On the Relevance of Piaget's Theory to the Visual Arts

Abstract

Piaget's genetic epistemology [1], which treats of the formation and evolution of science, is based on the parallelism between the historic development of science and the development of intelligence in children. This parallelism reveals the mechanism common to these developments and thereby sheds a new light on the evolution of scientific concepts and theories. It is tempting to search in the same manner for a parallel between the evolution of an artist, and even between the progression of a work of art while it is being made, and the evolution of the way children represent the world of objects. If one attempts to make such a parallel, one must take heed that whereas children tend to progress in their knowledge and understanding of the outside world, and in their ability to act on it (a definition that can apply also to the activity of scientists), the aims of artists are difficult to define in a general manner. In this note, therefore, we shall restrict ourselves to endeavours of artists and of children that can be compared, and we will find that similar mechanisms underly their progress. We first must give some general considerations that are fundamental to Piaget's theory and that apply to an artist's work, just as they are known to apply to the way in which children or scientists proceed. These considerations shed a new light on the way artists proceed by placing their procedure in a framework different from that of aesthetics. We then go on to show some specific analogies between the mechanism governing the creation of a work of art or, more precisely, of representational art and the mechanism governing the manner in which children represent objects. In the execution of a work of art, an artist engages in a struggle comparable to that of a child when its means of understanding develops during the course of its activities. The execution of a work of art by an artist, like the construction of reality by a child, can be characterized by an adaptive and evolutive process that goes on until a temporary state of