A new artistic language of the seventies and eighties led to the creation of highly appreciated work that clearly did not require an immersion in linear perspective. The Let's Design Objects! contest for children and youth aged six to sixteen brought to light hundreds of highly innovative young people. Many of them were unable to give an appropriate graphic representation of the objects they invented, modeled, and produced in real space.
A new artistic language of the seventies and eighties led to the creation of highly appreciated work that clearly did not require an immersion in linear perspective. The Let's Design Objects! contest for children and youth aged six to sixteen brought to light hundreds of highly innovative young people. Many of them were unable to give an appropriate graphic representation of the objects they invented, modeled, and produced in real space.
A new artistic language of the seventies and eighties led to the creation of highly appreciated work that clearly did not require an immersion in linear perspective. The Let's Design Objects! contest for children and youth aged six to sixteen brought to light hundreds of highly innovative young people. Many of them were unable to give an appropriate graphic representation of the objects they invented, modeled, and produced in real space.
Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 31, No. 4, Special Issue: Giftedness and Talent in the Arts (Winter, 1997), pp. 79-93 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333145 . Accessed: 24/07/2013 20:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Aesthetic Education. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection and Development of Visual Talent ANDREA KARPATI Introductory Remarks: The Multiple Nature of Visual Talent Art education in Hungary-and in Eastern and Central Europe in general- has been, until the eighties, based on the assumption that the development of visual talent requires exercises in different modes of the two-dimensional representation of space. Talent in drawing in perspective was considered the synonym for visual talent. An emerging new artistic language of the seventies and eighties, however, seemed not only to negate but also to ridi- cule this assumption and led to the creation of highly appreciated work that clearly did not require an immersion in linear perspective. The Let's Design Objects! contest for children and youth aged six to sixteen that has been or- ganized in our country for more than a decade brought to light hundreds of highly innovative young people who were precocious in design but many of whom were unable to give an appropriate graphic representation of the objects they invented, modeled, and produced in real space. In 1994, the theme of the contest was to design and build in model form a house that the child would like to live in as an adult or that would be a shelter for a figure from a favorite novel. More than two thousand entries were submitted and, after comparing the floor plans and frontal views of the houses with the models, we could see huge differences in quality. Most children who excelled in construction manifested a mediocre or poor drawing level.1 Different components of visual talent seemed to be unrelated to one another. This finding is supported by results from earlier national surveys. In 1981 and 1984, two national assessments of skills in visual perception and creation were performed in Hungary. In both cases, the correlation between the developmental level of drawing skill (as manifested in technical and Andrea Kdrpdti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education, Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary. She has recently published articles in such journals as the Journal of Art and Design Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and Visual Arts Research and has contributed essays to numerous anthologies, among them Anxiety and Fear in Children's Art Works, Education for the New Europe, Trends in Art Education from Diverse Cultures, and Visuelle Begabung-Diagnostik und Forderung. Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 31, No. 4, Winter 1997 ?1997 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 Andrea Kdrpati expressive tasks) and art criticism skills (measured by both verbal and non- verbal tests) was found very weak or in many areas even nonexistent. Con- trary to the assumptions of most art teachers in our country, those who re- ceived an excellent training in linear representation and color usage did not automatically develop sensitivity to works of art. Talented painters and sculptors were found unable to develop and express critical judgments and even to make sophisticated selections among works of art in tests that are used in empirical aesthetics to reveal the degree of understanding of concepts central to art criticism.2 In a recently completed longitudinal study, the Leonardo Program,3 we arrived at similar results. Students between the ages of six and twelve who received five types of art training with different curriculum foci manifested giftedness in a wide range of visual languages and media normally not in- cluded in Hungarian art education: folk crafts, model making, design, com- puter art, photography, video, and multimedia. Most of the children who were identified as excellent in these areas would not have been able to pass the drawing tests required for entrance to a high school with a special art program. The generally held belief about the necessity of accurate drawing skills for a variety of visual professions was seriously put into question and, as a consequence, new forms of entrance examinations for art colleges and art teacher training institutions are now being considered in Hungary.4 Ap- parently, traditional art education seems to center on a concept of talent that has no connection with the actual manifestation of visual giftedness. These data support Howard Gardner's notion that spatial ability is an amalgam of skills which may arise in sets but also as a single form of that intelligence: Central to the spatial intelligence are the capacities to perceive the vi- sual world accurately, to perform transformations and modifications upon one's initial perceptions, and to be able to re-create aspects of one's visual experience, even in the absence of relevant physical stimuli. One can be asked to produce forms or simply to manipulate those that have been provided. These abilities are clearly not identi- cal: an individual may be acute, say, in visual perception, while having little ability to draw, imagine and transform an absent world. Even as musical intelligence consists of rhythmic and pitch abilities which are sometimes dissociated from one another, and as linguistic intelli- gence consists of syntactic and pragmatic capacities which may also come uncoupled, so, too, spatial intelligence emerges as an amalgam of abilities.5 These ideas and research results indicate that the detection and develop- ment of visual talent should take as many forms as visual talent itself.6 Hungarian Gypsy children, for example, have practically no chance to get into secondary schools with a special art program because entrance exami- nations demand pencil drawings of still lives and geometric shapes. These This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 81 children have an exquisite sense of color and draw their expressive, Sur- realistic images without an effort at linear perspective.7 From their early years, many of them display an outstanding ability in handicrafts like bas- ket weaving, knitting, sewing, and wood carving. Many of them who could pursue a career in design and architecture will actually end up producing simple household items and selling them in marketplaces. Their talents are never developed, never even detected, because of the traditional academic methods of judging giftedness in the visual arts. Another problem in connection with research on visual talent is that studies focus on the analysis of the work of child prodigies and the detec- tion of traits of outstanding ability in the childhood output of established artists. Very little is known about those who excelled in youth but could not establish themselves in the artistic community. Was it because their skills faded away at a certain age? Is visual talent a gift that vanishes with time? Or did other factors influence the rise to fame of some? Mark Freeman sug- gests an intricate web of character traits, social background, effects of the living and working environment, and, last but not least, sheer chance. Edu- cation, so it seems, does not matter a great deal: "If the desire to be an artist overrides the desire to create art, the creative process itself will have in part become a means to an end other than the creation of art."8 All the artists whose fates are described in his book are graduates of one of the most prominent art schools of the world: the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1963, a study on how various cognitive and perceptual abilities and personal- ity traits contributed to creativity in art was initiated by M. Csikszentmihalyi and J. W. Getzels at the University of Chicago. In the course of the project it became obvious that social factors were also involved in realizing creative potential. Therefore, in 1980 Mark Freeman, student and associate of the two researchers, located and interviewed 208 artists of the original sample in order to discover the interplay of personal and social factors in artistic success. His book, a mixture of interview extracts, poetic essays, and scien- tific inquiries using various methods of art sociology, shows what it actu- ally took to succeed in America in the sixties and seventies of our century. The book overwhelms us with the power of Freeman's beautiful narrative and makes us ready to accept his major point: social reality is perhaps the most significant factor determining the fate of the creative individual. For the European reader, this assumption is not encouraging at all. Thus, in order to come close to the nature of visual talent and give it a real chance in art education, two lines of inquiry might be pursued. First, we need to reveal those skills and abilities that constitute the mindset of the visually creative person in order to detect and properly develop her gifts. Second, we need to engage in a continuing social study of talented individu- als to see how their fates are influenced by the interaction of their character This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 Andrea Kdrpdti with the culture and social setting they live in. This article intends to sum- marize some findings about recent Hungarian research on visual skills that address some assumptions educators have about giftedness in art that may require reconsideration. Relationship between Visual and Mental Abilities The first such assumption is that art is for the senses, not for the intellect, and development in this area will not yield positive results for the central objective of traditional education: intellectual development.9 Art educators have always been intrigued by psychological findings proving that there is no, or merely an insignificant, correlation between the developmental level of mental skills and that of visual skills and abilities. In the course of the Leonardo Program, the aforementioned Hungarian national research proj- ect for curriculum development, we decided to prove that Leonardo's idea about the erudite painter, the pictor doctus, may be true for children whose visual abilities are properly fostered. The Leonardo Program was coordi- nated by the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design to assess the devel- opmental potentials of five different curricula designed by teams consisting of two art teachers, an art historian, an artist or designer, and an educa- tional researcher. They represented an effort to harmonize the require- ments, ideals, and experiences of all fields related to arts education.l0 In order to evaluate the specific and general developmental effects and defi- ciencies of the five different approaches to art instruction, the programs were tested in twelve elementary schools in selected grades one through eight.1l Student performance was assessed through a set of internationally used psychological tests and a set of educational tasks. The major objective of the project was to prove the efficacy of curriculum models based on non- traditional approaches: crafts and design, color theories, photography and video, interdisciplinary aesthetic education, and art criticism and aesthetics. We utilized a set of six psychological tests to see how five different ap- proaches to visual art education affect different areas of mental develop- ment: general intellectual abilities, creativity, visual memory, and attention span. Assessment tasks and tests resembled "normal" art activities as closely as possible and were incorporated into the curricula to avoid "testing effects." Moreover, a portfolio of completed works and sketches done dur- ing the years of the project were collected in order to identify extraordinary performance in areas not previously considered important for the detection of visual talent: photography, video, design, and crafts. The work of the art teachers was continuously monitored through participant observation by curriculum design team members. All curricula were tested for three school years (six terms). Pre- and posttests were administered at the beginning and This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 83 at the end of the experimental teaching process. Psychological measures involved the assessment of general intellectual development, perception of space, attention span, visual, numeric, and verbal memory, differentiation skills among visual cues, and creativity in both the verbal and visual do- main. Our evaluation battery also included portfolios and ethnographic ob- servations of the classroom environment that monitored the educational validity of the programs and yielded data that explained the results of psychological measures.12 Chart 1: Curricula of the Leonardo Program and Visual Talent Areas Developed CURRICULUM FOCUS 1) VISUAL ENVIRON- MENT /DESIGN KNOWLEDGE - history of crafts, design and architecture, - environmental aesthetics, - cultural history SKILLS AND ABILITIES -verbal and visual methods of art analysis: form/ function, color composition, iconography -planning -modeling -folk crafts -craft and design techniques ATTITUDES -protection of the natural and man- made environment -preservation of cultural heritage -efforts to shape own environment aesthetically 2) COLOR -biological, chemical, -observation of -refined color taste and physical hues and shades -interest in color characteristics of -creation of color usage, colors scales, contrasts, experimentation -historic and harmonies, and contemporary rhythms meaning of colors -expressive, functional, and communicative use of color This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 Andrea Kdrpati -photography and video as an art form: history and aesthetics -techniques, themes, and genres -photography and video as a method for exploration: scientific and doc- umentary photography common structures, themes, expressive and compositional means of fine arts, music, literature and dance -methods of "polyaesthetic" analysis - interdisciplinary approaches in arts criticism -basic photographic and laboratory techniques -mixed techniques -methods of analysis of photo and video -interdisciplinary analysis of works and genres of the arts -improvisation with common arts structures and themes -revival of the integration of arts forms in folk customs -critical attitudes toward press photography and commercial video clips -interest in and tolerance for new genres in the media arts -frequent use of photography / filming as an expres- sive and scientific/ documentary means -positive attitudes toward arts-related experiments and "polyaesthetic" genres of art -observation of similarities and peculiarities of the art forms -preservation of folk art heritage through the cultivation of cus- toms and crafts 5) ART -facts, data, and -verbal and visual -art as an agent of CRITICISM concepts about methods of art national identity: AND styles, genres criticism preservation of HISTORY and iconography -methods of cultural heritage -cultural history of historical analysis of -open and tolerant the area and its works of art attitudes toward monuments contemporary art Tests for spatial skills Rybakoff and McQuery Test. Selected items from the Torrence and Guilford Creativity Test. Test for Creative Thinking/Drawing Production (TCT/DP) by K. Urban and H. Jellen ("Assessing Creative Potential Worldwide: The First Cross- Cultural Application of the Test for Creative Thinking/Drawing Produc- tion [TCT/DP]," Creative Child and Adult Quarterly 13 [1988]: 151-67). 3) PHOTO, VIDEO 4) INTE- GRATED ARTS ED. This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 85 Here, general findings about the relationship between mental and visual abilities will be outlined, while another article discusses which curriculum type turned out to be most successful in the development of certain aspects of visual talent.13 Our most important finding is that intelligence and visual talent are much more closely related than was previously assumed: five of the eight tasks for visual creation and perception that we used are not inde- pendent (on a p<0.001 level) from the Raven Intelligence Test. The level of aesthetic perception as measured by the Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST), a set of graphic artworks created by an exhibiting artist, is closely related to the other psychological measure for analytic thinking-the word and image subtest or FAT. This result questions previous studies that denied the existence of such relationships.14 It is conspicuous that, from among the art criticism tasks, only "sculpture" is unrelated to the intelli- gence tests. This is an area largely neglected by both the traditional and the experimental curricula; thus even bright children will be unable to produce a sensitive criticism of the three-dimensional work shown. For ages six to eight, correlations between both expressive and technical drawing skills and general intelligence are stronger than for older children. With growing age, differences in intelligence will have less and less effect on the level of visual creation. So far, our results seem to support those no- tions that reduce art education to the status of intellectually undemanding areas and erase it form the compulsory curriculum for adolescents. Still, we found one connection between the intellect and the drawing hand that does not diminish with age: perspective drawing, considered by Renaissance mas- ters la divina prospettiva, the gift of gods that Leonardo hoped would elevate painting to the rank of science. Our technical drawing task supports the views of the great pictor doctus: apparently, intelligence plays a crucial role in understanding and solving certain technical representation tasks. Results of this test correlate significantly with measures of general intelligence in all age groups, from six years to fourteen years. Hungarian art educators seem to be faithful followers of Leonardo as they have traditionally emphasized technical drawing in all special pro- grams for talent development. As we have seen, these tasks develop intel- lect; but do they foster the spatial skills so necessary for artistic creation? Is art education based on two-dimensional work able to fulfill its internation- ally accepted goals and contribute to enhancing students' orientation in and (re)creation of space? Regrettably, our findings give a negative answer to these questions. In Hungary, the representation of space is a very important part of both the elementary and secondary art curriculum. Problems like the axonomet- ric arrangement of geometrical shapes, the depiction of an object from a va- riety of angles, and the acquisition of the rules of one- and two-point per- spective are central to the efforts of most art teachers. Sophisticated spatial arrangements are used as models from as early as fifth grade (age eleven), This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 86 Andrea Kdrpdti and the final examinations on the secondary level as well as the entrance examinations for the arts academies and universities of technology also in- clude complex transformation and reconstruction tasks. The Leonardo Pro- gram did not intend to develop new programs for learning about conventions of spatial representation, but we were interested to find out which, if any, of our alternative curricula proved beneficial for the development of the per- ception and creation of space. Our psychological measures-especially the Rybakoff Test that required the matching of images in two dimensions- showed great differences among students. There were some in every age group who did all the tasks correctly, even on the pretest; and there were quite a few who failed with all tasks, even after the training. The estimates of length and width and the three-dimensional mental imagery measure ex- amined by the McQuerry test also showed large standard deviation. Hardly any connections were found among the art tasks and the space tests either during the pretest or the posttest period. There was only one program that managed to develop spatial skills: the Visual Environment I Design curricu- lum that involved regular building and construction tasks. Children who were engaged in creating in real space actually developed their spatial abili- ties much more successfully than those who learned about appropriate forms of the two-dimensional representation of space. As mentioned ear- lier, programs based on drawing and painting may foster general intelli- gence-but they do not seem to contribute to the development of spatial abilities. Another important aspect for art education is the correlation of visual memory with visual abilities. It might appear obvious that art education will develop visual memory-but does it really? Will those children who take part in an art education program necessarily develop better memories than those who are deprived of regular art instruction? And if not, is the program content, the school facilities, the teaching strategies, the students' social background, or some other factor to blame? In the pretest period we found that visual memory did not show significant correlation with any of the educational tasks. Those good at drawing or art criticism did not excel in their visual memory. At the posttest, however, significant correlation was found among the Moede Test and all the creative and perceptive art tasks-but only for the experimental groups. The five alternative curricula were different in their approach to art education, but they had one thing in common: they all provided a more intensive immersion in art. The level of both artistic creation and criticism seems to be closely related to the ability to remember spatial relationships. According to our investigations, a mini- mum length of time of regular involvement in art is required to produce a beneficial effect on visual memory. All experimental programs had ninety minutes for art and ninety minutes for design and technology per week. Whatever the content of the program and regardless of other characteristics of the school, a longer period of training appears to guarantee a better This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 87 visual memory, while forty-five minutes per week-the regular length of time control group members spent on artistic creation and criticism-does not. Relationship between Creativity and Visual Talent Creativity is still an important concept for reform movements in Hungary, especially in aesthetic education which has always been supposed to be but never actually was an agent in the development of the creative self. Clark and Zimmerman report that however important the role of creativity in talent development may be, no direct relationship was found between cre- ativity test results and the level of the creative vision identified by expert jurors.15 Visual talent and psychological tests of creativity seem to be con- tradictory at first sight. Artists often criticize tasks that psychologists stan- dardize as reliable measures of creative potential, and vice versa: those who have a proven record of visual creativity often fail when tested. The prob- lem may be twofold: visual talent requires a different concept of creativ- ity-and, consequently, a different set of measuring instruments-than ver- bal, kinetic, auditive, and other modes of giftedness do. Or is it our model of visual talent that requires reexamination? As the most ambitious aim of all aesthetic education programs is the development of creativity, we found it intriguing to measure their effects through standardized tests of creativity that generally have, according to both the data of the professional literature and the common beliefs of art educators, no connection with the level of creativity assessed through genuinely "creative" drawing or painting tasks. We have selected two items from the Guilford Creativity Test16 and a set of items from the Torrence Creativity Test.17 In order to do justice to the views of those art educators who think that creativity tests are not "art-fair," we tried to find a test that seems to be bet- ter suited to the needs of art education: a test that allows for a wide variety of solutions different in style and mood, a test that rewards humor and credits both abstract and realistic solutions. We are currently working on the standardization of the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) for Hungary and were able to use preliminary results for the study described here. This test also involves a task completion, but the vari- ety and unusual arrangement of elements to be incorporated in a picture enable a variety of different but visually satisfying solutions. The directions for the test also refer to its aesthetic potential, for it speaks about "an artist who had to leave her work unfinished" and makes it the task for the testee to "complete the drawing." Children who take this test alone hardly ever notice that they are completing a psychological assignment; they are puzzled by the visual cues supplied and try to compose the most exciting, or else the most traditional, image from them. This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 Andrea Kdrpdti We found that two tasks of our creativity test-creative usage of words and pictures-showed significant correlation with the art criticism tasks. Moreover, the Test for Creative Thinking by K. K. Urban and H. G. Jellen turned out to be a good indicator of visual talent as it showed correlations with some items of the creative tasks.18 These tests seem to be utilizable for the diagnosis of and follow-up studies on creative individuals. Other correlations were weaker; but this does not nullify the possibility of our developing a measure that is both "art-fair" and "psychology-fair." We are convinced that it could be done, and we also assume that it is the project or portfolio task that may have a high creativity- and talent-detection value.19 Detection of Talent: A Project-Based Alternative The Leonardo Program was intended to offer a variety of art programs for the child with average abilities in the visual arts. The assessment of this project has yielded results important for talent development, but it also called attention to the difficulties of the detection of visual talent through reliable and at the same time sensitive means. In the Hungarian school sys- tem, the most important occasion for judging artistic talent is the final ex- amination. In what follows, results from a Dutch-Hungarian project on the modernization of this examination will be discussed. Art educators have mixed feelings about educational assessment: they need the recognition of excellence and possible fame it may provide but fear the inevitable loss of freedom. When it comes to art education, teachers around the world appear to make efforts to bring examinations in the arts closer to the academic tradition of judging the aesthetic merits of works of art. Production, perception, and reflection are the three key ability compo- nents assessed at the same time with the same tool, whereas most standard- ized tests and correction sessions-judging a single work done in one or two art classes-focus on one ability area only, usually creation. The major advantage of portfolio assessment is that it resembles an activity done by artists and is close to the requirements of higher education in visual arts: showing a representative collection of works. Disadvantages include the necessity of using verbal cues to describe the creative process and the re- sultant translation of visual into verbal language; doing research on the topic instead of just acting on inspiration; and working in a disciplined, orderly way, including "keeping track" instead of merely following an impulse. Dutch secondary school leavers may choose art as one of their elective examination subjects. In preuniversity education (VWO, six years, the equivalent of the Hungarian "gimnasium"), national examinations include a set of elective themes or topics for a practical examination, to be com- pleted within twenty-eight lesson hours under the supervision of but without This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 89 interference by the art teacher, from January until April; a centrally devel- oped written test in art history taken in May each year; and two tasks, pre- pared locally and judged by the art teacher, that may be given and scored any time during the last secondary school year. Students are required to com- plete questionnaires and keep a scrapbook during the completion of the creative task, which provides ample opportunity for self-reflection. All works done during the process-an extended portfolio including three-di- mensional works, objects, and installations-are scored and exhibited, at which time the teacher, guided by centrally developed judging criteria, may not only assign a grade but also offer sophisticated remarks to the student about his or her development and accomplishment. A co-assessor (a fellow art teacher sent by the school authorities) offers the teacher professional insights concerning the attainment of, or failure to attain, different objec- tives in art education as evident in the series of final examination works. Comparisons of written test results with those of other schools may serve as an important indicator of the achieved level of teaching in art history/art criticism.20 The benefits of this system are numerous. First, it represents a balanced combination of central and local tasks. It allows for considerable freedom in assessing skills and for contents important to the region and the individual school. Since fifty percent of the final grade depends on performance in lo- cally developed tasks, art teachers do not feel as manipulated and restricted as they would if the entire final exam were centrally prescribed, as is the case in Hungary. Moreover, teachers are given a chance to keep up with the current professional literature and learn about valuable reference books, be- cause at the end of the school year and preceding the exam they receive background materials (a booklet with basic information and a bibliography on the selected periods and themes as well as a series of slides) for the cen- trally developed art history/art criticism tests and thus have time to pre- pare themselves. As most of the questions on the test refer to nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, the examination, functioning as a hidden cur- riculum, motivates the teacher to stay informed about the art of our age and orient his teaching toward contemporary issues and masters. A very impor- tant advantage of this examination system is an opportunity for profes- sional growth. For both student and teacher, the end-of-year exhibition of works means exposure to the school community, while discussions with the co-assessor offer professional feedback. As for disadvantages, the Dutch system-like all centrally designed ex- amination systems in the world-largely defines the contents and even the methods of art education. When the practical assignment is a project-a se- ries of works around a central theme, done with the help of individual re- search and experimentation-teachers will be forced to reduce representa- tional tasks like still life, the human figure, or geometric drawing in order to make time for teaching the project design and execution. Students do not This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 90 Andrea Kdrpdti regret their loss, realizing that these drills may be necessary for the devel- opment of certain technical skills they might otherwise find lacking in the course of individual projects or later in their professional lives. As written tests are focused on contemporary art, classic periods will be merely sketched in, while the last one hundred years are taught in great detail. Again, students may even prefer this arrangement as contemporary art problems are apparently more relevant and exciting for them than those of the classical period; still, over the course of their studies they may miss out on historical knowledge. In 1993 a three-year project was started by the Dutch and Hungarian Ministries of Education with a view to developing a new standardized examination system for mathematics, biology, English, the mother tongue, and the visual arts. In Hungary, a country with a strong academic tradition in the fine arts and a hundred and fifty years of public art education de- voted mostly to the acquisition of exquisite drawing skills and a high de- gree of art-historical knowledge, the Dutch examination system was a real shock. Based on projects to be developed over three months without interfer- ence from teachers, the Dutch art exams developed by the CIO (the Dutch examination center) require, beyond craftsmanship, independent thinking, a wide array of planning and design skills, and, above all, originality. Art teachers who volunteered to try out the tests were anxious about quality and discipline, but their students were enthusiastic, and the project was launched in February 1994. After twenty-eight lesson hours-about three months-alone in the art room, a new generation of Hungarian adolescents took the Dutch-style exam. The essence of the Dutch final examination is, according to our present estimation, the idea of the documented project as a measuring tool for the development of visual thinking, planning, and creating. The project resembles the portfolio as it also requires the collection of sketches, background infor- mation leading to a visual solution, and the production of a series of works centering on a certain theme. Projects are "domain-specific" as they address problems related to a given domain of human experience. In many respects, however, a project's examination task is more than a portfolio. First, it en- ables students to present their ideas in three dimensions as well, thus con- taining more varied and reliable data on the development of spatial ability, basic design skills, and the knowledge of a wide range of materials and tools necessary for sculpture and construction. In terms of the idea of using project themes to assess a large variety of creative skills in the visual realm, the soil is prepared in Hungary for the introduction of the project both as a teaching method and an examination tool. In the pretest, two hundred and twenty students enthusiastically helped us prove that such tasks are not only stimulating but also require a good deal of thinking, planning, experi- menting-and drawing. The major fear of those who opposed the idea of This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 91 the Dutch exam-that it will result in "cheap" solutions and an avoidance of demanding visual problems-was proved unjustified. Challenge re- sulted in motivation, and motivation fueled endless sessions of "looking for the right solution." Students unanimously declared that they learned a lot during project work and, regardless of the extent to which they are satisfied with their final product, they wish they could have similar, more sophisti- cated and more demanding tasks for their final examination instead of the three-hour drawing session they have today.21 There were of course some students who welcomed the project as an opportunity to "get around per- spective drawing," but even these students were able to find alternative means of visual creation to realize their ideas. Instead of a pen-and-pencil drawing in linear perspective, they used photography, computer anima- tion, collage and montage techniques, and installation-media and genres typical of our age, and methods fully justifiable in the last years of the twen- tieth century, even if they are not used in Hungarian schools. The "documented project" is a reliable and versatile means for the detec- tion of the different facets of visual talent that, according to empirical research referred to above, seems to have a multiple nature. Contrary to teacher ex- pectations, students worked harder and produced plans, sketches, paint- ings, sculptures, objects, and installations well beyond their average draw- ing level. In fact, several students who had previously been considered average, if only because they had had no opportunity to reveal their special gifts, were identified as talented and were encouraged to pursue careers in professions requiring visual skills. In conclusion: visual talent is manifest in several human capacities; there seems to be no central skill or ability that guarantees giftedness in the visual arts. We encountered talented critics who were extremely poor painters, proving that visual perception and creation are two separate domains with different educational requirements. We found magnificent young crafts- men whose technical drawing abilities were above average. We even had to accept that the successful two-dimensional representation of space does not necessarily result in better spatial perception. We in Hungary had to realize that our secondary school leaving examination as well as the art college en- trance examination system are unsatisfactory for the detection of excellence. However problematic it is to identify visual talent, it needs to be done. This article intended to prove that not only case studies of talented individuals but also national assessment projects may offer new ways toward a more successful identification of giftedness. NOTES 1. A. Karpati and E. Gaul, "Umweltgestaltung in Kunsterziehung und Werkunterricht in Ungarn," in Wohnkultur und Plattenbau aus Berlin und Budapest, ed. K. Dorhofer (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1994), pp. 139-54. This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 92 Andrea Kdrpdti 2. A. Karpati, "Learning about Art," in Art as a Tool and Conveyor of Knowledge, ed. Thorulf Lovstedt (Stockholm: INSEA Sweden, 1988), pp. 125-35; "Testing the Skills of Art Criticism of Hungarian 10-to-14-Year-Olds," Visual Arts Research 17, no. 2 (1991)): 11-27; and "Skills in Art Criticism of Hungarian Elementary School Leavers in the 1980s," Journal of Educational Evaluation 18 (1992): 111-22. 3. A. Karpati, "The Leonardo Program," in Trends in Art Education in Diverse Cultures, ed. H. Kauppinen and M. Dicket (Reston, Va.: National Art Education Association, 1994), pp. 95-102. 4. The project method to be described later in this article was used for the first time in a national competition in art for eighteen-year-olds, the prizes of which in- cluded credits for art college entrance. 5. H. Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 173. 6. G. Clark and E. Zimmerman, Issues and Practices Related to Identification of Gifted and Talented Students in the Visual Arts (Storrs, Conn.: The National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented and The University of Connecticut, 1992). 7. A. Karpati, "Art, Arts, or Culture? An Educational Dilemma from a Hungarian Perspective," Studies in Art Education 26, no. 1 (1984): 14-19. 8. M. Freeman, Finding the Muse: A Social Psychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 258. 9. Two recent meta-analyses of such studies are F. Haanstra, "Effects of Art Education on Visual-Spatial Ability and Aesthetic Perception" (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands,1994); and G. Clark and E. Zimmerman, Programming Opportunitiesfor Students Gifted and Talented in the Vi- sual Arts (Atlanta: The University of Georgia and The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, 1994). 10. Karpati, "The Leonardo Program." 11. In Hungary, compulsory education is 8 years and, until recent reforms and the appearance of the 6- and 8-year secondary school, it used to take place in com- prehensive elementary schools. This type of educational institution had an inte- rior dividing line: the lower grades- grades 1-4-where a classroom teacher is responsible for teaching most of the subjects, including art; and the higher grades-grades 5-8-where subject specialists teach. Both art and music educa- tion are compulsory in all grades. There are two periods (90 minutes a week) in grades 2-7 and one period (45 minutes) in grades 1 and 8. Moreover, optional art classes and studio classes are offered in about 70 percent of the schools. The subject "technology," with an equal amount of curriculum time, is gradually be- ing transformed into a subsidiary of art education: crafts, design, and architec- ture as well as creative work with modem media are part of most of the new alternative technology curricula. 12. Pedagogical Tasks used in the Leonardo Program. Art criticism task: oral or written criticism of a classic painting, a modern paint- ing, and a modem sculpture presented in slide form. Clark Visual Concept Formation and Generalization Test: nonverbal matching task of concepts and images (G. Clark, "Establishing Reliability of a Newly De- signed Visual Concept Generalization Test in the Visual Arts," Visual Arts Research 10, no. 2 [1984]: 73-78). Harvard Aesthetic Sensitivity Test: three aesthetic concepts (repleteness, com- position, and expressivitiy) are to be detected in works of literature, art, and music. Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST): aethetic preference test using authen- tic graphic art produced for this test (K. O. Gotz, A. R. Borysky, R. Lynn, and H. J. Eysenck, "A New Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test I: Construction and Psy- chometric Properties," Perceptual and Motor Skills 49 [1979]:795-802; S. Iwawaki, H. J. Eysenck, and K. O. Gotz, "A New Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test II: Cross-Cultural Comparison between England and Japan," Perceptual and Motor Skills 49 [1979]: 859-62; L. Chan, H. J. Eysenck, and K. O. Gotz, "A New Visual This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Detection of Visual Talent 93 Aesthetic Sensitivity Test III: Cross-Cultural Comparison between Hong Kong Children and Adults and English and Japanese Samples," Perceptual and Motor Skills 50 [1980]: 1325-26; and H. J. Eysenck, K. O. Gotz, H. Y. Long, D. K. B. Nias, and M. Ross, "A New Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test IV: Cross-Cultural Com- parison between Chinese Sample from Singapore and English Sample," Percep- tual and Motor Skills 54 [1984]: 599-600. Visual Narrative Drawing Task (B. Wilson, "The Superheroes of J. C. Holz," Art Education [November 1974]: 2-9; and B. Wilson and M. Wilson, "Children's Story Drawings: Reinventing Worlds," School Arts [April 1979]: 5-13). Technical drawing task for 11-to-14-year-olds: cityscape design, using a set of geometrical shapes given in model form. Technical drawing task for 6-to-10-year-olds: male and female figures and faces (happy and sad). Psychological Tests used in the Leonardo Program: Raven Standard Progressive Matrices Test; RIFA Attention Span Test; Moede Test for Visual Memory. 13. A. Karpati and V. Gyebnar, "Assessment of Learning in the Visual Arts-A Cur- riculum-Based Approach" (forthcoming in the European Journal of Learning and Instruction). 14. Two recent meta-analyses of such studies are Haanstra, "Effects of Art Educa- tion," and Clark and Zimmerman, Programming Opportunities. 15. Clark and Zimmerman, Issues and Practices. 16. "Consequences," a verbal task that required testees to follow up on an unusual situation or event, and "Three Lines" which involved the composition of a pic- ture by utilizing three more or less suggestive lines. Both tasks required three minutes to take. 17. Two Hungarian psychologists, Ilona Barkoczy and Csaba Pleh, compiled and standardized the Torrence Test for Hungary. We took a verbal task, "Unusual Usage," that required the listing of the most plausible "unusual" uses of every- day objects, (e.g., a brick), and a drawing task, "Circles." As these tests have Hungarian standards for all the age groups that we experimented with, we could compute relative flexibility and mean originality as well. 18. It was the Harvard Test for Aesthetic Sensitivity that showed the closest correla- tions with almost all items (with the flexibility item of the Torrence Test, r=0, 620, with the originality item of the same, r=0,405, and with the second task of TCT, TCT/B, r=0,362). 19. A longitudinal experiment is now underway with 400 13-to-15-year-old stu- dents participating that utilizes both Torrence and TCT as creativity measures and asks students to do two color tasks, two spatial tasks (one three- and one two-dimensional), and a project assignment including keeping a scrapbook, do- ing and documenting background research, and dating and saving sketches and variants of the final work. Results of this experiment will show whether and how complex art tasks reveal creativity. 20. Diederik W. Sch6nau, "Final Examinations in the Visual Arts in the Nether- lands," Art Education (March 1994): 34-39. 21. At present the Hungarian final examination for visual arts comprises a drawing task and an oral examination from art history. Students have three hours to complete one of three representational tasks selected by a committee and sent to the school in a letter to be opened on the day of the examination. There are four task types for the committee to choose from: (1) study drawing of geometric shapes, (2) reconstruction of a given projection, (3) still life (using natural or arti- ficial shapes), and (4) interior with figure-a model drawing. The examination committee decides the size and type of models to be used, the source and direc- tion of lighting, and the use of drapery. Grades are given by the art teachers based on guidelines provided by the examination committee. This content downloaded from 190.220.154.235 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:32:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions