Making
Sense of Children's Drawings
by John Willats
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NY, NY, 2005
280 pp., illus. Trade, $65.00; paper,
$29.95
ISBN: 0-8058-4537-2; ISBN: 0-8058-4538-0.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa
ballast@netins.net
Is it true, as some have claimed,
that children draw what they know, adults
what they see? Are there shared characteristics
among children's drawings, regardless
of time period, cultural setting or ethnicity?
Are children inherently more self-expressive,
more creative than adults? And can behavioral
anomalies be anticipated by analyzing
a child's drawings?
This new, pioneering book addresses the
typical questions about this complex research
area, but does it in a way that feels
more convincing than most other writings
on the subject. It is an especially rigorous
look, which takes nothing for granted
and does not hesitate to doubt even the
most sacred assumptions about children's
drawings. The book's chief emphasis is
on the perceptual development of children
in relation to their drawings, a somewhat
predictable viewpoint in the sense that
the earlier writings of the author have
also dealt with visual art in relation
to perception (see, for example, his earlier
book, Art and Representation: New Principles
in the Analysis of Pictures). As he
admits, this new project was influenced
by the findings of a British-born vision
scientist at MIT named David Marr, who
(circa 1982) proposed that we see by processing
phenomena in two very distinct ways (a
theory, according to Willats, that "revolutionized
the study of visual perception"). In one
of these, which Marr called "viewer-centered"
seeing, we interpret the nature of objects
from a single fixed viewing point (as,
for example, in traditional Western perspective).
In the other, termed "object-centered,"
we interpret visual experience from a
multiplicity of viewpoints. According
to Marr (in Willats' words), the human
visual system takes the "viewer-centered
descriptions available at the retina and
use[s] them to compute permanent object-centered
descriptions that can be stored in long-term
memory." (This, then, accounts for what's
usually called "visual constancies.")
But has this to do with children's art?
As it turns out, it may mean that very
young children do, indeed, draw what they
seebut at that age they see in a
manner that is largely object-centered,
not viewer-centered. Willats does not
simply put forth this hypothesis (which
is radical by comparison) and then move
on to other concerns. Rather, a major
part of the book consists of a balanced,
painstaking discussion of prevailing theories
of children's art (historical and current),
experimental support for his own hypothesis,
and the effects that his findings might
possibly have on the day-to-day practice
of teaching art.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Volume 21 Number
2, Winter 2005-06.)