Child Art in Context examines the process of creative expression in child art from an innovative socio-cultural and historical perspective. Over 100 drawings and sculpture illustrate the genesis and development of representational skill and its progression in the visual arts as well as theories on how this course can best be understood. The author addresses the question of whether children's primitive forms reflect immature cognitive and emotional development, a theory supported by the view that optical realism is the endpoint of artistic development. She disagrees with this notion and shows the intelligence of children's endeavors to invent symbol systems that represent their ideas in drawing and sculpture, emphasizing the vitality that modern artists have admired in childish or "primitive" forms. Of particular interest are chapters including new information on the developmental progression in sculpture in which the author systematically compares children's representation in drawing and modeling to demonstrate the significance of medium in understanding child art.

This volume will be of interest to developmental psychologists, educational psychologists, clinical psychologists who use drawings for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes, anthropologists interested in the arts, art historians, and art educators, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in these fields.

The Development of Drawing
The Development of Sculpture
Representational Models in Drawing and Modeling
Developmental Perspectives on Prehistoric Art
Child Art and the Modern Artists
Child Art Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Artistic Development