1-3: New empirical basis

Early pictures: Research projects at the Zurich University of the Arts

Pictures were not and are not simply "here". They emerge, arise, occur, appear, "originate" and develop themselves. Thus, pictures have a history and with this, an early history.

But how do pictures appear, "come into being"? What qualities, structural formations and development tendencies can be observed in early graphic expressions? Are early pictures products or processes? Are early pictorial characteristics cross-contextual, contextual, or individual? What does early pictorial cognition and aesthetics consist of? What general aspects of early symbolic behaviour do early pictures indicate? What picture concept arises from picture genesis?

Since 1999, our research at the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland) has been devoted to this complex of questions. The background and motivation here are based on the insight that hitherto there has been a lack of reliable and empirically well-founded insights into early graphic expressions in ontogeny (see previous chapter).

In the first place, our research re-examines the earliest picture qualities, structural formations, and development tendencies in children’s drawings and paintings, often called "scribblings" in everyday language. We hope to establish a basis here for arriving at general theses on questions about the earliest cognitive pictorial processes–some scholars call this "iconic" cognition–and, at the same time, theses on questions about early aesthetic behaviour.

Structure of studies

In the main, our studies concern three topics:

• Developing a methodological and empirical reference for contexts of picture production in Europe concerning the morphology of early pictures; this investigation relates to the interpretation of completed drawings and paintings
  
• Crosschecking the morphological interpretation of completed drawings and paintings on the basis of a related investigation of the early graphic process
• Comparing early drawings and paintings of children living in very different geographical contexts of Europe, India and Indonesia, related to very different contexts of picture production

The focus of our investigation lies on drawings and paintings produced by children in their first six years of life.

Further, we also attempt for "visual argumentations" and philosophical commenting on the matter.

Finally, we re-edit and publish in digital form existing picture archives relevant for the matter.

Up to now, we have completed and published three large investigations, re-edited and published two existing picture archives of other authors, and have visually and verbally "visited" a specific aspect of early depiction. The corresponding details are described in the following paragraphs.

Pictures as products: What about the qualities, structural formations and development tendencies in early pictures, if interpreted for completed drawings and paintings of European children?

As there are so far no robust empirical bases, we have carried out a broad study of our own for the context of Europe. The study started by building up an archive of original drawings and paintings of over 450 children (individual collections, pre-school age) from Switzerland (the majority), Germany, and France. This first body of about 143,000 pictures was then subjected to a regulated selection from which a second, reduced body emerged, consisting of about 25,000 pictures by 182 single children or from individual collections of different children.

The originals for this second body were reproduced digitally, along with the information relevant to them. The pictures from the digital archive formed the basis of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies. Within these studies, on the basis of a catalogue of picture qualities, single pictures were related to occurring picture qualities and the result of the allocation was evaluated statistically. As a final step, a general early development structure for graphic elements was compiled, which can claim to stand as a reference for the European context investigated and, possibly, also for contexts of North America.

The study included an extensive methodological investigation, above all concerning an appropriate terminology, an appropriate and systematic catalogue of picture attributes to consider, and appropriate rules for picture interpretation.

First, the results of this large-scale and time-consuming research were published digitally online (Maurer and Riboni, 2007). Subsequently, a printed version was also published as the first three volumes of a series entitled Wie Bilder «entstehen» (Maurer and Riboni, 2010).

For the online version, including the picture archive, see:
>> Morphology Europe (de)

For the printed version, see:
>> Link

Process and product: What about a possible missinterpretation of completed drawings and paintings, because the picture process is neglected?

Morphological interpretation of early drawings and paintings often prove difficult looking at completed pictures and corresponding derivations of general conclusions remain questionable as a result. Therefore, processual studies are required to clarify the critical aspects of interpretation of earliest picture structure. Such studies relate to the actual graphic acting of children and their associated verbal and non-verbal expressions.

Against this background, we have conducted an investigation of the early graphic process concerning two questions: 

• Which earliest differentiations of graphic manifestations–as they can be interpreted by adults looking at drawings and paintings as completed products, but which remain problematic in their interpretation–actually prove to be intentional, i.e., formal differentiations on the part of the child doing the drawing, or conversely, prove to be mere traces?
• Which earliest relationships of the graphic and non-graphic aspects–again interpreted by adults looking at drawings and paintings as completed products–can be proven and confirmed in processual studies, or conversely, prove to be non-identifiable from a processual perspective? Do types of such relationships also occur that cannot be recognised in morphological studies?

Our processual study was based on parallel video recordings of drawing and painting children at preschool age (recording A = drawing child, recording B = emerging picture), supervised by adults, but without any predefined setting of a task. In the first stage, we worked on an extensive body of these recordings, documenting over 650 picture processes by over 50 children from Switzerland. In an examination of this body of work, we selected those recordings that facilitate clear interpretations due to their film quality and the documented process and for which protection of privacy proved to be unproblematic. This selection, comprised of 184 recordings of 43 children ranging between the ages of 1 year and 5 months to 5 years and 4 months (marginal difference in the distribution by gender), formed the actual basis of our examination.

As a general result, most importantly, the morphological description of early drawings and paintings as completed pictures also proves to be identifiable in its main aspects from a processual perspective.

However, relativisations have to be considered. On the one hand, they concern the necessary caution when interpreting very early products on paper, particularly for the first year of life, when interpreting early isolated manifestations, when determining the picture age for the appearance of individual graphic attributes and groups of attributes, and when deriving general conclusions for which the morphological assessment proves to be fragmentary. On the other hand, the investigation of very early analogy formations–very early figurative representations or depictions as well as other types of representations–proved to be highly dependent on the insight into the graphic process. Thus, existing descriptions of the early development of pictorial representation have to be reconsidered and this requires extensive studies on the early graphic process.

First, the results of our investigation of the early graphic process described above were published digitally online (Maurer and Riboni, 2011). Subsequently, a printed version was also published as the fourth volume of our series 'Wie Bilder «entstehen»' (Maurer et al., 2013). Because of the publisher of the printed version, we had to close the eBook online. However, we have then published a short description in English online and the entire film archive is also still open for access.

For the online version, including the film archive, see:
>> Process and Product (en)

For the printed publication, see:
>> Presentation of the book (Jacques Borel, Graphic Designer) 
>> Cover, Impressum and Content 
>> Publisher 

Product and code: What about a possible missinterpretation of the early graphic development, because the context of picture procuction is neglected?

Every discussion of early picture development raises the question of direct dependence on or (even only partial) independence of the concrete context in which children draw and paint.

For this reason, we started to organise regular drawing and painting activities for children at the pre-school age (mainly 2-6 years old) in India in 2004 and subsequently in Indonesia in 2005. The activities were initiated, accompanied, and documented by adults.

The three communities in India were indigenous population groups in the South (Mysore and Kodagu districts, state of Karnataka) with very limited picture practice in their everyday lives. At the time of investigation, very young children in these communities neither drew nor painted on paper.

The two communities in Indonesia were rural population groups in Bali (Munduk and Tabanan regions) with a developed cultural context and identity that is very different from our own. However, in this region and at the time of investigation, very young children rarely drew or painted on paper.

We finished collecting our data in spring 2008, and consequently have at our disposal a picture archive of approx. 35,000 originals by a total of 150 Asian children. This first body was then again subjected to a regulated selection from which a second, reduced body emerged, consisting of about 31,000 pictures of these 150 children.

As for the European study, the originals for this second body were reproduced digitally, along with the relevant information, and the pictures from the digital archive formed the basis of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies investigating the occurring qualities, structural formations, and development tendencies of the pictures. On the basis of this, the results were compared with the corresponding, above-mentioned results of the investigation of European children.

The results provide evidence that, for a substantial part of early picture development, picture attributes are not related to the concrete context of picture production. This holds true both for so-called "abstract" as well as "figurative" aspects of early drawings and paintings.

Such a statement does not stand in contradiction to the finding of the occurrence of context-dependent graphic aspects. However, we interpret the former–the graphic aspects not directly related to the concrete context of picture production–as being more basic structurally and as underlying the context-dependent "coded" aspects.

It goes without saying that such a finding is of primary importance not only for the consideration of picture genesis in ontogeny, but also for the consideration of pictures in general and of human symbolic behaviour.

The results of this third investigation are published digitally online (Maurer et al., 2013). A printed version as the fifth volume of our series 'Wie Bilder «entstehen»'  is in preparation.

For the online version, including the picture archive, see:
>> Product and Code (de)

"Space in, space out"

Looking at early drawings and paintings, and reflecting about picture genesis and pictures as such, together with André Vladimir Heiz, we documented and formulated "what pictures find" and "where they are" (Maurer and Heiz, 2009).

"How pictures find houses and the house comes into the picture."

Not following an academic treatise, the properties, faculties, and assets of early pictures may also—indeed they should—be experienced and learned trusting the power of the pictures themselves in direct observation.

Adopting such a perspective, and looking at how children in their first years of live draw and paint houses, we addressed the relation of depiction, depicted, and picture maker within a principally visual study.

As a result, we created an extensive picture book including c. 350 drawings and paintings and including related reflections (Maurer and Riboni, 2013, de/en).

For the Outline, see
>> Outline

For the information of the publisher, see
>> Edition Patrick Frey

The Rhoda Kellogg Child Art Collection

In 1967, Rhoda Kellogg published an archive of c. 8000 drawings of children aged 24-40 months in microfiche form (Kellogg, 1967). Before we made our above-mentioned digital archives accessible, as far as we know, no other extensive archive of early graphic expressions other than the one of Kellogg was ever published, including a large sample of pictures and presented according to a classification system. Thus, the archive has a historical status.

Rhoda Kellogg was a psychologist and a nursery school educator. Here investigations focused on the art of young children, that is, on early graphic expressions. From 1948 to 1966, she collected approximately one million drawings of young children of ages 2 to 8. More than half a million of these drawings are filed in the "Rhoda Kellogg Child Art Collection of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association" in San Francisco, U.S.A. Of these half-million and more drawings, some 8,000 are available in the above-mentioned archive in microfiche form. Some 250 paintings and drawings, selected as outstanding examples of children’s work, are reproduced in full colour (Kellogg and O’Dell, 1967).

Kellogg describes the very first development of children’s drawings as a sequence of basic shapes or forms and their configurations: starting from twenty «basic scribbles», which can be observed at the age of two, children develop placement patterns, emergent diagram shapes, diagrams, combines, aggregates, mandalas, suns, radials, before humans and early pictorialism appear. Kellogg understands this sequence as a manifestation of "Gestalts", according to the Gestalt theory.

Kellogg is one of the rare authors who emphasises the role of formal design, which emerges before pictorialism and then plays a role in relation to pictorialism or is developed as a distinct type of pictures. Kellogg is also one of the rare authors who presents an extensive classification system related to early graphic expressions, combined with an attempt to give empirical evidence for the picture attributes of the system and their role in the development of drawing and painting.

In order to preserve the archive and to provide a direct and open access, we have reproduced the pictures of the microfiches, edited the related information, and published a digital version of the archive, including a digital version of the related handbook.

For this online version, see:
>> Rhoda Kellogg Child Art Collection 

"Portrait–Selfportrait": Diptychs of the picture archive of Gilles Porte

In the Introduction, we have already mentioned our attempt to step by step re-edit the archive of Gilles Porte. For his publications on portraits and for our first digital re-edition, see below. Details for the present second digital re-edition are given in Part 2. 

>> Portraits/Autoportraits. Editions Le Seuil, 2009, Paris. (Publisher's information)

>> Portraits/Autoportraits. Short films, Gédeon Programmes et S'imagine Films, France, 2009. 80 short films (of 2 minutes) combined with 80 animations.

>> Déssine-toi. Full-length film, Gebeka Films Distribution, France, 2010. Déssine-toi, Portraits/Autoportraits. DVD case, France Television Distribution, 2011. Including the full-length film, the 80 short films and additional material.

For the online version of "Portrait-Selfportrait", see:
>> "Portrait–Selfprortrait"