GIVE GENIUS A BREAK!
[Bu WHIM WHAMI Colouring books are nothing but an artistic straitjacket for children, according to the professor of fine arts at Pennsylvania Stats University. Dr. V. Lowenfeld . . . the books thwarted the child's creative instincts and developed a slavish dependence on prescribedoutline . . . the No. 1 enemy of creativeness in the United States.
Guilty is he of deadly cultural Sin Who gives his Child a Book to colour in: Who curbs with crude and rigid printed Line The young creative. Intellect, aged Nine; Who holds the lisping Leonardo back, Lets infant Rembrandt grow a servile Hack! My own creative Infancy was blighted By Books like These, in which my Heart delighted, Unconscious of the Injury inflicted Upon my Mind, thus shackled and constricted. I gave Dick Whittington a purple Cat, And Mother Goose a Burnt Sienna Hat, Daubed Simple Simon’s Pants with Prussian Blue And crimson-laked Miss Muffet’s Tuffet, too. When, there were no more Outlines left to fill, I busily applied my new-learnt Skill To press Advertisements I coloured Faces, Motor-cars, Whisky Bottles and Suit-cases, Wherever the kind Printers left white Spaces: My Watercolour, Chalk or greasy Crayon With infantile Abandon I would lay on. Reddening the Noses of the Great in Print, Improving Film Stars with some sickly Tint, Chalking on Statesmen’s Mouthfe the silliest Grins. And scribbling Whiskers on the loveliest Chins. My genuine Talents vilely misemployed, My innocent Creativeness destroyed, My natural Gifts perverted, I mistook The Book of Nature for the Colouring Book! Beeby! Hadst Thou been living at that Hour, I might have drawn with true creative Power, Like all your Infant Classes, from the Heart Drawing their artless All, where All they draw is Art
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Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 10
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284GIVE GENIUS A BREAK! Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28262, 27 April 1957, Page 10
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