Purchase

Amazon

Add to Wish List

Also by Jonathan Fineberg:

When We Were Young, August 2006
Trade Size

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
By: Jonathan Fineberg

New Perspectives on the Art of the Child

University of California Press
August 2006
304 pages
ISBN: 0520250435
Trade Size
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction

In his last and most overarching essay on the subject, Rudolf Arnheim encourages us to see the range of individuality in children's drawings and to recognize the child's creation of "significant form" as a way of bringing coherence to his or her experience of the world. This groundbreaking book brings together distinguished critics and scholars, including Rudolf Arnheim, to explore children's art and its profound but rarely documented history. The contributors address central questions of how children use art to make sense of their experience and what really constitutes visual "giftedness" in children. They also cover such topics as visual thinking, the influence of popular culture on children's drawings, giftedness versus education in children's drawings, process, and social interaction in drawing. Created to accompany an exhibition on children's drawings, When We Were Young features a stunning full-color gallery of drawings both by famous artists such as Ingres, Van Gogh, Picasso, Miró, and Klee when they were children and by extraordinary "ordinary" children. An annotated chronology, with synopses and more than a thousand scholarly notes, offers a comprehensive survey of the literature and history of child art from the thirteenth century to the present.

Essays by Rudolf Arnheim, Jonathan Fineberg, Misty S. Houston, Olga Ivashkevich, Christine Marmé Thompson, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - July 3, 2006