The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World

Psychologists and educators tend to judge child art by adult standards of "realism" or "naturalism." By comparison with the work of accomplished adult artists, children's drawings seem defective, exhibiting the child's so-called "primitive" conceptions of the world. In her landmark study, illustrated with more than 200 examples in color and black and white, Claire Golomb leaves that perspective far behind. She explores child art as an expression of visual thinking—the symbol-making function of the mind which produces images rather than words—and discovers that child art displays an orderly progression in the development of representational concepts. Children show a competent, sophisticated understanding, heretofore unsuspected, of the nature of representation and its problems.

Working within this developmental framework, Golomb addresses fundamental aspects of child art that have been neglected in previous studies: the differentiation of shape in animate and inanimate figures, the creation of pictorial space, the use of color, the role of affect and expression, and the emergence of compositional skills. We also witness the path taken by gifted children, the drawings of retarded and emotionally disturbed children, and the impact of cultural variables on the child's representation. The intrinsic predictability of child art development leads to a valuable reassessment of educational strategies and of clinical interpretations of children's drawings.