Children and Civilization

I enjoyed reading Arnheim’s chapter on growth. Since studying a conference works worth of children’s artistic development, I am drawn toward the correlation that many authors make between children’s artistic development and early human representations. Assumptions that a child of a certain age must have a certain set of skills can be harmful to the observations of the true nature of what is being expressed. It is important to consider the experience an individual has with a given material, else interpretations can be without objective support. Just as, I think, Livingstone pointed out, it is more biologically efficient to code for similarities than the numerous incorrect associations that can be assumed. The similarities between the development of the individual and the development of visual representation in cultures are important to understand. This relationship is especially clear to me in my experience with a past conference project. For my sophomore year art history conference, I studied Minoan pottery and learned how to throw pots on the wheel. Teaching myself to control the clay was difficult but I could see and feel myself develop more skill as I practiced. As I spent more time in the ceramics lab, I was able to make more delicate pieces. At the end of the project, in my review of the experience, I noted that my technical development was similar to the Minoan’s understanding of the ceramics. I like to consider the technical skill they must have developed independent of their use of the wheel, as the potter’s wheel had been in the lands surrounding Crete for almost a thousand years before Minoans included it into their production.

It is also striking to follow the increasing complexity and combination of different designs and motifs that were used over time. Early Minoan ceramics were limited to dark and light color differentiation that clearly distinguished the organic, swirly figures from the empty background. Eventually colors began to be included and designs began to include clear simple shape and not just designs. Soon, the handmade motifs incorporated the designs into larger shapes on larger vessels and everything evolved into more complex versions of the past. However, similar to the artistic development in children, certain techniques or mastered skills may be “dropped” in order to “pick up” a new, possibly more mature technique. The forms of the vessels remain within a certain number of variations function, with small differentiations between Early, Middle, and Late (with internal divisions of Early I, Early II, etc.)

) Late Minoan II