Child Creativity and the Visual Arts: From Secessionist Vienna to Postwar America

(Hardback)

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Tracing the dissemination of Secessionist ideas of child creativity from their origination in early-20th century Vienna through to their eventual commodification in postwar America this book highlights the central role that visual art has played in child education and in nurturing creativity in elementary and preschool curricula.

Taking the reader through the ideas of three artistic visionaries and their students; Franz Ciek, and Austrian-American migrs Emmy Zweybrck and Viktor Lwenfeld, the author reveals how these ideas developed in postwar America through a focus on child-centered methods of learning by doing in artistic practice. By centring the visual arts as a vital educational medium, we see how these teachings have been popularized as a means of nurturing creativity in childhood.

Across three chapter length case-studies, interspersed with three mini chapters on the reception of each artist-educators radical teachings in the American education system, the book provides new interpretations into the impact of these three luminaries differing philosophies on a broader program of socio-political activism in the USA. Drawing on previously untapped archival and primary source materials, it blends deep material culture analysis with narrative elements to present a compelling account of the unrecognized influence of migr art pedagogy on progressive, international art education. In doing so, it provides fresh transregional and thematic perspectives on early-1900s Vienna as a hotbed of creative and cultural experimentation and mecca of progressive art education.

Author Bio

Megan Brandow-Faller is Professor of History, CUNY Kingsborough, USA, and the author of Childhood by Design (Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Female Secession (2020). She is the co-editor of Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art Architecture and Design (2022).