The Mind of the Beholder: Some Provisional Doubts about the U-curved Aesthetic Development Thesis

Abstract

Many Western art educators lament the demise of drawing artistry and spontaneity in children once they reach the years of middle childhood. Few individuals make it through these artistic doldrums to re-emerge as adolescent artists. This process of decline in aesthetic production and eventual rebirth is referred to by Gardner (1990) as the “u-shaped curve” in aesthetic development. Similar curves can be found in other areas of cognitive development (Strauss 1982). Davis (1991) is the first to demonstrate empirically the existence of the u-curve in aesthetic development. We examine this phenomenon from a cross-cultural perspective, replicating Davis's original work using a sample of 165 drawings from 55 individuals from the Montreal Chinese community and two sets of judges, one Montreal Chinese and the other from the United States. We examine whether or not a similar u-curve is in evidence in aesthetic development and compare the aesthetic assessments of U.S. and Montreal Chinese judges using two different methods of assessment, the Davis aesthetic scoring procedure and a simple three-way sort of all 165 drawings.