It's Not Just about Drawing and Language ... It's Really about Reconceptualizing the Roles of Nature and Nurture

摘要

'Explaining "I can't draw"' by Neil Cohn [this issue] presents a very interesting review and theoretical perspective on the 'drop-off in drawing ability that occurs at puberty. The title 'I can't draw' immediately resonated with me because I really can't draw. My mother, on the other hand, was an artist - she really could draw. She could draw pictures that accurately represented the images that she intended to represent. My drawings are those classic stick figure people and rectangle houses topped by a triangle that Cohn talks about as being part of a common (possibly universal) graphic lexicon. My explanation for why I can't draw is that I didn't inherit my mother's special 'artistic' genes. So there you have it: the very theoretical bias that underlies people's beliefs about the development of drawing - in my own backyard, if you will. Cohn is suggesting that this is our belief about being able to draw - it is an entity that is fixed.