Childhood creativity: a brief history

Childhood, as we now understand it, is a fairly recent invention. Only in the 17th Century did an idea take hold that children had a special or valuable view of the world: that they were creative. In the West during the Middle Ages, a child was thought of as “a simple plaything, as a simple animal”. The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke was among the first people to think of children as not just human beings, but ones in need of educating in order to become rational adults. He explained that “[C]uriosity should be as carefully cherished in children as other appetites suppressed.” With Locke, then, childhood became a distinct and important phase of human development.

Since the latter part of the 18th century, educators and intellectuals directed their attention to children as a lens through which to revolutionise the human experience. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss-French philosopher, articulated this shift poignantly in his seminal work "Émile, or On Education" (1752). Rousseau envisioned a childhood emblematic of newfound political and social liberties, notably depicted through the character of Émile. Raised in harmony with nature and free from the constraints of bourgeois morality, Émile epitomized Rousseau's ideals. The philosopher urged the reader to "cherish childhood; foster its play, its delights, its natural inclinations." In Rousseau's conception, the child is governed by impulse and sensation, while it is the adult observer who possesses the capacity for imagination. Nonetheless, he sowed the seeds for the birth of the creative child.

How does this understanding correspond to children’s creativity? In his book The Innocent Eye: Children's Art and the Modern Artist, the art-historian Jonathan Fineberg, extensively explores the perception of children by modern artists and critics, portraying them as possessing distinctive and visionary artistic capabilities. The now familiar notion of the perceptive and innovative child aligning with the ideal artist model is a concept deeply rooted in modernism.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, artists including Pablo Picasso, Gabriele Münter, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee admired and sought to replicate the potent and concise representation strategies found in children's art. "When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children" Picasso remarked after viewing an exhibition of children's drawings in 1945.

Over the last century, there has been an explosion of interest in children’s creativity. The academic Amy F. Ogat – the author of Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America – explained that this chimed with a broader interest in creativity itself. “The growth in the cult of creativity occurred in the middle years of the 20th century, just after the conclusion of World War II. A combination of psychological research, shifting social values and Cold War fears in the US all contributed to an unlikely embrace of creativity in the post-war era”.

Visual art has always been central to children’s creativity. A flatly rendered drawing of a family in front of its house, with a butter-yellow sun shining, and a single symmetrical tree growing in the garden can be found stuck on fridges the world over. Childish daubs have for years been aligned not just with play, but development and education.

Ogat places the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi as starting this tradition, explaining that “Pestalozzi favoured an educational process that introduced the object before the word. Following Rousseau, whom he admired, Pestalozzi argued that the material world and our sensory perception of it were the fundamental sources of knowledge. Pestalozzi is best known for a system of teaching through drawing, which while deriving from instinct, would instil skills of observation, accuracy and patience. The idea that sensory engagement with objects might not only release a child’s understanding and encourage development, but also promote a forceful creativity was a central theme for subsequent reformers.”

Harmony, Manifestations: welcoming the future

Now, children are understood as being effortlessly creative, to the point that we expect them to be so on demand – and that they play through creativity, in a way that adults at some point stop doing. We see in children an innocence, and a uniquely original point of view. At its most extreme, we see in children’s expression a view of life unsullied by the ills of the modern world. We see in children’s creativity a purity – and most fundamentally – hope for a better world.

Adults find inspiration in children’s creativity and childhood, then – but what can we learn about children themselves through their art? And what value does practicing visual art have for children? This exhibition aims to treat children as Rousseau’s Noble Savage, but as developing people with needs and desires, keen to make sense of the world and in turn, be made sense of.

Adults typically celebrate the most optimistic forms of childhood creativity. Drawings of rainbows and other sunny natural phenomena dominate primary school notice boards the world over. This cements an assumption that children are by their very nature happy, and that creative expression is inherently optimistic. Harmony, Manifestations moves on from this notion and explores the entire spectrum of children’s creative expression.

Inspired by the work of child psychologists such as Rhoda Kellogg, and the wider practice of art therapy, Harmony, Manifestations celebrates the polyvalent creative output of children who make art. The exhibition asserts both the pure pleasure and clear value that making art brings children across the world and is a space to begin conversations and ask questions on this subject.

One of the most enigmatic figures at the intersection of child psychology and the visual arts is Rhoda Kellogg. Kellogg (1898-1987) was a psychologist and the director of a nursery school in San Francisco, who from 1948 to 1966, collected more than one million drawings
made by children around the world aged between two and eight. Kellogg believed in the fundamental role visual language plays in the emergence of consciousness, and her studies eventually culminated in the creation of classification systems for the early stages of artistic development.

Her research demonstrated that children follow a predictable continuum of graphic development, from scribbles to finger paintings to certain basic forms, and that this development is universal across cultures. “Scribbles are the building blocks of children’s art,” Kellogg noted. “From the moment the child discovers what it looks like and feels like to put these lines down on paper, they have found something they will never lose, they have found art.”

Kellogg’s research is evident in many of the works in Harmony, Manifestations, which gives credence to the universal nature of children’s art. In the Chinese scroll Picture of Autumn Fruits, 2023, we see various references and repetitions of forms such as mandalas, suns and radials that are the structuring elements of childhood expression all over the world. Kellogg demonstrates how each of these forms lead to representative depictions of real-world objects; for example mandalas become suns, which in turn become people. There is something ancient and instinctively human about these forms, which appear to us now endowed with spiritual and sacred overtones.

Harmony, Manifestations hosts art from children aged between five and twelve, a pivotal time in their development – both personally and creatively. Kellogg identified that, “most children stop all spontaneous art activity by the age of eight or so, those that go on usually study and practice the techniques to master various media.” In other words, children around this age begin to consciously make ‘art’ and become aware of it as something separate from normal life.

The participants are primary school students from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Oxford (UK), Torrão (Portugal) and Los Angeles. Each child was asked to gently respond to theme of ‘light and love’. This was qualified with the suggestion that the theme was just an opening, and that the children were ‘welcome to make any work that you want with absolute freedom’. Common traits are evident in the works on view, the overall effect of which is that they transcend their discrete geographic origins and become a universal expression of childhood. Perhaps most notable is an underlying spiritualism that evidences concern for both people and the environment, with an emphasis on emotionally expressive techniques.

Although it is important to emphasise the varied and unique nature of these works, a few subjects regularly recur, including: landscapes; abstract work; environmentally themed work (including animals); fantasy worlds, and people. Again, these subjects are evenly distributed across different cities. In discussions with the children, it becomes clear that even by the age of eight there are a huge number of influences that consciously or not affect their choice of subject. TV, subjects explored in art classes and books are actively cited, and to a lesser extent the work of well-known figures from art history.

Creating abstract work was described by one child as a liberating prospect, but often figurative work has abstract elements contained within it. Given the rapidly shifting dynamic existing between children and technology – in which children in affluent cultures receive smartphones at increasingly younger ages – it is tempting to read into the works the creeping encroachment of digital technology. Although undoubtedly a relevant subject to explore, it is hard to see any direct influence of this.

Two works exhibited demonstrate the pleasure associated with inventing novel ideas or combinations of forms. They demonstrate the journey from influence to assimilation and finally, creation. In Untitled (Light bulb) and O amor pelo anbiente (Love for the environment) the artists present hypotheses stemming from keen observation and personal influence, akin to scientific experiments awaiting validation by an intrigued audience. Noteworthy within the exhibition's context, these creations demonstrate children's capacity to engage beyond their immediate circles, using art as a medium for confident and curious expression.

When looking at the work and in talking to the children, it becomes abundantly clear that the children use art as a means of expressing their emotions and experiences. Many of the children described both the process of making the work – and subsequently sharing it – as a positive mental experience; art is a useful tool for self-expression and making yourself understood. This outcome reflects the more goal-orientated and prescriptive process of art therapy, in which participants (adults or children) make work with the sole purpose of expressing themselves.

O mundo mais colorido (A more colourful world) by Dafiny, The Illustrated Mind by Xiao Ran, The Seed of Life by Yu Tian, Árvores Inteligentes (Intelligent Trees) by João Besugo and Emotions by MITA are poignant examples illustrating the deeply emotional nature of children's artistic expressions. These artworks serve as both personal reflections and channels for communication with the world around them. These artworks serve as reminders of the emotional depth and resilience inherent in children's creativity, offering adults a valuable entry point for understanding and engaging with their inner worlds.

Whilst not wishing to impose rules or dogma, the exhibition’s hope is to encourage a more thoughtful engagement with children’s art. Harmony, Manifestations advocates for the free and expressive practising of children’s art. For children: art should be an exploratory space, unhampered by goals or grades. For adults engaging with children’s art: we shouldn’t see the work as something to extract value from for our own lives – or as representing some lost innocence – but take the work at its word, and try and understand what the children are saying.