Aging, Creativity and Art: A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development

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This title explores the strengths and opportunities of old age as they are manifested by the accomplishments of aging artists, late artistic works and elderly arts audiences. The book draws on scholarship in the humanities, primarily in art history; examines mainly paintings and painters, both historical and contemporary; reviews empirical research on creativity and cognition, predominantly from psychology and gerontology; and presents the author’s original studies, including surveys of art historians, questionnaires completed by aging artists and arts audiences, and experiments involving judgments of art by laypersons. The research suggests that creativity continues into the later years; higher-order mental abilities related to creativity, like imagination and problem-solving, persist until late in life; and the elderly’s physical, sensory, mental, and interpersonal competencies may be enhanced by engagement with the arts. This work interrelates the disciplines of science, the humanities, and the arts to form a synthesis that builds on the strengths of the methods of quantification of science; the emphasis on the individual in the humanities; and the expressive and intuitive modes of communication in the arts.