PSV705 Viktor Lowenfeld

Creativity

Common definition from Webster dictionary– Creativity is marked by the ability or power to create to bring into existence, to invest with a new form, to produce through imaginative skill, to make or bring into existence something new. 

Creativity can be defined as the ability to produce work that is novel (original) and adaptive with respect to the task (in term of usefulness) (Sternberg & Lubart, 2003)

Creative process reflects the modern view that  innovative solutions often result from the selective combination of elements previously seen as unrelated (Nickerson, 2003).

According to Thompson (2003) and Torrance, there are three element in order to understand the measuring of  creativity:

• Fluency – the ability to generate a large number of ideas
• Flexibility – The ability to think in many different directions
• Originality – when everybody starts off with the same task but ends up with all kinds off different solutions for their final answer.

Creativity is owned by all people (Mohd Azhar, 2004)

History of Creativity

Research on creativity started from 1950 when Guilford who was a president of American Psychological Association (APA) encourage researchers to emphasize on the creativity research. This is because less than 2% only studied on this area.

Viktor Lowenfeld Creative and Mental Growth

Art Educator, Psychologist, author and Professor at Pennysylvania State Univeristy. 

Famous for his work about child development and growth relating to art and creativity. 

Born in Linz, Australia 1930. 

Elementary school in Vienna for art history and psychology. 

Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, studied under Edward Steinberg, whom required his students to work with ceramic sculpture while blindfolded. According to this method Lowenfeld suggest this at the institute for the Blind, to approach the same method but for blind people. 

Wrote an articles about these sculpture of the blind. 

Renown works relates to child development and growth in relations to art and creativity, most especially the book titled “Creative and Mental Growth”

Creative and Mental Growth

Published 1947. Become the most influential book in art education.

Evidence of aesthetic , social, physical, intellectual and emotional growth is reflect in the art of child. 

Lowenfeld developed Stage of Artistic Development which are based upon the child’s age with relation to ability.

Through this theory of age-to-stage development is relatively out-of-date, the basic principals and overall knowledgeable content of Lowenfelds books is still being accessed, utilized, appreciated and evaluated.

Stage of Artistic Development

• The Scribbling Stage                                  (2 – 4 years)
• The Pre-schematic Stage                            (4 – 7 years)
• The Schematic Stage                                  (7 – 9 years)
• The Dawning Realist Stage                       (9 – 11 years)
• The Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage                 (11 – 13 years)

Table 1: Stage of Artistic Development