John Willats (died April 2006) was a psychologist and artist known for his research on pictorial systems of

depiction Depiction is reference conveyed through pictures. A picture refers to its object through a non-linguistic two-dimensional scheme, and is distinct from writing or notation. A depictive two-dimensional scheme is called a picture plane and may be cons ...

and perspective, which included a taxonomy of the methods of visual projection used by various artists. He was considered an expert on children's drawings and how children develop drawing abilities.

Biography

Willats studied sculpture at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It off ...

. He had degrees in mechanical sciences and psychology. He worked under the supervision of

Richard Wollheim Richard Arthur Wollheim (5 May 1923 − 4 November 2003) was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the Briti ...

at London University. He was teaching sculpture and drawing at Walthamstow School of Art when along with Fred Dubery, he published his first book, ''Drawing Systems'' Willats was an Honorary Research Fellow at the

Polytechnic of East London , mottoeng = Knowledge and the fulfilment of vows , established = 1898 – West Ham Technical Institute1952 – West Ham College of Technology1970 – North East London Polytechnic1989 – Polytechnic of East London ...

and was an Honorary Research Fellow of the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univer ...

. He was a professor at

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, when L ...

. In 2000, Willats completed a sculpture celebrating the millennium in a former hometown of

Bradford-on-Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon or Bradford upon Avon) is a town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset, which had a population of 9,402 at the 2011 census. The town's canal, historic buildings, s ...

, England. The sculpture is a life-sized representation of a mill girl, known as "Millie", that celebrates the town's history.

Research

In ''Perspective and other drawing systems'' (1983)'','' Willats and Dubery defined formal categories for pictorial systems, which they called projection systems. Willats posited that people have an innate capability to understand the grammar of pictorial depictions, which is related to Chomsky's theory of

universal grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible hum ...

. In ''Making sense of children's drawings,'' Willats proposed that children learn drawing in a manner comparable to language learning, by picking up increasingly complex rules of depiction.

Books

* Dubery, F. & Willats, J. (1972). ''Drawing systems.'' Studio Vista. *Dubery, F. & Willats, J. (1983). ''Perspective and other drawing systems.'' The Hubert Press. *Willats, J. (1997). ''Art and representation: New principles in the analysis of pictures''. Princeton University Press. * Willats, J. (2006). ''Making sense of children's drawings''. Psychology Press.

Representative papers

* Willats, J. (1977). How children learn to draw realistic pictures. ''Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(''3), 367–382. * Willats, J. (1981). What do the marks in the picture stand for? The child's acquisition of systems of transformation and denotation. ''Review of Research in Visual Arts Education'', ''7''(1), 18-33. * Willats, J. (1987). Marr and pictures: an information-processing account of children's drawings. ''Archives de Psychologie'', ''55''(213), 105-125. * Willats, J. (1992). The representation of extendedness in children's drawings of sticks and discs. ''Child Development'', ''63''(3), 692-710. * Willats, J., & Durand, F. (2005). Defining pictorial style: Lessons from linguistics and computer graphics. ''Axiomathes'', ''15''(3), 319-351.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Willats, John British psychologists Alumni of the Royal College of Art 20th-century psychologists 20th-century British sculptors Year of birth missing 2006 deaths