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Artistic Ability

The term artistic ability is often defined as, and is used here to describe, advanced ability in the visual arts as it relates to conceptions of giftedness, creativity, and talent.

Children gifted in art have fluency of imagination and expression, highly developed visual and organizational sensibility, intuitive quality of imagination, directness of expression, and a high degree of self-identification with subject matter, visual and conceptual fluency of ideas, complexity and elaboration; visual memory and detail; sensitivity to art media and technical control; random improvisation; and verisimilitude or the technical mastery of true-to-life results. Certain behaviors also seem to be associated with artistic potential: early interest in childhood; emergence through drawing; rapidity of development; extended concentration; self-directedness; possible inconsistency with creative behavior; use of art as escape; and ability to transfer skill to new situations. Additional behaviors include perceptual acuity, personal aesthetic preferences, and problem-defining and problem-solving skills.

Because artistic potential often appears in early childhood, one would expect longitudinal studies to be prevalent, yet descriptive case studies prevail in the research. Biographical studies of artists, especially the study of the childhood work done by artists such as the work of David Pariser on Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Karen Carroll on Edvard Munch have provided retrospective insights on the development of this level of expertise. Benjamin Bloom's study of accomplished sculptors focused attention on early memories of engagement with construction and spatial abilities rather than two-dimensional efforts. Prodigious childhood behavior may not develop into adult artistic productivity. Current understanding suggests that artistic ability is a constellation of qualitative traits evident in behaviors and products that emerge and develop in relationship to pleasurable and meaningful engagement with art making.

Artistic Ability and Gifted

Until the 1972 federal definition of giftedness included the visual and performing arts as an area in which giftedness could be manifest, relatively little was done to identify and serve this population formally. Use of multiple criteria is recommended for identification and may include both general ability measures as well as domain-specific criteria. However, research on the relationship between general intellectual ability or achievement tests and artistic ability has had mixed results. Although many students identified as intellectually or academically gifted also have demonstrated artistic abilities, not all do. Artistic ability can be found without demonstrated intellectual ability, and general intelligence may not be immediately apparent when it is masked by academic learning challenges.

Three-dimensional ability is also not necessarily accompanied by two-dimensional ability and vice versa. Studies of spatial ability or figural (nonverbal) reasoning measures have not demonstrated a correlation with artistic ability. These assessments do not appear to measure visual thinking, or thinking in images, although studies investigating dyslexia and the use of an Impossible Figures Test to identify artistic ability have been conducted. In Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, visual–spatial intelligence is described as an ability to think in images, and researchers in many fields have noted it as valuable to creative producers in all disciplines.

Many researchers have studied ways of identifying the artistically gifted and talented. Ironically, self-identification remains one of the strongest identifiers of artistic ability. Because identification of giftedness in the visual arts remains more of an art than a science, intuition, knowledge of the domain and the personal judgment of reviewers often enter into selection processes for special programming.

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