The Problem

Picasso's "Le Picador" (1890), painted at the age of 9

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

— Pablo Picasso

"When you pick up a brush, don’t ever ask anyone for help. Because the most wonderful thing about painting is being left alone with your own imagination. I do not paint to get praise from others, but to play a game of endless joy."

— Wang Yani

This oft-repeated quote from Picasso reminded me of a 1990 exhibition at the Asian Art Museum by Wang Yani, the Chinese painting prodigy who began painting at the age of 2. At the age of 14, she was the youngest person to have a solo show at the Smithsonian. On a promotional tour of the United States for "A Young Painter: The Life and Paintings of Wang Yani - China's Extraordinary Young Artist, Yani delighted the museum-goers in San Francisco with her painting exhibitions. Then, the 16 year-old artist said, "I still paint according to my own ideas," but everyone wondered if her genius would hold. All acknowledged the young girl's talents, but artists also expressed concerns about her celebrity status. Painter Zhang Hong Tu ruefully commented that her public painting exhibitions relegated her art to "performance," believing that her talents would develop better "if she were left alone to paint for a few years." On the other hand, artist Lu Hong commented that Yani's extremely large output of work would not have been possible if the young artist would have stayed in her hometown of Hangzhou. "When I was young," said Lu, "I had no chance to work with traditional materials such as ink and rice paper. They were too expensive. We weren't a poor family, but if we had bought art materials, we couldn't have bought food. We would have been hungry." The expatriate artists were all concerned that Wang Yani's tour the US should not be presented as evidence of China's "lifting of limits on cultural expression."

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-11-02/entertainment/ca-736_1_wang-yani

It is wonderful to discover that Wang Yani, now the mother of three children, is still hard at work, painting as she pleases. The Michael Jaspers Gallery in Munich, Germany has a page of selected works, as well as a series of images showing Yani in action, painting with the freedom that she exhibited as a child. Now in her 30's, Yani is still seeking and exploring "Der Neue Weg (The new way).

As we create art experiences for children, we should take heed of Picasso and Yani's words. We must take great care not to accelerate this process of undoing by encouraging kids to "BE" Picasso. The problem is how to enable every child to find their way to that lifetime of authentic engagement with "The Hundred Languages." Every child deserves to play this "game of endless joy."


The Hundred Languages

No way. The hundred is there.

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

-Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach

http://www.innovativeteacherproject.org/reggio/poem.php