Lowenfeld's 1947 Creative and Mental Growth was published and became the single most influential textbook in art education. Many elementary school teacher preparation programs used this book since it described characteristics of child art. Lowenfeld believed evidence of aesthetic, social, physical, intellectual, and emotional growth is reflected in the art of children.
He further developed a theory of stages in artistic development. The stages consisted of (1) scribble; (2) preschematic; (3) schematic; (4) Dawning Realism; (5) Pseudorealism; and (6) Period of decision/crisis.
Lowenfeld's ideas of art as a catalyst of creativity have prompted many research dissertations in the field of art education.
Read more about this topic: Viktor Lowenfeld
Famous quotes containing the words creative, mental and/or growth:
“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)