Children and art in the “Beauty Children, Mirò and Contemporary Art” experience

From Firenze University Press Journal: Studi sulla Formazione

Clara Silva, University of Florence

John Dewey, in Art as Experience, upholds that, between the subject who has experiences and the outside world in which the experience itself takes place, there lies a dialectic relationship, and that, in order to grasp this dialectic, it is necessary to maintain a unity between thought and corporeity, knowledge and emotion, activity and passivity. Indeed, «art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature». It is precisely in the aesthetic dimension that we can get a natural and in-depth grasp of how the various spheres of subjective experience interlock.

According to the father of pragmatism, art is that dimension which creates continuity between the subject and everyday experience. Hence, for this very reason, it should be removed from its isolation in museums, thus restoring «the continuity of aesthetic experience with normal processes of living». Furthermore, its experience can neither be purely emotional nor purely cognitive. Instead, it should be considered as a reality that involves all the spheres of subjectivity. Indeed, the artistic structure comprises an «emotional quality» that completes an «intellectual activity». It is once again emotion, for Dewey, that guides the selection of elements deemed coherent; it dyes «what is selected with its colour, thereby giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through the varied parts of an experience». On the basis of his idea of experience as something which is both made and had, Dewey deems that the «creative», «artistic» act of production must not be separated from the «aesthetic» act of perception and use.

This can be avoided if aesthetics is conceived of not as an «idle luxury» or something that depends on «transcendent ideality», but as the development of something that belongs to a normal experience. On the other hand, art can neither be understood as an act that is solipsistic, closed in on itself, since, in the relationship with the material, the artist gives rise to a structure that can be used by others. Hence, the work of art is produced in order to be used, it is an act of expression and communication. Dewey therefore asserts art’s institutional and social value, underlining its anthropological nature. In this perspective, Dewey places art and technique, art and craftsmanship on a continuous plane, even though the work of art, unlike other objects, possesses a complete form, a totally novel unity of sense, which can be used by the whole human community.

The link between art and technique resides in the creative dimension which, as Vygotsky notes, is an «essential condition for existence» and hence it is at the base of everything that is innovative in every human action, even when it is a small thing, an insignificant detail. Creativity is that active and experiential dimension which «makes the human being a creature oriented to-ward the future». It is founded on «imagination» or «fantasy». For Vygotsky, imagination does not just work on the materials derived from the experiences had by the individual, but it is also based on the experiences of others, in other words, the underlying historic and social conditions. Man «can imagine what he has not seen, can conceptualize something from another person’s narration and description of what he himself has never directly experienced. He is not limited to the narrow circle and narrow boundaries of his own experience but can venture far beyond these boundaries, assimilating, with the help of his imagination, someone else’s historical or social experience»9. For Vygotsky, «drawing […] is the primary form of creative activity in early childhood»: it develops through a series of stages or fundamental phases, a preliminary stage being scribbling. Creative drawing, more intense until puberty, however cools off with growth, except in exceptional cases.

Cesare Ghezzi, one of the most interesting experimenters of art-based teaching for children, considers graphic-pictorial expression a bridge towards knowledge of the self, others and the world. Art is paideia and has the task of educating the gaze to scrutinize outwards and inwards, of educating us talk of ourselves and our own original vision of the world. A child’s creativity can develop through a language of signs, graphics and pictures so long as to him the educational environment represents a place of freedom of expression. In this way, educating children towards art enables their broader expressive capacities to develop more and allows them to discover the path of inner narration.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/Studi_Formaz-16177

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