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:
“Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the awful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)