Labour and Childhood/Art as a Preparation

by Margaret McMillan

CHAPTER III

ART AS A PREPARATION FOR WORK AND TOOL-MAKING

THE YOUNG ARTIST AND HIS MODEL

THE key to the problems of human progress appears to lie in the realm of the unconscious. It is the new understanding of that dark realm that leads people no longer to look upon natural impulses as evil or meaningless. The young child cannot project his hand, but he uses it, and invents, or discovers rather, a hundred ways of using it, so that some teachers, as we have seen, have set themselves to copy them. He does not project his sense organs in instruments, but he loves, not only music, but noise, experiments even in painful ways (as when he draws a screeching pencil down his slate). He cannot project his muscles in fine mechanisms, but everyone knows how he experiments with muscles and even with joints.

He does not stop short entirely, however, at this point of mere activity and sensation. He gets a kind of acquaintance with his own anatomy by movement. But every one knows that at a certain age children want to draw, and also that for some years they show a very distinct preference for the living model, and will draw animals and men, even though these are the most difficult subjects of all and are hardly attempted by some grown-up artists, except in the way of caricature. Children of all nations and classes—Japanese children of the highest class as well as British children of the poorest class, cover walls, pavements, and books, with drawings of the human form, and also model this figure, too, with any material that comes handy—it may be mud, or it may be snow.^[1]

The most "discouraged" and "disciplined" class of children in the world will cheer up suddenly if it is proposed to them to draw, not a cube, but say a cat—and will grasp pencil or pen with returning courage. If the teacher, or friend, however, can himself draw an animal, or still better, a man, their delight and admiration know no bounds. Unhappily, even the best teachers, with very few exceptions (but these exceptions include Leonardo da Vinci) usually ignore this impulse, and offer few suggestions and little help to the mannikin-drawing children. The reason is not far to seek. Even very learned people are usually aware that they cannot draw a man very well, and they do not want to be asked to try. But writers on education, feeling perhaps secure that no one will require or expect them to draw the human figure, are not nearly so reserved about the child's selection of subjects.

Thus psychologists such as Sully have filled books with grotesque child drawings, and have traced their evolution, so that now many people know when to expect the appearance of ears and nose, of heels and elbows in the mannikins—also when to expect profiles showing two eyes and riders whose legs do not appear behind the horse's transparent body. It is noticeable, however, that in the case of most children, those embryo-like drawings, with their saw-teeth, rake fingers, and claw-like hands, do not give place to others of better proportions. They do not go on (though it is only a step) from the straight arm to the tapered one, or from the clawed hand to the human hand. On the contrary, they stop drawing quite suddenly, and nothing remains of the early and healthy impulse but a life-long conviction on the part of the little artist that he cannot draw.^[2]

And yet, though the normal child's selection of a model is certainly very bold, it is strangely wise. For, when we begin to consider the human form we find that it is not only the measure of all things, but also that it is, as we said, a kind of store-house of originals. Within it, not without it, the great events take place. There, first of all, is elaborated everything which is to be flung forth at last and revealed in labour. All this is not a mere figure of speech. It is a simple fact, and it has been set forth already or alluded to by such writers as Zeizing, Virchow, and Ernest Kapp. And it is this amazing fact that makes the child's choice so significant.

But this is not all. The adult human figure and head, offers, in spite of many fallings off in individuals and even deformities, the best, the most varied illustration of the great law of the relations of parts—the key of the mystery of beauty and fitness. This law can be studied in crystals, in plants, animals, architecture; but in none of these so perfectly as in the highest part (or head) of the human being, and in him only at the age when he has arrived at his full growth.

This law is, briefly, that in any form whatsoever a pillar, a building, a plant, a face, a gown, a pitcher, a vase, a pot, an axe, any two parts must stand to one another in the same relations that the larger of these stands to the whole.

The beholder does not know all this perhaps, any more than the infant musician knows that he selects the octave or the fifth. It is only because the law was illustrated a thousand times by thousands of unconscious workers and artists that it was at last appreciated and received its formula. It can be traced in the proportions of a horse's head, limbs, hindquarters. But the higher forms of life give, of course, a fuller illustration of it than do any of the lower.

And the impulse of the child is, to begin with the form that illustrates it most completely—the adult human.

Strange to say, this adult form is not at all like his own.

His own body does not illustrate the law of fitness and beauty, though during the whole growing period it is striving to fulfil it. Below is a drawing from Zeizing of the newly-born child. The head is enormous, the upper part of the body long in proportion to the lower. Every part seems to feel the force of gravity. To be sure the years that follow bring a great change in the proportions of the figure, so that at seven a child is as little like an infant of a week old as he is like a man of thirty years. The helpless, earthward-borne form is lifted, as it were, in every part and made ready to be a pedestal for the head, as well as an obedient, active servant of the brain. Thus it will be readily seen from the diagram above that the waist-line is much higher in the seven-year old than it is in the infant,

and the neck-line too is lifted. But for long years the seven-year old will not fulfil the law in his members. And on many grounds the impulsion may be justified which makes a child pass by his own form, and also the form of hobbledehoys, to draw the adult face and figure.

Endless faces does every child scribble on his slate, without knowing anything about the law of beauty and fitness. These scribblings are usually wiped out and forgotten, but not always. There is now a movement on foot to encourage them, and to respect them. It is beginning to dawn on many that perhaps we have not seen, and do not yet see, the full meaning of this impulse to draw the human form.

1. It is through man, too, that they approach the study, not only of art, but of the natural sciences and of Geography. "Children," as Kropotkin says, "care little for Nature if it has nothing to do with man."
2. The school doctor looks at a child's drawings, as he looks at a child's face or hand—that is, mainly to learn what he can about him. His interest in the drawing itself is a secondary thing. But the drawing reveals something about the artist—his touch, sight, memories, attentive power, etc.—so it is like the tool, a kind of book for him to read. As early art is very naïve, it is easier to read the meaning of child drawings, modellings, and inscriptions than might be supposed. It is proposed that at the International Exhibition of School Hygiene next year, a place shall be given to drawings, etc., as records, and to certain peculiarities in drawing, writing, and printing as symptoms.