Types of Child Art and Alternative Developmental Accounts: Interpreting the Interpreters

Two conflicting accounts of child art are grounded in opposing modern and postmodern aesthetic theories: one account describes a naturally unfolding process in which children invent graphic equivalents for the objects they observe and the emotions they feel. The other describes socially constructed art that children model after cultural art-forms. Different aesthetic theories directed to the nature of ‘high’ art and popular art lead researchers to view the same children’s artworks and draw different conclusions about the child and the developmental functions of child art. Analyses of two sets of Japanese children’s artworks, one in the popular style of the graphic narrative and another – school art in the ‘high’ tradition – leads to the conclusion that art derived from popular models provides children with important ways to investigate meaningful dimensions of the world and to experiment with life’s major themes – dimensions of meaning frequently absent from children’s school art.