Although the book is over sixty years old, Viktor Lowenfeld described the childhood stages of perception, via drawing and painting, and included a section on the blind and deaf.
“I Am Eating Candy” is the title of a clay sculpture by an 11 year old blind and deaf girl who attended The Perkins Institution for the Blind in the late 1940s. It’s from a book entitled “Creative and Mental Growth – A Textbook on Art Education,” by Viktor Lowenfeld, Pennsylvania State College, published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1950. Here’s the full plate:
Lowenfeld was very perceptive and astute in using art to measure the mental progress of young ‘uns. His descriptions of the early stages of perception, via childhood artwork, is very interesting – beginning with erratic or circular scribbles indicating movement, to drawing faces without bodies, to heads with arms and feet, etc. In drawings and paintings, the most important features are often grossly exaggerated in size, huge hands for example. Cool stuff.
Speaking of grossly exaggerated cool stuff, it’s time for
The Overnight Open Thread.
Tags: Art, Overnight Open Thread, Retro
