Visual Expression of Beauty and Ugliness in Adolescent Art

In this article, we present preliminary findings of a cross-cultural pilot study undertaken on the common borders of education and therapy through art. We examine images of beauty and ugliness drawn by adolescents in Hungary and the United States. Using beautiful and ugly drawing tasks as a personality test was first developed by researchers at an interactive digital testing site in Hungary. However, this method had not been used as a research tool, so with the developers' permission, a small pilot was performed to facilitate standardization of the task. The described research method is especially useful for adolescents and young adults whose verbal communication is richly supplemented by their creative imagery. Our analysis focused on themes, emotional responses in the drawings, which are vital signs that express adolescents' perceptions about the two extreme aesthetic experiences. The use of the Ugly and Beautiful Image Task (UBIT) as an educational and therapeutic assessment tool is also addressed.