Artful Scribbles: The Significance Of Children's Drawings [Paperback]

Howard E. Gardner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465004555 | ISBN-13: 978-0465004553 | Publication Date: March 8, 1982

Psychologists have long understood that the art works of children relate to their intellectual and emotional development but this is the first book to describe the developmental process of drawing. Gardner explores the vital links between children’s art and their emotional, social, and cognitive development.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award in education. In 2000, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (March 8, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465004555
• ISBN-13: 978-0465004553
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "My kid could do that" Good answers to the wrong questions, April 11, 2011

By 

Frank E. Kupper "Eugene Kupper, VitruviusP@ao... (Scottsdale AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Artful Scribbles: The Significance Of Children's Drawings (Paperback)

I have practiced and taught art and architecture for about fifty years.
Recently, my educational efforts have been focused on preschool through eighth grade learning/doing.
I enjoy Gardner's book - it is so exasperating!
There are two main problems that Gardner has with the work of children:

1: He wants to figure out what "children's art" is, from preschool onward.
To do this he confuses himself by comparing preschool paintings and drawings with the usual suspects - Miro, Klee, Picasso and Pollack. Just because accomplished artists work in a certain manner doesn't mean that four year olds do. Art is not something that children - or most adults - do. That is what artists do. In order to produce art, one must learn the techniques of drawing and painting, writing, and musical performance. With these abilities one may draw a picture, write a laundry list, or sing a tune. This is what we all do, better or less so. However, coupled with with other skills - namely: metaphorical ability, imaginative displacement, mythopoetic reverie, cultural immersion - the everyday techniques (drawing, etc.) may be put to use to make Art. Likewise the "art" we produce may be mediocre or transcendent. To make art is no guarantee of success, and the romantic balderdash people still spout seems to affect Gardner too.

2: He wants to find the scientific basis for the development of "artistic abilities".
Because he is a developmental psychologist, grounded in Piaget, Bruner and experimental methods, he wishes he could study children as if they are lab rats - but he also has a sentimental side about growth and growth spurts in his cute little "subjects". As he maps out the "development" of "young artists" he enjoys the neurophysiological growth spurts that occur around 4 and 5, and confers the designation "the magic years" on them. The he decries the pernicious "U-shaped curve" - the decline of the magic as children turn their attention and abilities to other developmental strategies. Because he is a sucker for his own kids (and who shouldn't be?) he places a little halo on their little heads. Gardner imagines that Mozart, Picasso, Klee, et al. achieved their mastery "spontaneously", forgetting the hard work that they completed under the tutelage of their own parents, and their years of apprenticeship within studio masters. Those artists fought the U-shaped curve and by dint of hard work bent it upward. "As the twig is inclined, so grows the tree," wrote Alexander Pope.

Gardner nine years later wrote an excellent article, "Zero-Based Art Education: An Introduction to ARTS PROPEL" that can be found in Gardner's 2006 The Development and Education of the Mind. Chapter 13. He offers 10 very constructive guidelines for arts education. I wish I had read his article back then! We have been unaware that we were following our own very similar guidelines for over twenty years in our own teaching at the elementary levels. (We come from graduate-level architectural education at UCLA.)
Gardner still doesn't want to bend the twig too much and concludes even this article with his departure from the teaching studio and a return to the laboratory "ivory tower". He carries his view of "natural development" (of the Rousseauian Natural Man) back to his writing desk to pen: "We feel that it is important to explore "natural" development before one examines interventions; and we believe that is important to to establish the psychological facts and to develop one's educational philosophy before one attempts to influence practice -- especially since it is always possible to influence practice for the worse!"

However, the studio/classroom where we educators work is also a "laboratory of empirical research". It is just that our "subjects" are not lab rats or children - but our own teaching effectiveness. "Creation is a Patient Search" wrote Le Corbusier. This is a risk that we have been willing to take, at UCLA, SCI-Arc, and several other "ivory towers", but more importantly - in elementary schools. We named our work The Vitruvius Program, after a two thousand year old exhortation by the Roman architect to teach the complexities of Architecture "from the earliest years." All these efforts have paid off in the collective work of our students whose projects have been seen in museum exhibitions over the years. Their portfolios map individual growth in learning the materials and methods of architecture, design and art. Later they may become great artists or architects - or just well educated adults.
[...]
Eugene Kupper Architect
Professor Emeritus UCLA
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