I-9: Winner – Universality versus Cultural Specificity of Drawing Schemas

"Many aspects of drawing development appear to be universal and to emerge independently of culture and formal training (Alland, 1983; Anati, 1967; Belo, 1955; Dennis, 1957; Fortes, 1981; Golomb, 2004; Havighurst, Gunther, & Pratt, 1946; Jahoda, 1981; Kellogg, 1969; Kerschensteiner, 1905; McBride, 1986; Paget, 1932; Ricci, 1887; Sundberg & Ballinger, 1968; B. Wilson & Wilson, 1984). Yet, strong cultural differences in children’s drawings also exist. For example, perspective is rarely found in the art of children (or adults) who are not exposed to realistic graphic representations (Golomb, 2002, chap. 4). And schemas for representing particular objects vary across cultures. For example, B. Wilson and Wilson (1981) report that many schemas in children’s figure drawings common in the nineteenth century are rarely seen today, a finding which they attribute to the importance of models for children to copy. One such feature is the two-eyed profile. Ricci (1887) found that 70% of Italian children’s profiles had two eyes, and half of Sully’s (1895) English children’s drawings were two-eyed profiles. In the Florence Goodenough 'Draw a Man' collection of children’s drawings amassed between 1917 to 1923 and housed at Pennsylvania State University, only about 5% were two-eyed profiles. By the 1950s, these figures were nowhere to be seen in American children’s drawings. The demise of the twoeyed profile has been attributed to the decline of the profile as the culture’s most characteristic pictorial view of the face and the rise of the daily comic strip with figures in every possible orientation (B. Wilson & Wilson, 1981). Wilson and Wilson note many other features that used to be found in children’s drawings but are no longer: For example, ladder mouths (where the mouth looks like a horizontal ladder, with the rungs being the teeth), hands like garden rakes, and milk-bottle shaped bodies. Wilson and Wilson predict that future investigators may wonder about the origin and decline of figures with big biceps and capes flying through the air. Children’s drawings, Wilson and Wilson remind us, do not emerge from some kind of innate program but instead are heavily influenced by the cultural models available to the child to copy.

The powerful effect of the pictorial culture was also demonstrated by B. Wilson and Wilson (1987) in a comparison between drawings by 12-year-olds from Egypt versus Japan. The Egyptian children were exposed to few pictures and had little arts instruction in school. Their drawings of human figures were static, figures floated in space, and there were only primitive attempts to depict depth. In contrast, the Japanese children were heavily exposed to images in Japanese comic books (and also had a richer arts education). Their drawings of humans looked very much like the images in the comic books that they read: The drawings were dynamic (the figures were depicted in motion), complex (there were many figures), the figures were grounded, and depth was represented through occlusion and size diminution.

Winner (1989) noticed the strong influence on Chinese children’s drawings of cartoonlike images published in children’s magazines. Wilson (1997) made the same observation about Japanese children who now draw humans with heart-shaped faces and huge eyes, images copied from popular comic books called Manga. Moreover sequential graphic narratives are far more common among Japanese children (showing the influence of Manga) than they are among Egyptian children (B. Wilson & Wilson, 1987; for other work on cultural influences on drawing, see Andersson, 1995a, 1995b; Court, 1989; Cox, 1998; Cox, Koyasu, Hiranumu, & Perara, 2001; Martlew & Connolly, 1996; Piaget, 1932; Stratford & Au, 1988; B. Wilson & Wilson, 1977, 1984)." (Winner, 2006, pp. 879-880)