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© 2000-2024 Childhood in ART
Depiction of childhood is a relatively new theme in
art. For a long time in the history of human culture
there has been no special attitude to the children,
their world hasn't been marked by inimitable
distinctness. Nevertheless, pictures of children can
be found in the art of Ancient Egypt, Greece and
Rome. Frescoes of Ancient Egyptian palaces and
shrines are the main source of information for
historians about the children's lives, their
games, schooling, etc.
In Ancient Greece, infantile representations were rare
and narrowed down to pictures of Amur (God of Love,
son of Aphrodite) and Hermes in childhood (due to the
correspondent mythology), or ephebes. In Ancient
Rome, the same tradition is kept, with portraits of
children as representatives of a certain clan. For a
long period of time, the European tradition has
regarded a child as a little adult. The art of the
Middle, Ages depicts the children in an emblematic
way, as one of the human ages. The most widespread
picture of a child is little Jesus. The Christian art
doesn't separate the theme of childhood from
that of maternity (Madonna and Child) which
becomes one of the most popular at the Renaissance,
combining the sacral motif and its secular score. At
the same time, the antique tradition of portraying
children is revived again.
The
tradition of portraying the noble blood children as
little adults has endured for a long time. The
Classicism art is mainly about depicting the young
body (including the tender years) and admiring its
special plastic of transformation in an antique way.
In the 17th century, there appeared a theory of
separating childhood from adulthood that was worked
out at the age of Enlightenment and included
purposeful upbringing and teaching. The children were
considered a special age, when their becoming depends
on adults not only in the bodily aspect. At the same
time, pubescence wasn't thought to be a
transition period. The juvenile years were defined by
the socio-societal status, accession to manhood and
civil rights. The portraits of children are still of
a dress-up character. The art of sentimentalism
mildness this tonality. The tradition of Romanticism
depicts the child as a human being of full value,
with an elaborate world of spirit. The impressionists
saw the children as a model full of rich descriptive
possibilities.
The
realistic art of the late 19th - early 20th
centuries also paid a close attention to the
children. Step by step, the European culture marked
childhood as a self-valuable age with its own
particularity of Weltanschauung. Humanity has reached
it through different socio-cultural changes of a very
gradual character. The previous epochs have left many
spotty and diversified in time notions about
childhood: weakness, dependence on adults, innocence,
nescience of the conscious sin, transitivity to more
conscious life forms full of value.
The
development of the psychoanalysis theory at the
beginning of the 20th century deprived childhood of
its "innocence" but left its naivety of
perceiving the age transformation processes. The
baby-boom epoch after the World War II singled
childhood out into a special period, thus cutting it
from the adolescent age and juvenility, and
regenerated a sentimentally conservatory attitude to
it. In the contemporary art, the children images are
included into various contexts, reflecting a
difficult and controversial attitude of society to
this period of human life.
This site
has pictures of children of different ages made by
various artists of different time frames.
Contemporary artists' works constitute the
majority of the pictures. The works are presented in
accordance with the art criteria, pictures of
children of accidental and documentary characters are
left behind.
Igor Kraszewski, translated by Andrey Bursau
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