On the notion of the primitive, folk art and children’s art in the writings of Stefan Szuman

Abstract

The article is devoted to the aesthetic concepts of the Polish philosopher and pedagogical theorist, Stefan Szuman (1898-1972). Szuman’s interest in the work of children and folk art was in line with the shift towards the “primitive” in European culture at the beginning of the 20^th century, which resulted from the critical assessment of the processes of modernization and longings for regeneration, as well as from the anthropological research on the structure of primitive societies and their creativity. Like Franz Boas, who in his theory of primitive art rejected the evolutionist model and the identification of “primitive” with a lower stage of development, Szuman emphasized the specificity of children’s creativity and folk art. Referring to the neo-evolutionist ethnologist Max Richard Verworn (the concept of “ideoplastic”) and to the psychological hypotheses od Jean Piaget, Szuman saw in the art of children a connection with the organic development of cognitive abilities and the need to externalize them. The concept of education through art proposed by Szuman, which assumed not so much a ready curriculum as supporting the development of students, has become a part of the trend of personalistic pedagogy, represented in Poland among others by Henryk Rowid, Janusz Korczak and Antoni Kenar.