An excerpt from a book by Maeno Takashi. Original in Japanese. My translation:
Let us consider our memory of images.
Memory among children is precise. Lower animals also tend to have precise memories. As discussed previously, research has shown that birds remember images with great accuracy.
Looking back on my childhood, I can no longer recall the nature of my memory for images at that time, but research has shown that, compared to adults, children have more accurate memories of images.
As we develop, memory becomes more abstract. This resembles changes seen in the paintings of Monet. In his early years, although his art was already described as impressionistic, it was still quite realistic. In one of my favorite paintings, Impression, Sunrise, although he painted the sun and sea in an impressionist style, we can easily understand what is being portrayed. Incidentally, from the title of this painting, Monet and others came to be called impressionists. The works of that period were indeed becoming more impressionistic, as if mental images overlapped realistic images in those beautiful pastel-tone paintings.
However, the late works of Monet are more abstract. The series of works known as Lilies are famous, but the lilies he painted in the last year or two before his death have a dramatic, otherworldly quality. No longer concrete images, the works are very abstract, almost indescribable, painted with powerful subjective lines and colors. Moreover, the overall compositions are wonderful. Although the details have lost all precision, in the total image, we can grasp the subject matter, which expresses a deeper, ineffable reality.
In his late years, Monet was almost entirely blind, and thus, rather than painting by sight, he depended on inner models, so perhaps we should say he painted the lilies he saw within.
This transition in Monet’s paintings seems to resemble transitions in how humans remember images. When I visited art museums in Spain, I also saw this quality in paintings by Miró. Although he is famous for the paintings from his youth, which have a delicate touch, the works of his later years are very powerful.
So, returning to our subject, image memory is like the paintings of Monet and Miró. In youth, precise and realistic, but with age, more vague and abstract. Other kinds of memory have the same tendency. That is, in youth, in order to make an inner model of the world, we must remember many things accurately, but with age, that is no longer necessary, so memories become less precise.
We should describe this, not as a decline, but rather as a qualitative transformation.