“The creative adult is the child who survived.”—Ursula LeGuin
BASQUIAT
Jean-Michel Basquiat died in 1988 at the young age of twenty-seven after creating over 1500 drawings and 600 paintings. Basquiat was a mixture of creative genius and rebellious teenager. He was hyper-aware of social issues that affected his generation. He was intelligent enough to understand that art had to be dealt with like a business to be successful, but he lacked the maturity to find balance in his personal life. He socialized with the elite of the art world but was constantly at war with himself, loving the labels society placed on him and then loathing them. His “wild child” persona pleased him and yet also repulsed him. Even his art was a constant dichotomy of themes depicting “wealth vs poverty, segregation vs integration, and inner vs outer experiences.”
Basquiat was aware of the power of maintaining a childlike mindset. In an interview with Vanity Fair he said, “I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.” His journey is an example of how an intellectual creator’s passion for illuminating social and political injustices can simultaneously be deeply connected to their inner child. His art expresses adult themes in a way that appears simplistic and relatable, yet complex and disturbing. He managed to retain his freedom by intentionally showing an energy of unrestrained and manic urgency in his art.
STAGES OF ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
When I think about kids being creative, I think about blankets stretched over chairs in the living room to create forts and mystical lands. I think about them tying a towel around their neck, spreading their arms out, and imagining themselves soaring thousands of feet in the air. They use art supplies to create colorful drawings backed by fantastical stories. It’s undeniable that children are creative, but it’s also clear that the percentage of creative kids is drastically higher than the percentage of creative adults. When I asked a room filled with preschoolers, “Raise your hand if you’re creative,” the majority of them enthusiastically raised their hands. When I asked a room of adults, a few reluctantly raised their hands.
The reason this happens lies in Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld’s stages of artistic development. In 1947, he posed that there are six stages of artistic development that every child goes through from age 1 to 16, and that these stages can be observed in the art they create. Let’s briefly go over the six stages:
Stage 1: Scribble Stage (1 – 3 years old)
Children draw simple lines to experience the movements. They may name or tell stories about their scribbles.
Stage 2: Preschematic Stage (3 – 4 years old)
Children start to communicate through their drawings by developing their schema, the visual identity of their drawings. Their scribbles describe people or objects important to them scattered around the paper.
Stage 3: The Schematic Stage (5 – 6 years old)
Children in this stage show a better understanding of space by placing objects on the ground instead of floating and having a clear separation between the ground and sky. Objects of greater importance, like their parents, are drawn larger than less important objects, like their house.
Stage 4: The Dawning Realism (7 – 9 years old)
Children in this stage attempt to draw more realistic with three dimensional techniques and shading using multiple colors. For the first time in their life, they become aware of their lack of ability to draw objects exactly as they appear in real life, so they become critical of their own work.
Stage 5: The Pseudo-Realistic Stage (10 – 13 years old)
In the previous stages, children cared most about the process of creating art. Now, in this stage, they care more about the end result. At this stage the art can be based on how they feel about things they experience in their life. Most children stop drawing at this stage because they become frustrated that their art doesn’t look like real life.
Stage 6: The Decision Stage (13 – 16 years old)
The few children that reach this stage typically continue identifying as an artist for the rest of their life. They continue to develop their creative minds because they retain the belief that art is an activity without merit.
Thus, children’s art starts off as playful, joyful, and unconcerned with the expectations of representing life as it is. They’re simply expressing themself. By middle-childhood, their drawings become more stereotypical as they focus on the rules of realistic representation. The biggest drop off of creativity happens in the transition from the Pseudo-Realistic Stage to the Decision Stage. Children’s self criticism about art hinders them from embracing the creative process and causes them to fear the judgment of their final works of art. Without deep encouragement from their peers and family to push through, they let go of creativity and start to view it as a trait a few other people have and they don’t possess.
CREATIVITY IS NOT LEARNED, IT’S UNLEARNED.
In the most watched TED Talk called “Do schools kill creativity?” Sir Ken Robinson explained that “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” Every child develops creatively the same way they progress through the stages of artistic development. Children start life fearlessly observing the world with a curious mind to express novel ideas. As they grow older, society dims their light and pushes them into conventional thinking.
Repetitive learning and standardized testing in schools stifle children’s creativity. Their focus on memorization and test-taking is the opposite of playtime. When kids engage extensively in pretend play, they are exercising the crucial imaginative thinking that helps them develop the creative skills they need as adults. Play, in all forms, is how humans grow to understand the world. Yet, rather than prioritizing play, schools smother kid’s creative potential.
Extrinsic motivation is also another way society blocks creativity in both children and adults. When we’re focused on external rewards like grades or paychecks, we’re less likely to take risks and pursue novel ideas. Instead of focusing on external rewards, schools and the workplace should encourage intrinsic motivation and allow people to explore their interests and passions for the sake of learning and personal growth.
Another factor that hinders creativity in kids is adult’s focus on obedience. Creativity requires taking social risks. Creative people generate novel ideas regardless of how the rest of the world thinks. In fact, creativity is most strongly associated with the willingness to challenge norms, which can be an ostracizing experience. When adults focus heavily on obedience and conformity, they may limit children’s ability to think creatively and take risks. Instead, we should encourage children to safely challenge norms and explore new ideas, even if they may be met with resistance or rejection.