Nature or Nurture?
Can we be truly uninfluenced by others – even at just four years old? The OCA Fine Art MA cohort have been discussing a story on the BBC website about a four year old who has opened her first art exhibition in New York. MA student Amelia Wilson introduces We Are OCA to the hot debate on the MA website. 
She is also not alone. An almost identical report appeared on the BBC website back in 2004. So would it ever be possible for us to go back to this point, to blank our minds and just create? Are we ever truly uninfluenced once we are capable of conscious decisions? It is very easy for us to answer this by saying – yes – but watch this five minute clip of Derren Brown to see how easily we can be influenced by something we don’t even consciously pay attention to.Perhaps as visual people, we are much more apt to taking in all we see and recalling it out of context as required. Less visual beings may be less influenced. As for this little girl – what she has seen her parents doing is normal to her. Children can now learn to type and use a computer at a very young age, all by watching their parents. This child is playing with the materials she is given. When we experiment with technique, we are doing the same. She is learning what the materials do and how to manipulate them.
If we wanted to try to go back to just creating, we would have to set ourselves parameters to prevent us relying on what we already know. Thinking about exploring the materials – to see what they can do – and no more than that. Very hard to do as adults with all we have seen and learned! In a way, this little girl has her parameters set by her parents, according to what they give her to explore. Give any child a canvas, paints, ketchup – whatever you choose – and space to explore those materials and I am sure you would get something we can all liken to artists work we know after a few tries.
Is anyone born a blank slate? By four she will have absorbed an enormous amount, cartoons even reference high culture, constantly reference, and so unless they brought her up in a studio it’s really not possible. They say that by five we have experienced everything emotionally that we will – all grief, desire, joy, sadness, etc, and the rest of life we recreate.
As artists we also continually refer to childhood experiences as being the original authentic impression. Remembering the open slate rather than the blank slate perhaps. Tracey Emin has commented on the difficulty that young Art students today have in developing mature concepts to inform their contemporary art practice given their lack of years and life experience 1 – hmm – four years old? Is this the start of a 21st century swing towards art for arts sake? Perhaps what we should take from these videos and musings is to remain open and spontaneous with our materials and ultimately our practice. That often our best, most expressive work comes from ‘playing’ – like we once did as four year olds.
(1) Tracey Emin,DVD, Illuminations 2003,2005
16 thoughts on “Nature or Nurture?”
Leave a Reply
> Next Post Dispelling the myth
< Previous Post Creative Writing gets a blogger
OCA MA Fine Art: In conversation with Riette van Rensburg
0 Comments
The OCA MA Fine Art team have been working with their students to undertake...
Read more
Artlab23 Collective
0 Comments
The aim of the Collective is to provide a mutually supportive environment which will...
Read more
Student stories – Jane Murdock
4 Comments
The grant, by enabling the partaking of this exhibition, has produced some long-term affects...
Read more
OCA Degree Show Showcase 21/22
0 Comments
Welcome to our online Degree Show Showcase 21/22 where we are celebrating a number...
Read more
I agree with the idea that this little girl has taken in a lot of influence from her parents, and from the environment within which she lives. I also think that, as you say, she is playing at art, and I’d be interested to see how her work compares with that of other children of the same age given the same space, materials and freedom to “play”…
God these type of people get on my nerves… There was a discussion about this on the OCA student not long ago http://oca-student.com/node/62350
Firstly as an EG of manipulation that I can see the parents are doing just from this small clip: The child has painted masks and put them on her work, do you think she asked for them or that they had them already and had given them to her.
The other point is unless you see the child make the painting without ANY re-clipping and montaging on the film you cannot be sure what you are seeing is the whole truth.
As a specialist Early Years teacher who for obviouse reasons was involved in the art I can tell you out of a class of average 30 year olds two of the children will full under the Governments headings as talented in art.
Children are open to their environment far more than adults they EG have books full of first class illustrations where colour is seen daily, advertising in the worls around them, colour logos etc… the list can go on.
This child has seen her parents working, their home will most probably have reference to art around it and their colour scheme for the house may even influence the child.
Lastly my daughter as some of you know who is 3 years old comes under both the Gifted and Talented Government headings. I believe its because she watches her sister and myself drawing, painting, reading and researching continuously and more importantly with enjoyment and enthusiasm! She has been influenced this way while awake all her life.
To be truely talented I PERSONALLY believe it would be a child who had no previous knowledge or play experience in an art area. Had not been influenced by books or any stimuli and yes I have taught children who have NEVER held a pencil before let alone seen paint. Someone who is given a paintbrush for the first time and can paint, can produce, is one with the medium – a natural extension of their body, mind and soul.
Sorry about my ranting – I feel better now 🙂
sorry about the spelling mistakes above
Didn’t Picasso say “every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up”
I’m not sure its true though, but give enough children enough space and materials, it would be really interesting to see what came out of it. Looking at my nieces constructions – its so interesting to see what she makes – the last birthday card I had was made from Easter leftovers, so there were disembodied rabbit ears turned into hearts, surrealist tendencies? Or perhaps its to do with the childhood capacity for making imaginary worlds out of everyday reality.
I think the influence of the parents has to be acknowledged at least in their tolerance for mess and in providing materials:) But to what extent she’s reacting purely physically and how much she’s interacting with the canvas and the work she’s done before – it would be interesting to see how she was working over a longer time scale.
The other thing that comes to mind is selection – I’d like to know if the parents select from a vast number of possible canvases – maybe only seeing the ones they choose for us to see.
Only time will tell with this girl, to me she looks naturally gifted but she could grow out of it. I thought it would be interesting to look up the child mentioned in the earlier case in 2004, Marla Olmstead, and it sure is interesting. A documentary film was made about her, “My Kid Could Paint That,” which implied possible fraud, that maybe she was being helped with making the paintings by her father — this link is to a trailer for the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvy4e43V-4M&feature=player_embedded#at=60
I read an academic review of the documentary which questions its validity, because the film maker evidently lost objectivity during the making — http://www.titicut.com/documentary-reviews/my-kid-could-paint-that/
There’s a video of Marla painting uploaded in 2007, here — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGmo3Gg-AxU — in the second half she’s older, about seven, and the work is more sophisticated.
Her own website is here — http://www.marlaolmstead.com/ and http://www.marlaolmstead.com/mainwork.html — not much recent news on it though (she’d be eleven now). A hiatus for growing up, or has she grown out of it altogether? Only time will tell? 🙂
Minou Drouet comes to mind. Maybe the kid should be tested…
Perhaps a bit too far, but as mentioned above, if she does a canvas a day instead of going to play school, the parents will have a big old selection to apply their own artistic thoughts to. This leads me to the monkeys and Shakespeare too, and in a way to my own photography. Take enough images and there may well be some that are worth keeping!
My mind also wanders to the Eggleston doodles in Paris.
My mind wanders quite a bit sometimes!
Well I was watching a video on Arturo Herrera today and heard that selection is a big part of his process which also includes chance and accident. For example photographing his collages without composing the photograph, then immersing the film in tea, coffee, etc and finally getting the film processed a month later and seeing what he has got.
I suppose that you could argue using a child as a paint application method was one way to include chance and acccident into your artistic practise:)
But then it’s the parents, not the child who is the artist, no?
I’ve lost track of what’s happening with the 3-legged cat photography exhibition, more of the same I guess. A question of curation, rather than artistic talent (or something).
Can 3 legged cats use cameras then? LOL. I know you didn’t mean that but if the hypothetical 3 legged cat had some means to operate a camera, would that mean the cat was the artist, or would the artist be the person who adapted the camera, attached it to the cat, selected the photograph and supplied the Whiskers?
I don’t mind how the image was made as long as its worth looking at and sometimes chance is more interesting than human endeavour.
Anyway we’ve probably wandered off the subject, I’m sure the child in question has her own ideas about painting!
The 3 legged cat isn’t hypothetical:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-13282601
As for wandering off subject, I’m not so sure… The child can apply the medium, but it will be her parents that make the vast majority of artistic choices wrt which to show. The child just plays at applying the paint, etc.
I must have been unconsciously influenced by that 3 legged cat and then forgotten:)
Testing
The problem with infant prodigies is that they are infants getting pulled into the adult world of marketing and hype, she is only really interesting because she is 4. I always have an overwhelming feeling of wanting them to be left alone to get on with their lives. I know there have been a number of famous artists who were infant prodigies (Picasso, Mozart) but I think there are a far greater number of prodigies who crash or never fulfil their potential. It always makes me cringe seeing this sort of stuff.
In from the creative writing course and I’ll throw in my tuppence. I was adopted at birth, traced my birth mother 7 years ago. As part of that search I had to attend a counselling session with a social worker who worked in the adoption service here in Ireland. His experience of reuniting adopted children with their birth parents was unequivocal. He saw so many similar traits and even verbal expressions that he had concluded it was 100% nature. Given that I’ve met my mother and half brother I’d be inclined to agree. We talk the same, use the same gestures and have the same facial expressions. My wife thinks it’s all a bit scary especially when we were out for a drive once and brother and myself managed to say the same thing almost simultaneously… “you could get a bus through there!” The similarities don’t end there, for we’ve taken almost identical career paths and, very weirdly, both play the ukulele. Certainly experience has it’s role but the genes will out eventually. My poor kids!
Guy,
Whilst I don’t doubt your experiences, I do think they can be examined critically. For instance, people re-united with their birth parents could very quickly and sub-conciously start echoing similar traits and verbal expressions as a means of bonding – they *want* to make a connection with son/parent and so immediately start reflecting the others (body) language. There could also be a element of “cherry-picking” expressions that are common as confirmation (whilst ignoring ones that aren’t) – a bit like the “I was just thinking of you and the telephone rang” fallacy. A better “experiment” would be to monitor the family members *before* they met, to see how similar their (body) language was, and examine whether it changed after they met. Of course your ukulele playing does clearly fall into the “before the meeting” case
I’ll immediately clutch your rss feed as I can not in finding your email subscription hyperlink or newsletter service. Do you have any? Please permit me realize in order that I may subscribe. Thanks.