They had been asked by to draw their family, their pet, an endangered species, a war, a politician, a scientists, their solution to save the planet, and much more. Two Polish researchers asked them to draw artists, and they did not like what they saw.
Małgorzata Karczmarzyk is assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Gdańsk (Poland). Dominika Szelągowska teaches visual arts at a high school in the same city. They are both practicing visual artists and art educators.
Their article Artists in the Eyes of Children – Semiotic Analysis of the Meanings about Artists Constructed by Children was published in Kultura i Edukacja in 2018 (No.2, pp. 131-141). The study was very small in scope with only 13 seven year old students taking part, from a few Polish towns. Favorably, each drawing was accompanied by an individual interview with the child. It would be nice to see all the drawings, and not only two.
What is so interesting about this endeavor are the questions it investigates:
- What meanings do seven-year-old children give to the term “artist”?
- What distinguishing features, according to children, should an artist have?
- How can the media influence the shaping of the meanings of children about the artist?
- How can the aestheticization influence the shaping of the meanings of children about the artist?
Not many researchers have asked children how they see art and artists. It is surprising considering that we keep hearing the carelessly overused phrase “every child is an artist.” So, this article is a precious addition to the literature.
It turns out though that the authors seem less interested in seeing and hearing what the children have to show and say, than blaming educators for children’s narrow views on art. It is as if the participants were used, rather than engaged, as to make a point about the deplorable state of art education in their schools. The beret a boy drew on the head of a painter is received as stereotypical. So is the easel a girl provides the painter she drew. They tell us that “the poor visual art awareness of tutors is to blame, no knowledge of art, their own prejudices and limitations in its reception, their own negative educational experiences.”
The authors are on a mission when they say “the ultimate purpose of the research is to obtain knowledge which will allow effective changes in education, in this case, in art education.”
The article could have been written a century ago, so much it transpires the ever-lasting tension between teaching art techniques versus free expression, the classics versus the moderns and, artists as educators versus teachers as art educators. When it comes to liking or not their answers, it begs the question, who is asking the children?
Below, a drawing found in our collection. Made by Rishi, it depicts the various formal element of drawing. As a school assignment, I would assume that the authors cited in this blog would say this type of exercise contribute to transmitting a detrimental and narrow notion of art to children.
