The Paradox of “Style” in Children's Drawings

The problem of "style" has received intense scrutiny from art historians who saw the history of art as a progressive evolution of artistic form toward naturalism in art. Much of the debate centered on the relationship between "conceptual knowledge" and "seeing with an innocent eye," with the latter leading to greater veracity in the depiction of the natural world. This issue has been revisited in three of the five essays that are included in Symbolic and Social Constraints on the Development of Children's Artistic Style (see record 2001-00529-000). The other essays are only loosely connected to this theme. Given the diverse emphases, the reader might have benefited from an introductory chapter that provides a conceptual framework within which to situate the separate essays. The study of style in child art needs to be grounded in an understanding of the nature of graphic representation, its possibilities and constraints, developmental trajectories, individual differences, the role of practice, motivation, talent, sociocultural context, and cognition. It is within such a framework that the question of style and of consistency over time can be profitably reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)