. Many are
called X-ray paintings because they show the bones and organs of the animals they depict.
In India the Bhimbetka rock shelters are prehistoric Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, as
well as the historic period. It exhibits the earliest traces of human life on the Indian
subcontinent and evidence of Stone Age starting at the site in Acheulian times. It consists of
seven hills and over 750 rock shelters distributed over 10 kilometres.
Image 9: Bhimbetka rock painting, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India

As the societies developed and expended new civilizations appeared and Asia was the cradle
for several significant civilizations, most notably those of China and South Asia. The
learning of human continued and knowledge of understanding grew as they used fire and
started to grow food for their livelihood. The mode of communication from gesture or sound
developed into symbolic and later into a phonetic language which is for transforming
knowledge from one generation to another.

1.8 ART AS LEARNING


As discussed earlier art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual expressions,
which intends to appreciate beauty in nature and expressing its emotional power. In their
most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art,
and the aesthetic dissemination of art. Earlier men made pile of stones as a story or landmark
or a memory reminder. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn. Cairns have
been and are used for a broad variety of purposes, from prehistoric times to the present.
Image 10: Cairn, boundary of Counties Durham and Northumberland UK and a Stupa, India

Art functions in human life in many nameless ways. In all culture every child, every man,
gives form to its feelings and ideas through art. Art is the essence of that which is human; it
is the embodiment of the human experience and goal. From the moment in our history when
man became distinguishable as man, art was the mark that distinguished him, and ever since,
man has continued to be an artful creature. The art act and object provide constant evidence
and demonstration of the human act and objective. The importance of art in the development
of human knowledge and sensitivity in the society is was felt by Plato, when he maintained
that art should form the basis of all education, made no extravagant claim. By art he meant
poetry, music, drama, dancing, painting and sculpture. All these arts possess certain
characteristics in common. They are form, rhythm, harmony and balance.

Art pervades every sphere of our life. Without architectural design our city would have
reduced to log cabins. Without sculptural design we would have no monuments or no coined
money. Without pictorial art no mural decorations, no pictures, no illustrations, no
illuminated advertisements, no paper money or postage stamps would be possible. In short,
without these arts we would be reduced to the crudities of the primitive man. Demonstration
of art is not for professional purposes but for life; not to make artists, but intelligent
appreciators of the beauty; not to make furniture, but to be able to choose them; not to paint
pictures, but to be able to enjoy them. Art programs within education have its importance in
not only expanding the mind but keeping kids off the streets and out of the correctional
system. Studies show that students with art programs are three times more likely to graduate
than those who don't. Art provides opportunities somewhere to express themselves if they
don't have the support to do that at home, it also gets them to think creatively and
inventively, expanding a kids way of thinking in general.
Most of our misconceptions of art arise from a lack of consistency in the use of the words art
and beauty. It might be said that we are only consistent in our misuse of them. We always
assume that all that is beautiful is art, or that all art is beautiful, that what is not beautiful is
not art, and that ugliness is the negation of art. This identification of art and beauty is at the
bottom of all our difficulties in the appreciation of art, and even in people who are acutely
sensitive to aesthetic impressions in general, this assumption acts like an unconscious censor
in particular cases when art is not beauty. For art is not necessarily beauty: that cannot be
said too often or too blatantly.

Art is an effective tool of the process of learning and growing. The Roman philosopher
Plotinus considered the artist to be a divine intermediary between man and God; he
maintained that the artist is the voice of divinity. This concept must have been derived, in
part, from observing that the artist's sensitivities enable him to probe beneath, the purely
mechanical explanations of realities to achieve experiences and understandings that cannot
be obtained by purely rational means. In achieving and expressing this profound under-
standing, the artist engages in processes of art activity that involve the pleasure of the
aesthetic experience. The labour of the artist is a labour of love. When it does not involve
pleasure, the labour of art loses much of its meaning, its scope of sensation, and its
inspirational exhilaration. A completed art activity provides a kind of revelation available by
no other means.

Therefore, Art is an intense expression of creativity that educated. The idea that art teaching
is concerned with the promotion of response to sensory experience in the context of
individual development has often failed to reach those who determine the priorities and
structure of the curriculum in schools. This central idea has also been diluted by the
introduction of other issues such as the transmission of culture, questions of taste, and the
role of the artist in society. This dilution of the reasons for teaching art has damaged its status
as a subject.

1.9 LET US SUM UP

The journey began from caves well before the existence of structured alphabets. The
knowledge was achieved through visuals or sounds that had some meaning for
communication. This demonstration was copied or imitated by the young learners which
continued till the existence of structured instructions. At later stages they received instruction
of a more structured and formal nature, imparted by people not necessarily related, in the
context of initiation, religion or ritual. Some forms of traditional knowledge were expressed
through stories, legends, folklore, rituals, and songs, without the need for a writing system.
These methods were illustrative or purely oral.

The art and education co-existed since the earliest prehistory, as adults trained the young of
their society in skills they would need to master and eventually pass on. The mode of
communication from gesture or sound developed into symbolic. For transforming knowledge
from one generation to another they made pile of stones termed cairn as a story or landmark
or a memory reminder. As the culture and societies expanded and spread over, the formal
education system developed. In west Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first
institution of higher learning in Europe. In Asia the highly formalized methods of learning at
Gurukula (गुरुकु ल) was taking place a type of residential schooling system in ancient India
with shishya (students) living near or with the guru, in the same house.

If, therefore, we are to give a more important place to art in the general system of
education, and if we are to cultivate the arts deliberately and for their own sake, we
shall find it necessary to challenge that rational philosophy of life which Plato so
eloquently advocated. To comprehend the role which art plays in our total design we must
decide, therefore, what it is that we want our children to achieve. Today there are two
varying trends, two discreet propositions, tending to create what in essence is a false
dichotomy: specialized training vs. liberal education. Recognition of this is necessary to
understand the special problems of art education. The creative art education is not a training
of skills, such as learning ‗how‘ to paint or draw, but an essential part of experiencing the
process.

1.10 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Question 1: What do you understand by term Art and Education ?


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Question 2: Explain the Platonian theory of education.
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Question 3: What is learning theory? Mention their names.


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Question 4: In India What was the setup of formal education system?


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Question 5: What are the five educational learning theories used for the learning
environment for all students?
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Question 6: How the mode of communication developed from gestures to symbolic?


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1.11 REFERENCE AND SUGGESTED READINGS

 Appreciation of Art ; K.K. Jeswani; Atma Ram and Sons, Delhi;1965


 Approaches to Art in Education; Laura H. Chapman; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Publishers , New york;1978
 Approaches to Art in Education. Chapman, Laura H. New York:Harcourt Blace
JovanovichINC,1978.
 Art Criticism and Education ;Theodore F. Wolff and Geogre Geahigan; University of
Illinois Press ,Chicago;1997
 Art Education & National Integration. Ramesh, G. New Delhi(India):South Asian
Publishers,1993.
 Art Education: A Critical Necessity; Albert William Levi and Ralph A. Smith;
University of Illinois Press ,Urbana;1997
 Art in Art. Om Prakash Sharma, Abhinav Publications, India 1994.
 Art in Education; K.K. Jeswani, Atma Ram and Sons, Delhi;1967
 Art in the school room. Keiler, Manfred L. Lincoln(USA):University of Nebraska
Press,1955.
 Education for Creativity : A Resource book for teacher educators ;NCERT , Delhi;1995
 Teaching and Appreciation of art in schools. K.K. Jeswani, Atmaram and Sons,1958.
 The Art in Education and Curriculum Research. Tickle, Les. London, Croom helm,1987.
 The Art in teaching Art. Keiler, Manfred L. Lincoln(USA): University of Nebraska
Press,1961.
 The Story of Indian Art; Dr. S.K. Bhattacharya; Atma Ram and Sons, Delhi;1966
 The Three Faces of Art. Cirici, Alexandre. Gopinathan, S. Singapore, Federal
Publications,1977.
UNIT 2 KNOWING ART EDUCATION
Contents

2.1 Objectives
2.2 Learning Outcomes
2.3 Introduction
2.4 Why Art?
2.5 Art – according to Plato
2.6 Functionality of art
2.7 Art – a visual perception
2.8 Planned approach
2.9 Let us Sum Up
2.10 Check Your Progress
2.11 Reference and Suggested Readings
___________________________________________________________________________

2.1 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit you will be able to


 Know the art as philosophy.
 Know the different theories of art.
 Understand the visual perception of art and its function.
 Understand the importance of planning in art education.

2.2 LEARNING OUTCOMES

After having studied this unit, you will be able to:


 Explain the philosophy behind art.
 Identify the art theories including Plato‘s theory.
 Explain the visual perception.
 Analyse the functional role of art
 Determine the planning for art education.

2.3 INTRODUCTION

Individuals in all culture create form for its feelings and ideas through art. Art is the essence
of that which is human; it is the embodiment of the human experience and goal. From the
moment in our history when man became distinguishable as man, art was the mark that
distinguished him, and ever since, man has continued to be an artful creature. The art act and
object provide constant evidence and demonstration of the human act and objective. There
are different thoughts for the term ‗art‘ among adult and children. To understand the notion
better we have to look in the perspective of adult notions about art. There are many opinions
about the nature of the subject that lie within these statements. What indeed is art? Dictionary
definitions describe it as something that is to do with an aesthetic idea or something
concerned with acquiring a skill. If one is going to describe it as something that is concerned
with an aesthetic idea, immediately one has got to ask the question ‗aesthetic to whom? Is it
for the viewer or to the artist?' Or indeed can a work of art be described as a thing that exists
in its own right with no reference to anyone?

2.4 WHY ART?

When the word ―Art‖ is mentioned the first thing that comes to our mind is a painting or
sculptures, though, it is a narrow conception of art. Plato, when he maintained that art should
form the basis of all education, made no extravagant claim. By art he meant poetry, music,
drama, dancing, painting and sculpture. All these arts possess certain characteristics in
common. They are form, rhythm, harmony and balance, Indian literature has also talked
about it a lot and a brief about the advent of art have been explained in Unit 1.

Art functions in a society much as it functions in the life of an individual. It becomes the
emblem of a group, just as it is the mark of a single man. It is a universal and personal
implement with which men protect and liberate themselves. Art is a dynamic, ubiquitous
source which serves human need and manifests the human potential and pervades every
sphere of our life. Without architectural design our city would have reduced to wooden
boxes. Without sculptural design we would have no monuments or no coined money.
Without pictorial art no mural decorations, no pictures, no illustrations, no illuminated
advertisements, no paper money or postage stamps would be possible. The human race
would have been without celluloid and animated visual entertainment. In short, without these
aesthetic or arts we would be reduced to the crudities of the primitive man. Art is
an autonomous entity for philosophy, because art deals with the senses and art is as such free
of any moral or political purpose. Hence, the conception of art in aesthetics is: art
as knowledge and as action.

Hegel said that it is not possible to make art out of all things and that certain conditions
attach themselves to doing so. For instance, a tree must be capable of being painted, for the
subject matter must be appropriate to the kind of artificial form used to represent it. He also
says that the subject-matter of art must not be purely abstract and, finally, that the idea must
be as profound as the way in which it is presented. According to him a type of art represents
how closely the idea of subject and its realization is related. Symbolic art or early art is weak
in an idea and so misled by the process of making as to be mannered in a senseless way in
this case a mere concentration upon the decorative effect that the leaves may give to the tree.
Classical art having concerned with human form would be the perfect representation of the
tree, perfectly executed, and romantic art moves on from pure intellect to represent the
emotions of the artist as well. The tree would have a life of its own and the artist also would
be embodied in it. Hegel would go on to say that our 'tree' method of appreciation of the
situation makes nonsense because each type of art is concerned with different art forms. So
thinking of our one art form, painting is not a satisfactory model to base our analogy on. For
instance, symbolic art may be architecture, classical art may be sculpture, and romantic art
may be music and poetry. Each type could be any art form but is ideally fixed within a
prescribed pattern.

Another philosopher Schopenhauer believes that all things are beautiful if they are found to
be so by the person looking at them. Thus, in our case, the tree can be interpreted as being
worthy of art by the artist, who then in effect is pointing out this fact to the viewer. He
further says that our artist gets his, creative force from what he calls ‗the Will to Live‘. This
is removed from the cares of the day and is experience at a deeper level. He explains that,
contrary to the scientific analytical form of understanding concepts, if we contemplate our
tree in an individual-enough manner, really sinking our feelings in doing so, it will come to
have meaning and explain to us the 'treeness of tree' in a very personal way. This idea of an
encouraged truth is one that is very powerful visual and indeed may be found in the present
thinking of many art practitioners.

2.5 ART – ACCORDING TO PLATO

Plato's theory of art has given rise to different understanding. Which is based on a
threefold vision of reality; so, as we have already seen, is Freud‘s. It may be that a
comparison of the two systems is fantastic, but let us try it. Plato distinguishes three
orders or grades of objects: first, the absolute and eternal form, wholly real and wholly
intelligible; secondly, the perceptible object, copied from the form; and thirdly, the
work of art, copied from the object. To these three degrees of reality correspond three
degrees of knowledge, so that the order of knowledge embodied in a work of art is
merely a reflection of the perceptual knowledge, embodied in that rough and ready
notion of reality which we gain from our everyday experience.

If, therefore, we are to give a more important place to art in the general system of
education, and if we are to cultivate the arts deliberately and for their own sake, we
shall find it necessary to challenge that rational philosophy of life which Plato so
eloquently advocated. Art can and should be an experience shared by all men every day of
their lives; this does not mean that all men must, be painters, architects, authors, composers,
nor does it mean that men must spend all their evenings in theatres and concert halls. Rather,
it means that man‘s innate sensitivities to the arts must be allowed to develop, and, by early
encouragement and education, must be given opportunity for growth so that the whole man
can emerge.

The art experience encompass all forms of involvement with art: the production of works of
art on the part of the professional artist, the primitive craftsman, the layman, the child, as
well as the active appreciation of art on the part of the universal art audience which looks at,
listens to, reads and uses the work of art with personal interest, understanding and love. The
ultimate dimension of the art experience is that which enables each man to become aware of
the aesthetic of his own environment, brings to his attention the endless excitement of form
and colour, the richness of texture, the force, rhythm and sound of human interaction, the
poetry of nature and man.

2.6 FUNCTIONALITY OF ART


Art functions in man's life in many nameless ways. In any analysis of the role of art in human
existence, one can only attempt to describe those qualities of the art experience that appear,
at a specific moment in time and space, to be of particular value to man. Each individual,
each culture, each age, will arrive at different points of emphasis according to its own need
and history. It is even true that a work of art produced to satisfy one human need in one
period of time can function in an entirely different way in another culture. The best one can
do when one hopes to verbally clarify and classify the functions of art, is to attempt to single
out those ways in which art seems to be of significant value to human existence and
development at a particular moment. Other men in other times and places have described and
will continue to describe the functions of art differently, for art, like man, is ever changing.

Art discovers, heightens, and refines life experiences; it brings our emotions to our attention
and makes us fully feel them. Art is a selection and examination of the physical and social
world in order that we may apprehend in ideal simplicity the selected properties and values
usually evident only incomprehensibly, if at all, in ordinary experience. Art serves to clarify
our feelings. Until we express emotions we do not know what they are. The artist's vision,
both analytic and panoramic, makes noticeable at once the parts and the whole.

The work of art sums up and reflects the discoveries the artist has made about his
environment and about himself. For the child, as for the man, art is a way of discovery which
leads to new understanding of the physical world in which he lives and of the self; it gives
new meaning and significant form to his life. It deals with the emotional realm of men and
supplies stimulus for their capacity to feel and react through sentiment. As art experience
sharpens and rewards the senses, and thus it develops all human faculties.

Art expression enables men to see themselves and communicate with him/her self for it gives
voice to the self. The artist's product makes the men unique as much as his/her thumb-print as
signature to single him/her out. The artist does not deal in categories but in particulars, and
s/he deals directly with them. This individuation of experience, of emotion, is made possible
through art. All races in all ages have produced their own distinctive art. It is to such
sources that we turn in evaluating their cultures. The rise and fall of a culture are
reflected accurately and eloquently in the artifacts that it leaves. When we
thoughtlessly eliminate the arts from our schools, there has to be some compelling,
underlying social reason. It is a comment on the value that we place on creative
self-expression within our society. If we perceive art as the means by which the
individual can state his/her claim to individuality and his/her rejection of
regimentation, then for a society to reject art has a dangerous significance.

Despite the Indian philosophy of art, which listed sixty four arts on a totally non-hierarchical
basis, the colonial period radically transformed the general approach of the so-called
educated people in India. They imitated the Western standards and values in judging all art
forms. The division of art between fine and applied also channelled the best talents in the
direction of fine arts, especially painting and sculpture, which were mostly patronized by the
rich.

Unfortunately, the so-called modern education based on the educational foundations laid
during the colonial period is expediting the rapid extinction of these traditions. The faster the
growth of this system of education, the quicker will be the disappearance of traditional skills
and aesthetic standards, and the objects that are used by the people in their daily lives will
become uglier. In the course of time the beautiful objects which we still have around, will be
seen only in museums. But there too they will gradually wither away, for they are not, or
never were, made to last long.

The mentioned above should not be interpreted as plea only for the continuation of all the
traditional arts to the exclusion of any other development in artistic creation. Nor it is implied
here that everything traditional is of the highest aesthetic order. The purpose here is to
explore the dynamics that played their role in forming traditions that made the objects of
daily use, generally speaking, beautiful, and to discuss the role of education in making our
surroundings aesthetically healthy; also to equip ourselves with the capacity and discretion to
select beautiful things.

True art education not only makes the physical surroundings beautiful, it‘s more important
objective is to reach the deeper layers of the human heart. The artist studies nature to
understand its spirit and its rhythm and to feel oneness with it, so much so that gradually
everything develops into a relationship of friendship. Apart from this, art education aims at
providing activities for continuous self-expression and for constant self-realization, for
experiment with a diversity of material and for experience of beautiful things, for recreation
and for productive work done in the spirit of play, for freedom, for thought and opinion, for
mental and spiritual growth and for the training of the power of observation. All these
considerations offer contributions to the building up of a high standard of citizenship and to a
fuller enjoyment of the ‗good life‘, and same is the purpose of education. Art education has a
rich tradition and enough is known to make art a useful and necessary part of the education.

Vivekananda believed education is the manifestation of perfection already in men. He


believed, it a pity that the existing system of education do not enable a person to stand on his
own feet, nor do it teach him self-confidence and self-respect. Rabindranath Tagore was
primarily an educationist, he emphasized on 'naturalism' for framing educational model. In
education, freedom is the basic guiding force for inculcating interest within a student who
will derive inspiration from nature to pursue any branch of knowledge he likes. The
establishment of Shantiniketan fulfilled the desired goal of Tagore in the educational front.
Tagore's education marked a novel blending of the ideas of the East and West. The
spiritualism of Indian philosophy and progressive outlook of the western people were
blended together to give rise to an educational philosophy which marked its distinction in
comparison to other educationists of India.
He envisaged that nature is the best teacher to the pupil. Nature will provide the student with
necessary situation to earn knowledge. No pressure should be exerted upon the student to
learn anything. It is nature which will be the guiding force to inculcate the spirit of learning
in the mind of a student to pursue the education he likes. It will shape his behavior and
character. For the first time in the arena of education, Tagore established a new mile-stone.
With boldness and firmness, he rejected a book-centered education for students. To him it is
not just to confine the mind of boys and girls to text-books only. It will kill the natural
instincts of a student and make him bookish. It will kill his creative skill. Accordingly, he
preferred to give free choice to students to develop their interest in any field they like. To
him, education should be after the heart of a man. He explained freedom in three-categorized
ways i.e. freedom of heart, freedom of intellect and freedom of will.

Tagore laid emphasis on the practicality of education. That will definitely increase the
creative skill within a learner. That creativity will bring perfection in the learning process and
the student will be a master in his own field but not a slave to mere theoretical knowledge
which one delves deep place of fine arts like dance, drama, music, and poetry etc.

―I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little


children and making it the beginning of learning.‖
Gandhi

2.7 ART – A VISUAL PERCEPTION

There has been a time long debate about the effects of the visuals transmitted through eyes on
human perception. Different School of thoughts has defined their point of opinion from their
own perspective about the both. All have talked about Literary and Philosophical opinion on
aesthetics or beauty in visuals and performance. Judgments of beauty are sensory, emotional,
and intellectual all at once. Judgments of aesthetic value in visuals seem too often involve
many other kinds of issues as well and may be culturally conditioned to some extent.
Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later,
Edwardian audiences saw the same sculptures as being beautiful. Evaluations of beauty may
well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability. Thus, aesthetic judgments
might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture,
preferences, values, subconscious behaviour, conscious decision, training, instinct,
sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which
theory one employs. This holds true both in visual and performing expressions.

The visual we mean, an image in the mind, which is derived from Latin visus ―sight,‖
meaning "relating to vision" was first attested in c.1600. The noun meaning ―photographic
image or other visual display‖ is first recorded 1951 as per Cambridge English Dictionary.
The picture elements, as distinguished from the sound elements, in films, television,
performance or relating to the sense of sight are visual perception. This visual perception has
been a key performer since the beginning of human kind. The earliest man has been
communicating using signs to express his idea. This urged made him to draw on the rough
surfaces of rocks in the caves.

Art education is also concerned with enriching visual perception, with forming concepts that
are not based on word patterns, with imagination and imaginative problem-solving, with
communication and above all with finding out more about oneself. Coupled with this is the
awareness of the process of making things and the specific behaviour that is needed to
undertake the act of making things. This is not, of course, analyzed in the individual, but
nonetheless is known about if it has been experienced. Patterns of thought that are instigated
by the more manual processes are important pointers towards other ways of thinking. It has
been said that creative expression is only possible when it is carried out with no other
intention than the desire to create.

Art has always reflected the strengths and weaknesses of a culture. Domination becomes
evident not so much in the subject matter, but in the general weakness that erodes art as an
expressive language. One of the more recent examples of this was the empty posturing of art
under the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. The vital, expressive art of the previous decade
completely disappeared. Hence, art is capable of making concrete not only the history of
man, but also their emotions and feelings. It is capable of forging a link between past cultures
and our own. We recognize, however, that the art form that helps one individual to expand
his understanding of another discipline may not help the next person.

2.8 PLANNED APPROACH TO ART

The basis of art education needs rapid and in some cases radical changes. Many of these
changes have been brought about by the emergence of the open classroom and the humanistic
approach to education. We recognized the fact that art can be used to achieve a wide variety
of purposes-mental health, vocational and skill training, the development of general creative
abilities, concrete examples of ideas and artifacts for social studies; we considered the
qualities that only the visual arts can pro-vide to be its most prized contribution to the
education.

The fact is that neither the arts subjects nor the teachers have ever been taken seriously in the
education system ever. Such has been the reluctant conclusion of every major educational
policy or framework published since independence. Frequently, when art teachers are asked
to define their philosophy they suggest that much of their work is concerned with the
expression of feelings through the medium of art. This belief is complicated by the idea that
art education is also concerned with the transmission of social and cultural values from one
generation to another. This implies a need for a change of emphasis and direction in the place
of art within the education system.

As already discussed, art has inherent qualities of its own that are different from those of
others. The values of art have been known to mankind from the beginning of recorded
history. Some of the very earliest records that we have are art forms - for instance, the
drawings on the walls of prehistoric cave dwellings. Throughout the ages people of every
culture and era have found satisfactions and values in art expressions. At different times and
in different places art forms have expressed the spirit of the times and the needs of the
people.

Art has a unique capacity for interacting with human living. It interacts with, and become
part of the living and the thinking that is characteristic of children. When the art forms pro-
duced by children are childlike, when they represent the thoughts and feelings of children, we
have some reason to believe that they also have educational value. And art expression
becomes an educational contribution to one‘s everyday living. The most important resource
in art education is the learner with whom the teacher works. The special characteristics of
early age must be understood by the teacher in order to insure the effectiveness of the art
education pedagogy. Once the teacher has gained some understanding of learner, it may then
become possible for learner to know what useful educational relationships can exist between
learner and art.

Although a learner engaged in art activity uses knowledge previously acquired, their act of
making an art work is part of a process, a way of doing that is ever new because it is the
result of previous experience recombining with new experience to open new worlds of
knowing and understanding. The process of art activity is a process of doing and becoming;
and ―becoming‖ implies change, the forming of that which does not yet exist. Process grows
out of the forms of art that are natural for each phase in the growth of learner. We do know
that art is distinguishable according to levels of physical, emotional, and intellectual growth.
The art work of the kindergarten child is different in appearance from the art work of the
seventh or the eighth grader. These characteristics of child art will influence the nature of
need. For example, need in the kindergarten is not the same in quality as it is in the upper
grades. The need to manipulate materials in order to become familiar with environment
requires a different kind of emphasis in the kindergarten than in the upper grades.

Process in art education operates in a context consisting of children, their cultural character-
istics, and the classroom teaching situation. It is of special importance to us that the nature of
this context be given a definable form by means of specific teaching techniques. The way in
which processes of art activity operate within the context of the classroom is our immediate
concern. In art education, process and result are related. The way a thing is done is at least as
important as the thing accomplished. The result of the art activity, the work of child art,
becomes a part of the instability of learning and growing and art object becomes a symbol, a
marker, a sign of achievement or lack of it.

At school level the teacher must identify the ideas, themes or topics with reference to the
other curricular areas after discussing with other teachers. The teacher must make a wide
variety of suitable and locally available materials for art work. However, just giving children
opportunities to work with materials is not enough. Children need to learn how to relate
materials to thinking. They may learn to do this if the teacher makes it possible for them to
explore their surroundings and then makes it possible for them to discover how explorations
can be related to forms made with art materials. At higher education the liberty to choose
medium and free expression is required. The observation and discussion become a pivotal.

There must be a designated room or laboratory for doing art activities in the school. The
classroom should be organized in a way that will invite the children to become involved in
art activities. The teacher should plan the room so that tools and materials will be available
and easily accessible to the children. The classroom will invite art activity if it reflects the
work the children do. Work in progress as well as completed work needs to be seen
continuously, and the displays should change as the children's understandings and knowledge
change and grow. Art activity is an active learning process; it gains much of its strength from
the learner's direct involvement in processes of forming concepts into physical structures
with their hands. The process of art education has validity because it evolves out of the need
learner recognize or are helped to recognize with an emphasis of invention, imagination, the
organization of real experience, and the construction of forms that give added meaning to
learner‘s experiences and learning.

Although art education is most effective when it is planned in terms of the needs and
experiences learner knows about and can understand, it is also necessary that they draw
inspiration from the immediate environment itself. The organization of the classroom
provides the environment that helps to motivate the learner to activity. The classroom is
thought of as a workshop that pro videos children with opportunities to develop concepts and
understandings related to their own living and observation.

2.9 LET US SUM UP

Art pervades every sphere of our life. Without architectural design our city would have
reduced to wooden boxes. Without sculptural design we would have no monuments or no
coined money. Without pictorial art no mural decorations, no pictures, no illustrations, no
illuminated advertisements, no paper money or postage stamps would have been possible.
The human race would have been without celluloid and animated visual entertainment. In
short, without these aesthetic or arts we would be reduced to the crudities of the primitive
man. Art is the essence of that which is human; it is the embodiment of the human experience
and goal.

Plato, when he maintained that art should form the basis of all education, made no
extravagant claim. His theory of art is based on a threefold vision of reality. On the other
hand, Hegel says that it is not possible to make art out of all things and that certain conditions
attach themselves to doing so. Schopenhauer believes that all things are beautiful if they are
found to be so by the person looking at them. Art functions in man's life in many nameless
ways. In any analysis of the role of art in human existence, one can only attempt to describe
those qualities of the art experience that appear, at a specific moment in time and space, to be
of particular value to man. Each individual, each culture, each age, will arrive at different
points of emphasis according to its own need and history. Art is an autonomous entity
because art deals with the senses and art is as such free of any moral or political purpose.
Hence, the conceptions of art in aesthetics is as knowledge.

2.10 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Question No.1: What do you understand by the term ART ?


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Question No.2: Explain the theory of Art stated by Plato ?


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Question No.3: ‖Hegel said that it is not possible to make art out of all things‖? Explain the
given statement with example?
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Question No. 4: What is the role of Art as Function?


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Question No.5: Why Art is connected with Imagination , how it is visually perceived ?
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Question No.6: What are the various approaches which lead to effective Art Education?
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2.11 REFERENCE AND SUGGESTED READINGS

 Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Introduction to Aesthetics (Einführung in die Ästhetik),


Munich, Wilhelm Fink, 1995, p. 7.
 Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9.9.1828-20 -11.2010), usually referred to in English
as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all
time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War
and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.
 Creative teaching of art, The art in teaching art, Art education and national integration
 Creative teaching of art, The art in teaching art, Art education and national integration
 Diffey, T. J. (1985). Sydney, What is Art- Art and education, Plato‘s theory of art and
education.
 http://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/on-education/gandhi-views-on-education.php,
accessed on 14.01.2019
 http://www.preservearticles.com/201106238415/tagore-on-education.html, accessed on
14.01.2019
 Jeswani, K.K. (1958). India, Teaching and Appreciation of Art in Schools, Atma Ram &
Sons.
 Jeswani, K.K. (1958). India, Teaching and Appreciation of Art in Schools, Atma Ram &
Sons.
 Prasad, Devi. (1998). Art: The Basis of Education, New Delhi, India, National Book
Trust of India p.p. 1-2
 Steveni, Michael (1968). London, Art and Education, B. T. Batsford Ltd. Publications.
 Steveni, Michael (1968). London, Art and Education, B. T. Batsford Ltd. Publications.
 Steveni, Michael (1968). London, Art and Education, B. T. Batsford Ltd. Publications.
 Taher, Mohamed; Davis, Donald Gordon (1994). Librarianship and library science in
India: an outline of historical perspectives. New Delhi: Concept Pub.
Co. ISBN 8170225248.

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UNIT 3 ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF CHILD
Contents

3.1 Objectives
3.2 Learning Outcomes
3.3 Introduction
3.4 What is Child Art?
3.5 Theories on Child Art
3.5.1 The Schema- a conception in Child Art
3.5.2 Classification of children‘s drawings
3.6 Diverse Theories of Child Art
3.7 Schema or no schema in child art
3.7.1 Consideration by Size
3.7.2 Consideration by Dimension
3.7.3 Biological Principles
3.8 Let us Sum Up
3.9 Check Your Progress
3.10 Reference and Suggested Readings
__________________________________________________________________________

3.1 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit you will be able to


 Know the child art.
 Know the different theories related to child art.
 Understand the diverse theories of child art.
 Develop the understanding of schema or no schema in child art.

3.2 LEARNING OUTCOMES

After having studied this unit, you will be able to:


 Understand and explain Child art .
 Identify the different theories related to child art.
 Explain the diverse theories of child art.
 Able to classify the children‘s drawings .
 Analyse the Schema on the basis of Consideration by size, dimension and biological
principles.

3.3 INTRODUCTION

Art is an innate quality of human being. And the same is nurtured in time through senses and
experience since childhood. In the previous chapters we have discussed arts as a tool for
acquiring knowledge and the recommendations for art as curricular subject at school level in
various policies and educational frameworks. Now we examine the child art and see the way
that children develop and express their emotions through visual representations. To
understand this phenomenon we have to look at a variety of things. In the past, children‘s art
was considered to be a rather immature in compare to adult art. It was common to assume
that children were just not very good at a kind of activity that adults were able to do very
much better.

In contemporary educational thought, art is defined both as a body of knowledge and as a


developmental activity. Children are introduced to basic concepts in art and to methods of
inquiry that permit them to learn about the subject of art. At the same time, art educators are
committed to art experiences as a means of nurturing personal maturity. The processes of
creating art and of responding to visual forms develop the child's identity and openness to
experience. It is worth repeating that personal development through art is as important as
learning about art.

2.4 WHAT IS CHILD ART?

It was Franz Cizek from Vienna who popularized the term child art, already in 1905 Georg
Kerschensteiner, superintendent of the Munich schools had published a book, Die
Entwicklung der Zeichnerischen Begahung (The Development of the Graphic Gift), which
was the result of the examination of 3,00,000 drawings and pictures of 58,000 Munich
school children. Kerschensteiner pointed out the fact, surprising to most people at the time,
that the best work did not come from the children of artists, sculptors, architects, well-to-do
families and parents with high intellectual attainment in general, but mostly from children of
simple, even poor artisans. In 1928, Wulff, another German, said in his book The Art of the
Child: „The task of art teaching is to educate the average talent so far as it can be educated,
that is to represent : reality directly from perception as it is seen and not as merely imagined.‟
In 1922, G.F. Hartlaub wrote The Genius in Child and defended with great warmth the
child's urgent necessity to create, and analyzed many aspects of child art.

There was another German, Gustaf Britisch, who had a clear view of child art, which he
expressed in Theory of Pictorial Art (1931). His practical influence, though, was not very
great, and he and his disciple Kornmann faced much opposition. Franz Cizek used to say that
what Britisch and Kornmann had found mostly in theory was proved in his own fifty years of
practical work with children. Although Franz Cizek worked only in Vienna, his influence on
the British system of education of young children was significant. Next to the British were
the North Americans in introducing the concepts of child art in their early school
programmes.

However, when it was realized that the mind undergoes a process of gradual development, it
was also understood that perception ran hand in hand with this development and that it was
not possible to perceive more than one was able to understand. In this statement lies the clue
to understanding children‘s drawings. However it will not be appropriate to use the word art
at this stage. Very broadly, what we are looking at when we look at the work by a child is
evidence of various kinds of growth: social growth, physical growth, mental growth,
emotional growth and the growth of the personality, and also growth of representational
ability.

The young child has a unique ability to learn and to form an understanding of the world on its
own, by observation and by acting upon this observation. It is not easy to realize what a
powerful, yet gradual, process this is. The very young child is only interested in things that
immediately concern it for obvious reasons. Its life in many ways centres around very simple
things, such as mother, father, cold, warmth, hunger satisfied, simple ability to move and
respond, as well as the ability to evoke some kind of response in others by behaving in a
certain kind of way. Slowly the child‘s horizon broadens, along with the growing
understanding of the world. The need arises to grow ability to exist in this world. Much of
this understanding of the world and many of the experiences that a child has can be
represented in all kinds of ways. They are presented in play, speech, movement, and to a
certain extent in drawings which are merely simple forms generated by natural muscular
movements.
Within the context of this study, the term ‗mental growth‘ is used to mean the growing
power to perceive, and to understand what one perceives. Combined with this, because you
cannot really separate them, is the power to form concepts, especially spatial concepts, in the
context of children‘s drawings. Imagination is another important factor, and it might be
possible to argue that perception to a certain extent depends upon imagination as well as
formed concepts and memory. The powers of expression and the ability of the individual is
another factor.

There is evidence of physical growth in drawings of children in the way they are able to
control the marks that they make, in fact as Rudolf Arnheim points out the act of drawing a
straight line is a highly complicated matter when one considers the joint structure of an arm.
Herbert Read mentions ‗kinesthetic imagination‘ the manner by which children develop
scribble patterns through purely muscular rhythms. Therefore certain types of straight
scribbles are an attempt to form the necessary muscular responses that would enable the child
to cope with the drawing of a single line. The early scribbling of children has been
commented upon in several studies.

Herbert Read has studied the personality differences in children‘s drawings, and undoubtedly
even from the very first marks that children make, one can spot a difference in personality
between different children that is to a certain extent borne out by other observations of the
child‘s psychological characteristics. The growth of representational ability is also another
factor to take into account when looking at children's work. One could say that the growth in
representational ability corresponds to mental and other kinds of growth, but it does exist to a
certain extent in its own right. For one thing, what one person regards as representational
ability might not be regarded as such by another; it is such a subjective thing at certain levels.
On the other hand one can look at a study such as the one by Rudolf Arnheim which is
especially concerned with this from a certain point of view, that of a section of a work on the
gestalt psychology of perception.

3.5 THEORIES ON CHILD ART

There are various theories to understand the child art. The difficulty of looking at the
different theories of child art is that to form any theory one must be to a certain extent
partisan and look in one direction or sector of the work available. Because of the different
conceptions that these theories hold, it often seems that they conflict. There may well be
some degree of conflict in the ideas that are being presented when they are examined, but one
often finds that it is not so much a conflict as a different view of the problem, even though it
is presented as a conflicting view.

In his book Education through Art, Herbert Read produced a theory of child art that is more
concerned with different types of expression than with the gradual growth of understanding.
He relates the different kinds of expression in children‘s art to the different psychological
types that one can find in the population as a whole. He begins by defining his conception of
child art, and likens it to play. However, whereas Dr Margaret Lowenfeld has said that,
―..Play in children is the expression of the child‘s relation to the whole of life, and no theory
of play is possible which is not also a theory which will cover the whole of a child's relation
to life‟, he preferred to regard play as a form of art rather than art being a form of play.

3.5.1 The Schema – a conception in Child Art


Read uses the schema to develop his ideas, and examines it as a typical work of individual
art, rather than as a particular kind of imagery that the child uses to denote many different
situations. The schema, he says, does not develop in a very systematic way it can emerge all
times during the development of a child‘s graphic powers, even during the scribble stage. He
explains that producing schemata marks is a separate activity from scribbling. Commenting
upon the image, he says that eidetic imagery is usual with young children, but during the
child's maturation this is lost and is replaced by concepts. This more conceptual image would
more easily be called a schema, which is the medium of communication and not the thought
itself. The criterion of success here is the verisimilitude of representation. In addition he says
that mankind has elaborated various signs and symbols which do not aim at any kind of
verisimilitude, but can still have generally accepted connotations and are understood by a
great number of people. The exact relation of the schema to the image in the child's mind is
difficult to determine, and there are three hypotheses that one can consider:
i. The child's drawings represent progressive efforts to achieve accurate imitation of many
images or precepts.
ii. The child, unable to translate his image into adequate graphic or plastic representations
is satisfied with merely associative relationship between the mark and makes and an
image. However, this theory does not explain a child‘s progressive attempts to elaborate
his symbols.
iii. The child is seeking to escape from the vividness of his eidetic images, and he wants to
create something relatively fixed and personal, in fact an escape from reality to
something of his own. He therefore creates a symbol that will express what he wants it
to express in his own personal terms. It is this personal concept of a schema that Herbert
Read seeks to develop in his Empirical Classification of Children‘s Drawings. He says
that this kind of schema would be representative of the child‘s personality structure and
it should be possible in this way to recognize particular personality types.

3.5.2 Classification of children’s drawings

A large „number of children‘s drawings were studied by Read and put into various
categories-not necessarily psychological categories, for this could not be ascertained from the
drawing alone-but more or less stylistic ones. After a whittling-down process, the various
drawings were put into eight categories:
1. Organic These were concerned with feeling for and understanding of the structure and
presence of objects regarded.
2. Empathetic A rather more personal kind of feeling and identification with the object.
3. Rhythmical pattern Concerned with a strongly rhythmical element in the drawing.
4. Structural form The object is reduced to a geometric formula, a stylized form of reality.
5. Enumerative A painstaking record of the separate details of a whole object.
6. Haptic Drawings that are concerned with non-visual imagery derived from internal
physical sensation.
7. Decorative Drawings with well-defined patterns.
8. Imaginative Drawings of a particular imaginative theme that can almost be likened to an
imaginative literary concept

These eight categories are then related to the function types as defined by Jung, and
expressed diagrammatically as follows:

Thinking extrovert = enumerative


Introvert = organic
Feeling extrovert = decorative
Introvert = imaginative
Sensation extrovert = empathetic
Introvert = expressionist (haptic)
Intuition extrovert = rhythmical pattern
Introvert = structural form

A further comparison is made with a piece of work by Bullough, concerned with establishing
various aesthetic types. Bullough gives four types: objective, physiological, associative and
character. Very briefly, the objective type is a more intellectual person, the physiological a
person that responds in a warm and personal way to things and situations; the associative
type makes associations with other objects, and the character type is the sort of person that is
both objective and subjective, one who has the power to project himself into a situation and
yet not be too personally involved at the same time. Herbert Read finishes by saying that art
is as varied as human nature, even in terms of development, and it is very difficult to produce
any fully satisfactory system for understanding all children all of the time.

There is another factor that makes the formation of theories rather difficult when one is
looking at children‘s work, unless one has got a great number of works available by a
number of children that are associated with one another; children need to copy one another to
progress, and they look at the work of their friends a great deal and also at the work of adults
at a later age. What, in fact, one is looking at is not entirely concerned with the child, but
with the way that he is able to understand and copy the works of others. One has only got to
see the work of a child that has just started school compared with the efforts that they
produced only a few weeks before, to appreciate this point.

3.6 DIVERSE THEORIES OF CHILD ART

James Sully published his Studies in Childhood, which contained one of the first coherent
attempts to classify the drawings of children. Sully was one of the first to try to explain what
children‘s art really was, and he likened the work to their play activities. To a certain extent
all theories of child art have to be inherited or concerned with building upon experience.
Many researchers have described certain stages that the children go through if one takes this
approach. There have been other approaches, and we will comment upon those; however the
majority of accounts could be described as genetic. Cyril Burt has categorized this
development into different stages according to the age of the child. Burt has called the very
initial stage of development as scribble for a 2 to 3 years old child. The term coined as
scribbling, if one means by is a series of unidentifiable and unidentified movements. This is
an attempt made by very young children to make art by using a tool. Cyril Burt has further
divided this stage into four.

(a) Purposeless pencilling: This is purely a muscular movement from the shoulder,
usually from right to left. The child does not have a concept of space or size. These
scribbling are wayward and start or end anywhere.

Myrah, 2 years
(b) Purposive penciling: The scribble is a centre of attention and may be given a
name.
Gaggu, 2.8 Years Priya, 3 Years

(c) Imitative penciling: The scribble is still a muscular movement, but wrist movements
have replaced arm movements, and finger movements tend to replace wrist
movements, usually in an effort to mimic the movements of an adult draughtsman.

Kaku, 3 Years
(d) Localized scribbling: As the observation skill of the child grows, he seeks to
reproduce specific parts of an object and is a transitional stage from scribble to liner.

Vikas, 3.6 years

At the age of 4 the visual control is now progressive. The human figure becomes the favorite
subject, with circle for head, dots for eyes, and a pair of single lines for legs. More rarely a
second circle may be added for body, and more rarely still, a pair of lines for the arms. It is
usual for feet to be represented earlier than arms or body. A complete synthesis of parts is
unobtainable and often un-attempted. Burt identifies it a second stage as line.

Sukhita, 4 years

Saira, 4.5 Years


Pallavi, 4.5 Years

At Descriptive Symbolism stage the child is at the age of 5 to 6. At this stage the human
figures are reproduced by the child with tolerable accuracy, but as a crude symbolic schema.
The features are localized in the roughest way and each is a conventional form. The general
‗schema‘ assumes a somewhat different type with different children, but the same child
clings pretty closely, for most purposes and long periods, to the same favorite pattern.
Raj Kumari, 5 Years

Vijender, 5 year
Meena, 5.4 Years

Anketa, 6 years
Nityanshi, 6.3 Years

Manav, 6.5 Years


The fourth stage at the age of 7 to 8 is Descriptive Realism. At this stage the drawings are still
logical rather than visual. The child sets down what he knows, not what he sees and is still
thinking, not of the present individual, but rather of the generic type. He is trying to
communicate, express, or catalogue all that he remembers or all that interests him, in a
subject. The „schema‟ becomes truer in detail. Profile views of the face are attempted, but
perspective, opacity, foreshortening and all the consequences of singleness of viewpoint are
still disregarded. There is a gathering interest in decorative details.

Sidharth, 7 Years

Sumitra, 8 Years

Burt mentioned that Visual Realism is attained at the age of 9 to 10 years and is the fifth
stage of development. At this age the child passes from the stage of drawing from
memory and imagination to the stage of drawing from nature. He further divides this stage in
two phases:
(a). Two-dimensional phase-outline only is used;

Rashmi, 9 Years

(b) Three-dimensional phase-solidarity is attempted. Attention is given to overlapping and


perspective. A little shading and occasional fore- shortening may be attempted. Landscapes
are attempted.

Nikita, 9.6 Years


The sixth stage sets in most commonly at about the age of 13 in a period of 11 to 14 years.
This is regarded as a part of the child's natural development ant termed ―Repression‟.
Reproduction of objects is laboriously done and the child becomes disillusioned.
Language becomes preferred as a means of expression.

Kaku, 11 Years
Ansu, 11 Years

Sangeeta, 12 Years
Sneha Pandit, 14 Year

From about the age of 15 drawing for the first-time blossoms into a genuine artistic activity.
Drawings now tell a story-a clear distinction between the sexes is now evident. Girls show a
love of richness in colour, of grace in form, of beauty in line; youths tend to use drawing
more as a technical and mechanical outlet. This early adolescence stage „Artistic Revival‟ is
mentioned as seventh in child art by Burt.

Parvesh, 14 Years

Sristi, 14.6 Years


Rohan, 15 Years
Ravinder, 16 Years

Harsh, 16 Years
Rajni, 16 Years

This theory elaborates a number of stages, the first one being the scribble; the next one the
build-up of visual units, usually into the human figure, this being described as schematic;
then the stage of drawing what the child knows, to drawing from nature through a stage of
repression and finally into an artistic revival in early adolescence. Whereas, there are several
points that emerge from this theory that warrant a little closer inspection, and Herbert Read
mentions only three of them in Education throughArt.

3.7 SCHEMA OR NO SCHEMA IN CHILD ART

The concept of schema is debated among researchers; the criticism of this idea is whether in
fact the schema is such a complete idea as some people think. Helga Eng is very much
attached to the idea, as is Burt and many others, but there have been other studies that seem
to suggest that it is not such an inflexible idea as it was first thought, and that it is constantly
changing and developing, not only according to the progress of mental concepts, but also
visual percepts. A solid character of the visual will be found according to Rudolf Arnheim. In
her book Imagination in Early Childhood Ruth Griffiths gives her analysis of the first six
years of age of drawings and to a certain extent fills out the gaps in the study by Burt with a
different interpretation, particularly with regard to the scribbling stage. Her findings with
regards to child art development are:

1. Undifferentiated circular and rhythmic images.


2. Clear geometric shapes emerged from scribbling. The child appears to be trying to
represent an object, naming the shape and no attempt to combine the shapes.
3. The shapes are joined and given names that are roughly representative of simple things.
For example, a table, flag, ladder, etc.
4. Child starts to combine circle and the straight line, and makes a representation of a
figure in the circle and two lines formula. Gradually eyes, arms and feet are added.
Also, other circle and straight-line figures, such as the mother and food.
5. Now child begins to consolidate with experiments with the collection that he has
assembled for himself.
6. After the fifth stage, which is short-lived, a tendency to devote more time to one favorite
object, such as a human figure or a house or a pet. The drawing is bolder and more
assured, and the details are starting to emerge.
7. A further stage of concentration and combination, but now a variety of objects is
grouped on the page, often side by side. By means of a process of selection, ideas are
represented. However, these representations still do not form into a proper picture yet.
8. A stage of partial amalgamation. Child starting to group into more of a picture, but other
items are still included for pure pleasure and do not relate to the main idea.
9. A pure picture is drawn, that is, one in which all the items relate to one another, and no
extraneous items are added.
10. The child works out many different themes, some represent an action, but others are
representative of an experiment with colours.
11. Here a notion of developing a topic by means of a series of related pictures emerged.
But this stage is archived by a few.

As compared to Burt, Griffiths has not mentioned the ages of the child in the analysis, and she
makes the point that these stages do not necessarily fit within a fixed age structure, although
she does make some mention of a correlation of mental age to degree of attainment within
the stages that she names.

In fact, the elaborate description into eleven stages appears to be the expansions of a span of
the first three to four stages that are mentioned by Burt. However, hercomment is rather more
concerned with what the children say they are doing. It mentions the stage of naming before
the drawings have got any recognizable shape, and she gives the subject matter rather more
importance, as perhaps one would expect from a study that is really concerned with
imagination.

Michael Steveni in his book Art and Education points out that the 11th stage of child art
development of a theme by means of a series of pictures is noticed to be a common and very
important manifestation in children's drawings. Besides Griffiths, there is one other point in
the description done by Burt where other researchers have expanded the development stages.
What he describes as four stages of scribbling have been extended and given meaning in
several studies, notably the one by RhodaKellogg.

Rhoda Kellogg makes a study that is concerned with an even smaller time scale. It is the
result of a very large number of children‘s drawings-in fact 100,000 are quoted, and it is, as
she says, a purely objective study of what can be seen, making no subjective interpretations,
with any given child‘s work. She is concerned with work from scribbling until early image-
making, which in terms of Burt's analysis would only really fully concern his first two
sections. In terms of actual pieces of work and the variety of what can be observed, it is
probably one ofthe most detailed studies of its kind.

If the children were investigated as well as the drawings, Steveni thinks that it would be
found that these aggregates are all done to some purpose or other. In fact they would be
found to be name symbols that had a meaning. From these aggregates, which may
incidentally be based upon any basic form starting out as circles and then have circular
additions, or square with square additions, or a large number of crossed areas added to them
as recognizable images begin to emerge. For instance, from a mandaloid image can emerge a
sun or indeed a human figure-the basic human figure is often created from a mandaloid
shape with certain additions and then recognized by the child as being a figure. There is a
very interesting section on the development of the drawing of humans, and undoubtedly,
purely in objective terms, this study has got a great deal to offer.

In a single sample study Helga Eng noticed various stages in the development of scribbles
from her niece. She describes the Wavy Scribbling as the initial stage of a child‘s art.
Followed by Circular scribbling and Variegated scribbling. Variegated scribbling is when the
child produces zigzag lines, straight lines, crossover loops, rectangles, wavy lines and so on.
With reference to space management, she noted that these scribbles were either placed in the
middle of the page, scattered over the page or there was a single isolated scribble on one part
of the page, and these comments would seem to tie up with those made by Rhoda Kellogg.

The child draws a particular kind of double scribble as ‗mother‘. This progressed into a more
formal drawing which corresponds to the notion of the schema, and some time is spent in
mentioning different types of formula that children have for representing animals, trees and
flowers with comments that they can fit within clearly defined categories. She says that the
free drawing of children before school age is almost entirely from ‗memory‘ and for the most
part it remains the same during the early years at school. This is explained by the fact that
children learn to draw by repeating lines and forms and in fact build up a repertoire that is
used in an idiomotive sense to fit certain situations. She makes the comment that it is
difficult to ask a child to make a purely visual drawing from an object, because the child has
to conceive new shapes to deal with the problem at hand. Next the child begins to express
with ‗judgment‘. The notion of a child changing its original conception by a process of
synthesis is extended to considerations of the power of language in visual forms of
expression. A child‘s memory is no longer a pure collection of mental pictures, but consists
in great part of arrangements of judgments which are, or may be, clothed in language.

The representation and understanding of ‗perspective‘ require an ability for abstraction and
complex naturalistic synthesis which is not to be found in younger children. She gives a
summary by Kerschensteiner of his results in an investigation into perspective drawing. This
is given as a series of stages:

The first stage


At this stage the graphic representation of space is either completely absent or the objects are
just placed alongside one another.
The second stage
This includes drawings which are either a conscious attempt at spatial representation, which
for one reason or another are not successful or they make the impression of being such an
attempt. Here we find the map-like representations showing objects turned over on the plain
of a paper. We find unsuccessful attempts at bird‘s-eye view, representation from two or
several points of view, simple placing of figures one over the other with continual reduction
in size, marking out of space by simple outlines, and soon. Attempts of this kind are clearly
intended to represent space, but unsuccessfully, and are found now and then in children as
young as six years.

The third stage


In this, there is successful but incomplete spatial representation. The child makes use of a
strip of ground of greater or lesser width, and expresses his ideas of space by taking
perspective foreshortening into consideration and making sparing use of the masking of one
object by another. But in all these representations, a definite horizon, actually represented or
definitely suggested, is missing.

The fourth stage


This is a faultless pictorial representation of the whole space, which makes use of all means
of line and atmospheric perspective, masking, surface contours, the change of proportions,
with distance and the use of shadows and reflected lights. He says that children begin by
drawing persons in a neutral position which are alike and have the same stereotyped
expression. Nonetheless, the child imagines that they are performing actions. Then partial
movement is represented in the form of connections, for instance, arms can be elongated and
joined and this indicates movement. After this, there is an attempt to represent independent
partial movements of single persons, for instance a man walking or clapping his hands, and
finally there is a complete representation of posture, movement, action in their totality. The
most interesting points in Helga Eng‘s book are the ones that concern memory and judgment.
In particular the notion of defective synthesis of orthoscopic forms is worthy of much greater
study.
Viktor Lowenfeld has produced another most important book that concerns the development
of children‘s drawing called Creative and Mental Growth and in this he has an analysis of stages
in children‘s drawing that concern various elements. His comment on the characteristics of
the stages, in terms of the work that is done, follows to a certain extent the analysis of Burt.
In the early stages the main difference in the point that he makes is the difference between
visual types, as he calls them, and haptic types. Lowenfeld gives a genetically structured
account of the development of child art as do many other writers, but he makes a
different emphasis in the later years. He also called the first stage of child art as scribbling
stage (2-4 years) and is characterized by a gradual change from haphazard marks to ones that
are moredirected and also a change of thinking from kinesthetic to imaginative.

Second stage is called pre-schematic (4-7 years) and is characterized by a gradual discovery
of a relationship between the way a thing is represented, and the thing itself. There is no order
in spatial representation and relationships are constructed according to emotional
significance. Lowenfeld called the third stage as schematic stage (7-9 years). In this stage
definite schemas are formed to represent different concepts. There is the simple idea of
relationships in space, and objects would be arranged on a base line.

Aryan, 7 Years

Stage four is that of dawning realism. There is a greater awareness of the self and with this
awareness slight self-consciousness. The pre-adolescent crisis (9-11years) is a transitional
stage in which schematic forms of representation are abandoned. There is a tendency
towards more attempted realism, the base-line concept of spatial representation is abandoned
with the discovery of the plane and some difficulty is encountered in producing a satisfactory
image.
Mohit, 10 Years

Pseudo-realistic is the fifth stage (11-13 years). This is characterized by a more greatly
developed individualism that is not backed by the visual approach to representation. The
approach is realistic, dramatic and there is a tendency towards either visual or non-visual
mindedness. There is a great desire to experiment with three-dimensional- representation and
this expresses itself in early attempts at perspective drawing.

Harshit, 11 Years
The next stage is called the stage of decision-the crisis of adolescence (13-17 years) and in
this stage Lowenfeld‘s major point is expounded, which is the difference between what he
called ‗the visuals‘ and ‗the haptic‘. According to him the visual type (50 per cent) operates
through visually observed phenomena, which, so to speak, stand apart from the scene that is
being represented, and depicts purely visual phenomena such as light and shade.

Prashant Tomar, 13 Years

Adolescence has always been something of a sacred cow to the educationalist in recent
years, and we see the beginnings of this in Burt's analysis in what he calls 'the age of
repression'. Most educationalists would agree that this seems to be the result of an early
adolescent stage, but whether this is a natural thing or the result of being part of a social unit
called a school, is another matter. It may be that what we regard as an inevitable stage of
development is no more than a reaction to the type of society that we present the adolescent
with. There are by now too many exceptions to this rule for us to take it too much for
granted.

Abhay, 15 Years

The haptic type (25 per cent) on the other hand, is able to express through actual tactile
experience and an imaginatively approached attitude to be at one with the object
regarded. There is a noticeable personal and emotional approach to the drawing that could be
characterized by the enlarged hands contained within the drawing of a child who is
engaged in a manual activity. The other 25 per cent would be classed as in-betweens, and
their reactions are not definite in either direction.
Vijay Laxmi, 16 Years

Lowenfeld makes several interesting points about imitation, saying how useful this is and
how it is used only as a means to an end and is not an end in itself. He mentions the need in
teachers for self-identification with what is being done, and says that some art educators
identify themselves predominantly with aesthetic criteria and their application, the elements
of design, and their organization; other identify themselves with the individual who
produces. While the one group of educators concentrates on the organization of the creative
products and design values. The other identifies itself with the individual and his
psychological needs only.

In his book Art and Visual Perception, Rudolf Arnheim includes a most interesting chapter
entitled ‗Growth‘, which is concerned largely with the growth of children‘s ability to
represent. His most important point is that most theories that are concerned with the growth
of child art are based upon the child developing specific typified images called schemas that
are then used to satisfy a variety of situations. He makes the point that early drawings done
by child are generalized rather than specific. Children generalize about what they look at and
produce a general pattern that is typical rather than unique. For instance, the visual concept
of a hand is more concerned with arranging spreading fingers than with the number five.
Arnheim mentions that systematic theories of the development of form can be presented but
the difficulties of doing this are considerable. Rhoda Kellogg have already mentioned the fact
that some children can advance and others regress so much that there is no fixed relationship
between the age of the child and the stage of his drawings. After the early stages of finding
significance in circles and mammaloid forms, the child becomes interested in the act of
drawing for its own sake. This manifests itself in an interest in straight lines, investigating
horizontal and vertical relationships between objects, and finally investigating the more
complex problems ofoblique relationships.

3.7.1 Consideration by Size

The size of the art is also an important factor to understand the child art writes Arnheim. He
mentioned that the relationship of objects to one another in terms of size is at first
undifferentiated. Later on, children begin to give different sizes to different objects that are
relative to their mass and their importance. The fact that a house is bigger than a figure is
demonstrated by the house being made larger than the figure, but the amount of difference is
not important. The relationship is purely a symbolic one. He disagrees with Lowenfeld in
rather an interesting way where Lowenfeld, who has a great deal to say on this subject,
quotes a picture of a fly and a horse where the fly is very large in relation to the horse.
Lowenfeld gives this the interpretation that the fly is large and therefore important. Arnheim
would say that just the fact that they are different is the one that matters and that the fact of
the fly being smaller than the horse is the important one.

3.7.2 Consideration by Dimensions


The translation of the three-dimensional fact into a two-dimensional representation of it is
one of the most difficult that the child can attempt. In the early work of children space only
exists within the two-dimensional picture plane. The third dimension is still utterly
undifferentiated. For instance, the spatial qualities of a dinner plate are not treated differently
from those of a football, all things lie at the same distance from the observer. This does not
mean to say that all things are seen as being flat by the child. What they are offering are
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symbols that represent things completely, but they are only understood two-dimensionally.
An early circle is not a front view or a side view, or any kind of projection, but just the
pictorial representation.

Fisher boat, by John, aged 5 years. The size relationships and position of forms are
established by relative importance. Note the human fish.

Initial the representation of three diminutions can either be oriented vertically or horizontally,
so that child can have interest either in vertical space or horizontal space. An example would
be in drawing a house, where if the interest were horizontal the two side walls would be
used; if it were a vertical interest the roof would predominate. Children would draw a room
by adding cubic rectangles to the side walls. They would be able to handle this element of
perspective slightly by making an oblique orientation of the lines, but this is not always so. It
is something that they have either observed in other people‘s drawings or something that they
have seen for themselves.

Finally, Arnheim says that child art shows certain cognitive functions of the mind. These are
the sensory perception of the outer world, the elaboration of experience in visual and
intellectual thinking and conservation of experience and thought in memory. Pictorial work
helps understanding and acts as a guide for the task of identifying and defining things,
investigating relationships and creating order out of increasing complexity.

Another look at child art is provided by a book entitled The Biology of Art by Desmond Morris.
This book is primarily concerned with observing the work of lower primates, but there are
some general biological principles that Morris says affect higher as well as lower primates.
This connection would be at a very basic level for obvious reasons, and these ideas provide a
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very interesting source for further investigation. He lays down six biological principles of
picture-making that are worth mentioning.

3.7.3 Biological Principles

1. The principle of ‗Self-rewarding activation‘


Here, all pictures must have a self-rewarding element involved as all or part of motivation of
the picture maker. Other sociological or materialistic motives may, or may not, be operating
at the same time. If the production of the picture is not a reward in itself, then its aesthetic
value will be impaired. It is true for human and animal both, he quotes an instance when a
chimpanzee was provided with food to encourage it to draw more instantly, and the outcome
of this was that the animal associated the action of making drawings with food and
discovered that any old drawing would do, but it still got the food. Thus, the very worst sort
of commercial art was born.

2. The principle of ‗compositional control‘


Morris says that all beings would attempt to arrive at some kind of balanced arrangement of
lines and shapes, intuitively j at least they would start basing their thinking upon this feeling
and would either consciously accept it or, although he has not mentioned this, would reject it
in a more sophisticated art form.

3. The principle of ‗calligraphic differentiation‘


By this is meant a gradual growth of form and manipulation of units on a step-by-step basis.
Expertise grows with the growth of classification of experience.

4. The principle of ‗thematic variation‘


The fact that people pick upon a theme and vary it slightly. It gradually grows and develops
but in a fairly slow way. Also, one particular style can give rise to amovement against it, and
he says that this accounts for the movements, schools and ‗isms‘ in art which arise at
regular intervals.

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5. The principle of ‗optimum heterogeneity‘
This is the shift from extreme homogeneity or blank space towards maximum heterogeneity
or a mass of fussy detail. There is a point on this scale where the picture is considered to be
finished. One mark or line less and it would have been incomplete, one more and it would have been
overworked. When this rule is applied to human beings one can often notice that children have
got an absolute sureness about the finish or otherwise of their picture.

6. The principle of ‗universal imagery‘


Much of the imagery of art is universal, both in occurrence and appeal. Just as certain
characteristic arrangements crop up in certain apes independently, giving ape pictures as a
whole a recognizable character, so among human infants we can see imagery that is universal
in its form and presentation.

The original six principles give rise to many interesting questions; for instance, the point
about universal imagery-it has been assumed in the past that children reach an age at about
15 or so during adolescence when they just give up producing pictures. This has been
considered the reason for the childlike look of a lot of adult drawing. Desmond Morris
throws a new light upon this notion. His idea of optimum heterogeneity is a factor that is
very rarely commented upon. It is often assumed that children produce work for reason that
lie in the subject-matter; the idea that the state of' finish', and whether the visual ideal of the
child has been, in their terms, adequately expressed, is one that we do not stop to consider
as being of any great importance.

―The notion of semantic variation, where he accounts for schools and ‗isms‘ and
fashions, holds as well for children as it does for adults. It would be quite possible to
say that the whole concept of child art has been expounded so much that children
are encouraged to produce this thing that we call child art‖. (Desmond Morris)

According to Art Education – Its Means and Ends this early phase of artistic
development occurs during the ages of 2 to 5, although some writers fix its span as
lasting only from 2 to 4 years of age. Because of the interest in nursery schools
and kindergartens, it may be profitable to examine this stage of development as an
introduction to the early elementary stage.

Quite appropriately, Millard says: ―The activity of children with paints and crayons
before three years of age is mainly of scribbling, exploratory nature. At three or four
years of age children are usually delighted when given the opportunity to create a riot
of color on a large sheet of paper. At this time, they are also ready to express some
initiative in design and pattern. Such concepts usually take shape in the making and
are not until the child is four or five yearsof age that he can project a design and carry
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it out.‖

The scribbling of a child thus involves the self in „body and soul‟, as it were and
supplies a physical need as well as a creative outlet. The vast importance of the scribble
is not to be underestimated, but rather it is to be encouraged, watched, and guided.
Learning to control the movements of his shoulder, arm, and hand, and to master them,
is closely related to the child‘s total development and to his social adjustment. This is
true not only at this but at all levels of growth.

Again, to quote Millard:


―Creative impulses are almost entirely associated with motor activity. As the
child becomes adult, he may do creative work without any accompanying motor
activity. The young child, however, thinks and creates with movements.”

As the child grows, the kinesthetic enjoyment undoubtedly continues in some form. But
from the creative point of view, it is the visual realization of what he has scribbled
that interests him. He moves from uncontrolled scribbles to purposive scribbles: up-
and-down, circular, and mixed line movements. In due time the child makes known his
purpose by naming their work. Pre symbolic is the primary phase, at this phase of
artistic unfolding is still in large part within the manipulative stage of development. It
involves children in the kindergarten and first grade. However, some children in
nursery school may already have reached this stage, and some children in the second
grade may remain at this creative level and others will go beyond it. Flexibility of the
art program is necessary if children are to be helped to grow at their own natural rate.

By this time most children have arrived at progressive, manipulative and visual control.
‗People‘ or ‗me‘ find their way into their drawings and paintings. Drawings are largely
based on circles or ovals for heads and bodies, while horizontal and vertical lines stand
for legs and arms. Seldom are all parts of the body present, although especially
precocious children may have fairly complete symbols for ‗me‘ or ‗ball‘ or ‗boy‘. The
naming of the object is worthy of special attention when it occurs at this level because of
its various implications in evaluating the growth of the child who produces the named
drawings.

Symbolic Stage considered by Millard is when child is in 2, 3 and 4 th standard. Usually,


it involves children in the second and third standards. Worth remembering at this point
of growth is that environment and endowment have now played their part for some
time. Beyond these, a number of influences have been exerted on the children,
consciously or otherwise, by parents, teachers, and others.

In general, this period is characterized by a keener concept of man and the world, man
and things. The pupil begins to utilize his heightened instinctive powers, the knowledge
he has accumulated, and the experiences he has undergone. He observes major changes
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in size, shape, direction, and often in relationships. The knowledge, physical skills, and
coordination achieved by children so far, suggest to them that the inert symbols they
have been using for ‗man‘ cannot act or accomplish anything. Therefore, children are
inclined to bend and stretch legs or arms and to bend the body according to the action or
position they have in mind. They begin to sense space relationships and with regularity
make use of a base line, and sometimes two base lines. These are indications of abstract
concepts of space as well as of a sense of relationship to and with surroundings.

Drawing, painting, modeling, and other forms of expression produced at this stage
begin to acquire meaning. They are meaningful to the child in the sense that clear
purposes may be observed. It is paramount that teachers and parents recognize such
purposes. Having developed a graphic, although still diagrammatic, mode of
expression, the child at this point is likely to use it often. He does so for the satisfaction
he experiences at the accomplishment as well as for further mastery.7 But Goodenough
found that children at this stage actually have a wide variety of symbols. This fact
should indicate to teachers that individuality and inventiveness are beginning to show
forth and should be encouraged. Lowenfeld calls attention to the deviations from the
newly discovered symbols and points out that these deviations are significant,
particularly the exaggerations of parts, omission of unimportant parts, and changes of
symbols for the expression of emotionally important parts. These changes are
meaningful because they may suggest experiences of a profound character; a fact not
too common at this age level. A further meaning is that the changes suggest emotional
influences which intimately identify the child with his personal attempt at full
expression.

In addition to the highly individualized and diversified symbols mentioned thus far,
children at this level realize direction and position in space. It is this realization that
gives rise to folding-over and x-ray pictures. In the folding-over type of expression the
child gives objects a position of significance rather than of perspective appearance. In
the x-ray representations the outside-inside relationships are shown in the same picture.
Often, in the same picture, several phases of one event are told; this is indicative of the
thoroughness and completeness of thinking of the child artist. Space-time equivalences
and concepts are often found in the work of old and new masters in painting.

Devi Prasad in the book Art: The Basis of education has stated that ―It is difficult to assign
specific age groups for these stages‟. Generally speaking, children pass through the
following stages in their art expression:

Two to four years: Scribbling and getting familiar with tools and material.
Use of hands and muscular movements.

Four to six years: Stage of symbols and naming the drawings.

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Seven to eight years: Getting away from infantile stage. Beginning of visual
realism.

Nine to eleven years: Stage of disillusionment and discouragement.

Eleven to fourteen years: Early adolescence and confusion.

Fourteen years and after: Possibility of the stage of artistic revival.

The time of transition from one stage to the other depends on each child's nature and pace of
growth. It is also difficult to say how long a child continues to remain in each of these stages.
It was noticed that some children passed through the first stage in a matter of weeks, but
others took months. It has to be remembered that in general, these stages are not static, as
children go on moving from one experience to another, thus grow continuously. These
stages are not clear- c u t periods in themselves, they overlap with each other. Sometimes,
you may be surprised to see a child move on to the next stage all of a sudden.

One of the first things noticed in the movements/activities of babies is the way they try to
put everything into their mouth. It is because the baby‘s introduction to the outside world
takes place first through the mouth, for fulfilling the most important need for survival-
sucking is its first method of knowing and feeling the objects that are around. Gradually
comes knowing by touching and holding by hand, first by the fist. Then comes the feeling of
holding hard or soft, liquid or pasty material which challenges and motivates the baby to
bang it around, mess about or spill. There is no doubt that these are the most important
activities for children at that stage to gain first-hand knowledge of the world around.

Prasad writes that it is also learnt that the evolution of children‘s drawings is of the same
nature and, almost identical all over the world, and that children do not draw what they see
but what they know. These observations clearly point to the fact that art activities can
become creative and pleasant for children. While analyzing psychogenesis of child art he
deliberates that as soon as a child is able to hold a pencil it starts scratching it on any
available surface. If it is paper or a surface on which the pencil marks can be made, children
like scribbling on it. The scribbling does not represent anything in particular. It is the child‘s
effort to make acquaintance with the material and at the same time to make bodily
movements. Children also like to feel that they are doing what their parents or other adults
do. Sometimes, when asked what he has drawn the child will think and call it something on
the spur of the moment. Generally, the human figure is the favorite.

The next is a stage of Symbols, at this stage comes when the child has had enough of
scribbling without having anything in mind about what the scribbles represent. S/He has
already started giving names to the drawings. Now he begins to associate his drawings with
objects from the world outside his own self, objects which he is familiar with. They have no
likeness with the object but the child says it does. He creates symbols in his mind. These
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symbols have no long-term relevance, for the same drawing can become different things at
different times. In due course, these symbols acquire some kind of permanency. For instance,
a circular shape with two smaller circles in the top half and one in the bottom half is a human
face. The same round shape can be father, mother or anyone else, depending on the occasion.
The artist is totally subjective in his experiences as well as expressions.

Gradually these symbols change into visual realism. The change is caused by new
experiences. Children go on noticing new aspects of the same thing, which influences the
form and even style of the symbol. For instance, at first a human face was a large circle with
two smaller circles, representing the two eyes. Then the mouth comes into the picture and
then perhaps the nose. The mouth and the nose may be only two tiny lines-one horizontal and
the other vertical. In due course the ears, hair, neck etc. are also seen. With the development
of objectivity in their visual observation, these symbols start looking somewhat ‗realistic‘.
The more children start seeing in that manner the more they begin to compare the
drawings with the objects themselves. The kind of change in their faculty of looking at the
outer world brings a ‗realistic‘ approach into their drawings.

Drawings made by children during the earlier stage were not the results of visual
experiences. It would be appropriate to call them logical or schematic. If told that the picture
does not look like the object that is supposed to have been represented, the child will try to
explain and argue and actually insist that it is the picture of that particular object or person.
For him two horizontal parallel lines is „road‟ and someone is walking on it. Here from adult
perspective that „man‟ would appear to by lying on the road. Generally, children at that stage
do not consciously think in such logical terms. It comes from their inner self and from the
intellectual part of their mind. That is the reason why it is called ‗schematic‘.

At next stage, most children do not feel the same encouragement as they did during their
earlier stage of art expression. Now they expect themselves to be able to draw like adults.
It should be pointed out that this kind of comparison could not have taken place in the older
pattern of life in India, or for that matter in many parts of the world. For instance, the gap
between the art of folk traditions and that of the children could not have been so wide as to
create a spirit of comparison in the minds of children. But the popular standards of taste and
design, today, cautions Prasad, are such that if children follow them as their model, the
direction of their growth would entirely change and their development become distorted.

S/he further concludes that judging the art from adult perspective is wrong on the part of
contemporary society to force or even expect realism in the paintings, of children. It leads to
an unnatural development, in fact erroneous development, of the child‘s personality, and
eventually of his creative potential. Genuine child art is created only when the child does it
for his or her own inspiration and satisfaction and not anybody else‘s. It is only then that the
child‘s aesthetic creativity finds true expression and develops at a natural pace. Adolescence,
many people consider it to be a difficult age. Some even call it the age of crisis. Whatever it
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may be, there is no doubt that it is an entirely new experience for the child, for him the
whole world changes. The psychology of the child changes when he is just entering or has
just entered the adolescent stage.

The change is partly due to the physical growth in the child‘s own body, and his almost
suddenly becoming aware of it. It may even become an obsession occupying his mind
continuously. On account of the fear of social stigma and their own shyness most children are
not able to talk about it. As a result, they do not find the necessary explanation, an
explanation that would relieve them of the pressures within. They are distracted from other
activities and interests. Whereas the bodily demands become more like those of the adult, the
mind is not quite prepared to respond to the new situation. In other words, the stage of early
adolescence in fact is a stage of confusion.

Towards the end of the last stage, the child has started becoming conscious of the actual form
of objects that he tries to draw. With the advent of adolescence that kind of awareness
makes a very significant impact on drawing. Now his or her eyes do not want to see any
visual difference between the object and the drawing that he or she wants to make, which
seems difficult. He feels defeated. The new awareness, generally, takes the child away from
art work. Art experiences help young children develop more fully as individuals and
prepare them to become members of social groups. They also prepare the child for the
many creative art activities he will encounter as he progresses through school.

Art experiences are enjoyable as well as educational. As early as two years of age
most children enjoy working with materials such as paint and clay. Through art, pre-
school children can express personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings about people
and things, or they may merely play with paint, clay, and various construction materials.
Some believe that art activities are ideal for rainy days, for children who are ill, and for
active children who need physical rest periods. Teachers find that children become
deeply absorbed in art activities that they can be calmed as well as excited by them
depending on the medium or activity used, and that through continuous study of a
child‘s art expression a great deal can be learned about her/ him.

3.8 LET US SUM UP

Art Education hold a very prominent position in our day to day life as it is an innate quality
of every human being. Similar to the physiological development of a living being, art also
have different developmental stages. The complexity in art grows as a child grows. We
understood that it is very important understand the role for the artistic development of Child.
In this unit you have understand Child art and different theories related to it. This unit
elaborates the different stages of progressive development of art in a child and diverse
theories related to them. It have also explain the theory of Schema or no schema under the
consideration of size, dimension and biological principles. This unit distinguished several
stages of development that began with aimless scribbling, passed through primitive design,
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and reached a more sophisticated treatment of the human figure beginning from the early age
of aa child. As child grows his or her art also grows which become more detailed and
complex by the time a child enters into adolescence.

3.9 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Question No. 1: What do you understand by the term ‗Child Art‘ ?


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Question No. 2: Explain the different theories of child Art ?
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Question No. 3: Cyril Burt has categorized the development of child into different stages,
Explain them?
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Question No. 4: What is Schema ? Analyse it on the basis of consideration by Size and
Dimension?
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Question No. 5: Explain the Biological principles of picture making as laid by ―Desmond
Morris‖?
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Question No. 6: Classify the number of Children‘s Drawings categorised by Herbert read?
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3.10 REFERENCE AND SUGGESTED READINGS

 Cecil V. Millard, Child and Growth and Development in the ElementarySchool


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Years, Boston, D. C. Heath and Company, 1951.
 Chapman, Laura H. Approaches to art in education. Harcourt BraceJovanovich Inc.
 Charles D., and Margaret R. Gaitskell, Art Education in the Kindergarten,Peoria,
Charles A. Burnett Co., Inc., 1952)
 Florence L. Goodenough, Children’s Drawings in Handbook of Child Psychology,
Worcester, Clark University Press, 1931.
 Howard, Conant., and Arne, Randall. Art in education. Library of Congress. Catalog
No.-58-5510. Peorja Illinois. 1959.
 Italio, Francesco L De. Art Education- Its means and ends. Harper & BrotherPublishers.
New York. 1958.
 Prasad, Devi. Art: The Basis of Education, National Book Trust India. NewDelhi.
1998.
 Steveni, Michael. Art and Education, B. T. Batsford Ltd. Publications. London. 1968.
 Steveni, Michael. Art and Education, B. T. Batsford Ltd. Publications. London. 1968.
 Victor Lowenfeld, Creative and Mental Growth, rev. ed., New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1952.
 Voila, Wilhelm. Child Art, University of London Press

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UNIT 4 SCOPE OF ART EDUCATION
Contents

4.1 Objectives
4.2 Learning Outcomes
4.3 Introduction
4.4 Art under patronage
4.5 Art as Career
4.6 Probable in Education
4.7 Potential in Visual Media
4.8 Art Industry
4.9 Let us Sum Up
4.10 Check Your Progress
4.11 Reference and Suggested Readings
__________________________________________________________________________

4.1 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit you will be able to


 Understand patronage of art.
 Understand future prospects in art education.
 Understand different opportunities available in art.
 Understand contribution of art economic growth.

4.2 LEARNING OUTCOMES

After having studied this unit, you will be able to:


 Explain the patronage of art in West and Asia.
 Explain numerous opportunities in art.
 Explain the contribution of art economic growth.
 Apply for employment.

4.3 INTRODUCTION

Art has a special ability to interact with living things. It interacts with and becomes a part of
the living and cognitive processes that are unique to humans. Because art forms are created
with emotions and a specific ability or technique to portray the creator's ideas and feelings,
we have reason to believe they have instructional value. As a result, artistic expression
becomes a societal educational contribution. Art is regarded as a mirror of society; in addition
to expressing messages and raising awareness, it also provides a source of income.
Previously, art sponsorship was more common in societies where a royal or imperial
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government and an aristocracy ruled and controlled a major portion of resources. Samuel
Johnson defined a patron as ―one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in
the water, and, when he has reached ground, burdens him with help.‖

4.4 ART UNDER PATRONAGE

Patronage of the arts has shaped art history from the ancient era. Art sponsorship may be
traced all the way back to mediaeval and Renaissance Europe, feudal Japan, traditional
Southeast Asian monarchies, and beyond. Patronage of the arts was utilized by rulers, nobles,
and the very wealthy to legitimize their political goals, social status, and prestige. The phrase
patronage can simply refer to direct financial support for an artist, such as grants. Artists
entered into contracts with patrons, much like they do today, that stipulated a fee for the
artist's work, time, and materials. Rich individuals and institutions, on the other hand,
frequently extended their patronage in order to provide continued financial support and
assistance. Patrons, in other words, served as sponsors. Some patrons, such as the Medici
family of Florence, used artistic patronage to 'purify' riches that was suspected of being ill-
gotten money amassed at unreasonably high interest rates. Patronage had a crucial role in the
production of religious art. Churches, cathedrals, temples, painting, sculpture, and handicrafts
were all funded by the Roman Catholic Church and later Protestant organizations. While the
most well-known part of the patronage system is the financing of painters and the
procurement of artwork, other disciplines such as music and dance have also profited from
patronage. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Indian court painters all
sought and received patronage from noble or ecclesiastical figures. The system included
musicians such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Tansen.

Court painters are the name given to these artists. A court painter was an artist who painted
for members of a royal or princely family for a predetermined fee and on an exclusive basis,
meaning the artist was not allowed to do any other work. The most typical court artist was a
painter, although the court artist could also be a sculptor, dancer, or musician. The job first
appeared in Western Europe in the mid-13th century. Portraiture, primarily of the family, had
become an increasingly important part of their commissions by the Renaissance, and in the
Early Modern period, one individual may be assigned only to portraits, while another was
assigned to other tasks, such as adorning new buildings. Court sculptors were frequently
recruited when there was a significant building programme that required sculpture, or during
periods when portrait sculpture was particularly in demand, such as the decades around 1500
and the Baroque period. Much of the work of the court sculptor in various 18th-century
German courts was designing figurines and other products for the prince's porcelain business.
A court sculptor could also design the heads for coinage.

They were frequently granted the position of valet de chambre, especially in the late Middle
Ages. They were usually given a salary and a formal title, as well as a life annuity, though the
arrangements varied greatly. However, the artist was frequently paid simply a retainer, with
further payments made for works created for the king. A court appointment freed the artist
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from the restrictions of local painters' guilds, yet they still had to spend a lot of time on
decorative work around the palace and making temporary works for court entertainments and
shows in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Some artists, such as Jan van Eyck and Diego
Velázquez, were employed as diplomats, functionaries, or administrators at court.

Similar arrangements existed for miniaturists and artists in other media in Islamic cultures,
particularly between the 14th and 17th centuries. The shah and other kings in Persian
miniature often maintained a 'court workshop' or 'atelier' of calligraphers, miniaturists,
binders, and other crafts, which was usually administered by the royal librarian. Courts were
more important patrons of large-scale commissions than in the West, and governmental
developments, as well as changes in personal tastes, may have a substantial impact on the
evolution of a design. A Persian painter who came to the Mughal Empire was awarded a
variety of important official positions. In the 'sub-Mughal' princely palaces of India, whether
Muslim or Hindu, the court remained the focus of patronage of painting; the 18th-century
painter Nainsukh and musician Tansen are the leading examples.

‗The painters‘ atelier‘, from an Aklaq-i Nasri manuscript


By Sajnu (Sahu), c. 1590-95
Opaque watercolour, ink and gold on paper
Height 23.9 cm, width 14.1 cm
Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Aga Khan Museum, Geneva
(AKM00288)

Art culture shifted away from its patronage structure to the more publicly financed system of
art academies, museums, theatres, mass audiences, and mass consumption that we are
acquainted with today with the advent of bourgeois and capitalist social formations in the
middle of the nineteenth century. The academic sub-discipline of patronage through
organized government and non-government establishments, institutions, galleries, and so on
began to evolve in the latter half of the twentieth century, in recognition of the important and
often overlooked role that patronage had played in previous centuries' cultural life.

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4.5 ART AS CAREER

Fine arts and Applied arts are the two broad categories of art. Fine art encompasses all forms
of literature, performance, and activity. Visual and ornamental (architecture) methods are
combined in applied art. However, it is a large field of study, especially in terms of
specialization. Art education prepares students to be both artistically and professionally
competent. Provides pupils with a variety of career options. Countless institutions around the
world offer opportunity and support for a wide range of arts disciplines, from fundamental
professional abilities to highly specialized skills. Being a successful fine artist is difficult, but
that is true of every job. Many people, however, are able to sustain themselves through a mix
of hard labour, determination, and a variety of artistic talents and expertise to augment their
income from the creation of original works of art.

Art is the application of imagination, innovation, design, and practice to make something
valued and extraordinary. Candidates who believe in these ideas and have received education
in this sector will have a lot of options to work in the arts and related organizations. A career
in art isn't restricted to painting canvases that are framed and sold in galleries or painting
murals on walls. A graphic or commercial or applied artist or illustrator - generally a team - is
behind every piece of art in a newspaper, magazine, book, poster, or leaflet. The publications
are put together by graphic artists, and the cartoons and visuals are drawn by illustrators.
Website designers, computer-graphic artists, and animators for film and television are also
available. Computers do not create the visuals; they are merely a tool, a modern equivalent of
a paintbrush, that is employed by an artist. Stage set designers and constructors exist.
Designers of computer games exist. There are museums and art galleries. There's also art
therapy, mural painting, and face painting, as well as tattoo artists.

4.6 PROBABLE IN EDUCATION

The current educational system is largely based on the assumption that promoting a specific
type of understanding will enable a student to pass tests at any cost. It does not include a
learning process. Many educators may not agree with this assertion, but they may disagree
with it hastily. But, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll see that, despite what we tell the
system and what we put on syllabuses, this is exactly what happens. Despite our best efforts,
the toxin is more potent than we expect. Formal school education, a lengthy and honourable
gurukul system, has percolated to formal and been passed down to modern society. The
system produced a contemporary education system by drafting and implementing Education
Acts and Policies. The idea that humans should be evaluated and tested like vegetables and
educated in a specific way eventually became appealing. Art not only develops skill but also
makes a person more creative and socially aware. Skill is the taught capacity to carry out a
certain task with predictable results and good execution, generally in a limited amount of
time, energy, or both. National Education Policy 2020 has unequivocally advocated for the
promotion of skills that will enable people to become self-sufficient, and art is one such
resource. To contribute to the modern economy, people require a diverse set of talents.
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Teachers are, without a doubt, the most important people in our society. They provide
children a sense of purpose, prepare them for success as global citizens, and instil in them a
desire to excel in life. Today's children will be tomorrow's leaders, and teachers are the
important factor in preparing a youngster for their future. Teachers have the power to mould
future leaders in the best possible way for society to construct positive and inspired future
generations, and so design society on a local and global scale. Teachers, in reality, have the
most important job on the planet. Those who have an impact on society's children have the
ability to change lives. Not just for those children themselves, but for the lives of all and art is
the most relevant subject for overall development as a responsible citizen.

Teachers are, without a doubt, the most important people in our society. They provide
children a sense of purpose, prepare them for success as global citizens, and instill in them a
desire to excel in life. Today's children will be tomorrow's leaders, and teachers are the
important factor in preparing a youngster for their future. Teachers have the power to mold
future leaders in the best possible way for society to construct positive and inspired future
generations, and so design society on a local and global scale. Teachers, in reality, have the
most important job on the planet. Those who have an impact on society's children have the
ability to change lives. Teaching is not only a rewarding job that pays well, but it also allows
you to uncover your creative ability while also learning from your pupils and polishing their
own artistic approach as you teach. Because there is nothing rote about art, education is a
never-ending process of discovery for both the learner and the teacher. It takes discipline and
effort to schedule enough time for your own artwork because it can be demanding and
draining at times.

4.7 POTENTIAL IN VISUAL MEDIA

The creative sector is competitive, but that reflects the commitment that its members have to
their work. Consider it a challenge to strive for success rather than dismissing yourself before
you've even started. It involves dedication and hard effort, as well as the ability to market
yourself and manufacture the goods. The internet has expanded the reach of art and allowed
artists to raise their visibility to audiences and collectors all over the world, reducing their
reliance on museums and galleries for publicity and marketing, and fine art is no longer the
only professional option for artists.

Photography, landscape design, interior design, shop-window design, framing; textile and
garment design; furniture and lighting design; architecture, landscape architecture, and
engineering are all examples of art. All of these jobs involve creative skills, and while you
may aspire to be a qualified fine artist, working in any of these sectors will complement your
work at the easel. Artists today use social media in greater numbers than ever before.
Multimedia Specialist, Television, Film Director, Curator, Product Designer, Art Director,
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Museum Director, Art Therapist, Medical Illustrator, Systems Designers, and others are all
possible professional paths.

4.8 ART INDUSTRY

The art market is a marketplace where buyers and sellers trade services, articles, and works of
art related to the arts and cultural sector. It is divided into two parts: the primary market,
which deals with new artworks, and the secondary market, which deals with resales. From a
local town crier to worldwide advertisers, the Indian art industry, particularly advertising, has
made enormous progress. After China, it is regarded as Asia's second-fastest-growing
advertising market. By the end of 2019, the Indian advertising industry has risen at a 9.4%
annual rate, reaching Rs. 68,475 crores. The sector will have risen by 10.9 percent to Rs
75,952 crores by the end of 2020. By 2025, it is predicted to increase at an annual rate of
11.83 percent, reaching a market size of Rs. 1,33,921 crores. Several causes have contributed
to this expansion. One of the most important aspects is the country's fast adoption of
cellphones and the internet, which makes digital advertising more accessible. Other growth-
promoting variables include rising population and favourable government policies.
Television will account for 39 percent of all media spending in 2019. (Rs. 26,869 crore).
Print expenditures (29 percent, Rs. 20,110 crore) and digital expenditures follow (20 percent ,
Rs. 13,683 crore). Given its enormous reach, television remains the most important medium
for advertisers.

According to recent data, global art and antiquities sales rebounded by around 29% in 2021
over the previous year, following a severe drop in 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic. Overall, the total value of transactions in the worldwide art market reached $65.1
billion in 2021, surpassing sales in 2019. Meanwhile, the global art market's sales volume
increased by approximately 19 percent in 2021, although it remained much below pre-
pandemic levels. Online sales of art and antiques worldwide rose in 2020, then increased
even more in 2021, as auction houses and dealers improved their digital divisions, accounting
for a fifth of global art sales.

The most famous paintings, particularly old master pieces completed before 1803, are usually
owned or housed in museums for public viewing. They are considered priceless since
museums rarely sell them. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci has the highest recorded
insurance value for a painting, according to Guinness World Records. On December 14,
1962, the Mona Lisa, which is on permanent exhibit at the Louvre in Paris, was appraised at
US$100 million. After accounting for inflation, the 1962 value would be roughly US$900
million in 2021.

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Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1500)

The earliest sale on the list (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh, March
1987) was for £24.75 million (£71.2 million in 2021 currency) and was for £24.75 million.
This sale more than tripled the previous high, ushering in a new era in top art sales. Prior to
this, the highest absolute price paid for a painting was £8.1 million (£20.4 million in 2021
currency) by the J. Paul Getty Museum at Christie's in London on April 18, 1985 for Andrea
Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi. In constant values, the National Gallery of Art paid the
highest price before 1987 when it bought Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for roughly
$5 million ($41 million in 2021) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. The sale of Van
Gogh's Sunflowers marked the first time that a "new" (in this case, 1888) picture, as opposed
to the old master paintings that had hitherto dominated the market, became the record holder.
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Only nine pre-1875 paintings are presently ranked among the top 89, with none painted
between 1635 and 1874.

Graffiti artist David Choe, for example, received payment in shares in exchange for painting
graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. When he was granted his shares, they
were worthless, but by the time Facebook went public, they were worth roughly $200
million. Sales between private parties are not routinely reported, and even if they are, details
like the purchase price may remain hidden. For example, on June 25, 2019, J. Tomilson Hill,
an American hedge fund manager, purchased a recently uncovered Caravaggio painting
Judith and Holofernes (1607) two days before it was to be auctioned in Toulouse. The picture
was predicted to sell for $110 to $170 million, despite the Louvre Museum's refusal to
purchase it for €100 million. Because of a confidentiality agreement related to the private
transaction, the actual purchase price was not released.

The other most well-represented artists are Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy
Warhol. Unlike Picasso and Warhol, Van Gogh is only known to have sold one painting
during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, to the impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch for
400 francs (about $2,000 in 2018 USD) in 1890. When adjusted for inflation to 2017, the
prices realised for just nine of his paintings are over US$900 million. The record for the
highest price paid for a painting by a woman belongs to Georgia O'Keeffe. The Crystal
Bridges Museum of American Art purchased her 1932 artwork Jimson Weed/White Flower
No. 1 for $44.4 million (equivalent to $50.8 million in 2021) on November 20, 2014 at
Sotheby's. ‗Shot Sage blue Marilyn‘ a portrait painting done by Andy Warhol was sold at
Christie‘s in May 2022 setting a new record for any American artwork for $195 million.

Only six paintings by non-Western painters are among the top 89. Qi Baishi, Wu Bin, Wang
Meng, and Xu Yang have all created classic Chinese paintings. Qi Baishi's Twelve
Landscape Screens, in particular, was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. While the only non-
Western modern artwork featured is the oil painting Juin-Octobre 1985 by Chinese-French
painter Zao Wouki, which sold for $65 million in 2018. The High Sun by Chinese painter
Wang Shaofei, which was evaluated for $74 million in 2017, is not included in this list.

Tyeb Mehta's painting ―Durga Mahisasura Mardini‖ was sold for USD 2.9 million (Rs 20.49
crore) at Sotheby's first auction in Mumbai, Boundless India, on November 29, 2018. Born
into an observant Shiite Muslim family in Mumbai, he is a patient and precise painter. His
family worked in the film industry, so he began editing films and continued to make them
long after he became a painter. At Saffron Art‘s ‗Milestone 200th Auction‘ in 2018, his
artwork of goddess Kali with a gauche crimson lips fighting the buffalo monster set a record-
breaking price of £2.8 million.

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Durga Mahisasura Mardini by Tyeb Mehta Tyeb Mehta: ‗Kali‘, 1989, Image Credit: Vogue

The another most expensive Indian painting ever sold is V S Gaitonde's ‗Untitled‘ that
fetched Rs 39.98 crores (£3.1 million) in 2015.

VS Gaitonde: Untitled, 1995, Image credit: BBC U.K

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Francis Newton Souza was born in Portuguese-controlled Goa and raised in a Portuguese
Catholic colony. He was expelled from school for sketching sexual images in the school
lavatory and was suspended from Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay for supporting Gandhi's
Quit India agitation. His works frequently feature female nudity, religion, and the metropolis.
In 2015, Christie's auctioned his piece 'Birth' for £2.9 million. A pregnant reclining nude
woman with hairpins, a guy in a priest's tunic, a still life on the window sill, and a townscape
with buildings and lofty towers are depicted in this oil painting.

Francis Newton Souza: 'Birth', 1955, Image Credit: Indian Art Ideas
Raja Ravi Varma: Radha In The Moonlight, 1890, Image Credit: Pundoles

Raja Ravi Varma was the first Indian artist to use European realism to portray Indian gods
and legendary characters in naturalistic settings. He was also the first Indian painter to make
lithographs of his paintings affordable and accessible to the general public, bringing fine art
to the masses. His painting style is well-known, and it influenced Indian 'calendar art.' In
2016, ‗Radha in Moonlight‘ was sold for £2.6 million.

Akbar Padamsee: ‗Greek Landscape‘, 1960, Image credit: Christie's


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Padamsee's pioneering attitude may be seen in his willingness to experiment with a wide
range of mediums, from oil on canvas to photography and digital printmaking, as well as in
his topics. They all demonstrate his mastery of space, form, and colour. In 2016, his painting
'Greek Landscape' was auctioned at Saffron Art for an extraordinary price of £2 million. The
piece depicts an imagined cityscape painted in a greyscale palette of varied intensities. The
piece was first shown at Mumbai's Jehangir Art Gallery, where it was praised for its novel
approach and gigantic scale. The recognition that Indian art continues to receive is immense
and we are sure that the upcoming artists will reach the same, if not better heights.

4.9 LET US SUM UP

Individuals have numerous options to develop themselves as successful creative and


contributing members of society through art. Art has a special ability to interact with living
things. It interacts with and becomes a part of the living and cognitive processes that are
unique to humans. Because art forms are created with emotions and a specific ability or
technique to portray the creator's ideas and feelings, we have reason to believe they have
instructional value. As a result, artistic expression becomes a societal educational
contribution. Art has flourished under the patronage of royals and the rich since the historic
period. Artists were commissioned to make the piece of art according to the patron's wishes
and desires. The royal patronage has faded in recent times due to changes in administration to
administer countries, but the powerful and wealthy continue to commission art. The rise of
technology in the twentieth century liberated art from the royal courts. This course will teach
you about the various options for a future profession in art in the fields of education, the
private sector, and print and non-print media. You learned in this unit that art contributes to
economic development through its allied specialisation in society. The development of
artistic expertise leads to recognition and a source of income.

4.10 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q. No. 1: What is patronage? Explain with example.


___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Q. No. 2: Write a short note on different possible careers in art.


___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Q. No. 3: Can media survive without art?

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___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Q. No. 4: How art is contributing in the development of economic growth?


___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

4.11 FURTHER READINGS AND REFERENCES

 "The Chinese Ink Paintings of Wang Shaofei Break the World Record"
 "The Most Expensive Female Artists 2016 – artnet News". artnet News. 2016-05-24.
 ―Indian Advertising Market Report & Forecast 2020-2025.‖ Report & Forecast 2020-
2025,
 Brown, Mark (28 February 2019). "'Lost Caravaggio' rejected by the Louvre may be
worth £100m". The Guardian.
 Dentsu Aegis Network, DAN E4M Digital Advertising Report 2020,
dentsuaegisnetwork.in/digital_reports.php?var1=MjAyMA,,&var2=NQ,. Accessed on
12 September 2020
 https://www.edutopia.org/blog/career-arts-lets-get-real-stacey-goodman
 https://www.statista.com/aboutus/our-research-commitment
 https://www.statista.com/topics/1119/art-market/#topicHeader__wrapper
 https://www.studentartguide.com/articles/art-careers-list
 https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-importance-of-teachers/
 Nick Bilton, "For Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches," The New York Times,
1/1/12.
 Rao, M.S. (2010). Soft Skills - Enhancing Employability: Connecting Campus with
Corporate. New Delhi: I. K. International Publishing House Pvt Ltd. p. 225. ISBN
9789380578385.
 Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects: An introduction to aesthetics. New York:
Harper & Row, 1968. OCLC 1077405
 Robin Pogrebin, Mystery Buyer of Work Attributed to Caravaggio Revealed, The
New York Times, 27 June 2019.
 Sägmüller, Johannes Baptist (1913). "Patron and Patronage‖. In Herbermann, Charles
(ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
 Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) – online collections from UK museums, galleries,
universities.
 Zao Wou-Ki, Juin-Octobre 1985, Modern Art Evening Sale, Sotheby's, Hong Kong,
30 September 2018.
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