On Training Sensitivity to Painting Styles

Abstract

A training study was conducted with ten-year old children (1) to determine the steps through which children pass in learning to sort paintings by style; (2) to investigate the relationship between this and other perceptual and performing skills. Subjects who initially focused on subject matter cues learned to sort paintings by style; a substantial proportion of the subjects succeeded in consistently applying a multidimensional analysis, by means of which various compositional components were first independently assessed and their cumulative effects then evaluated. Moreover, the subjects passed through a consistent set of stages en route to style sensitivity. Posttesting revealed that sensitivity to style is more likely to be enhanced if subjects have had intensive exposure to a small set of highly distinctive styles than if they have gained a superficial familiarity with a wide variety of styles; that the classification skills leading to style sensitivity are related to certain discriminative capacities utilized in the sciences; and that subjects trained to attend to certain features of painting show a modest change in their own style of representational drawing. The findings are discussed in terms of the cognitive capacities emerging during the middle years of childhood.