A sensitive, imaginative and reasoned approach to plastic language

As essential knowledge, the elements of plastic language enrich students' artistic culture. For the teacher, they are sources of inspiration for formulating relevant creative proposals.

However, art is a territory with infinitely complex and shifting boundaries: the meaning attributed to colors, shapes and other elements is not universal. The principles set out in this book are therefore only guidelines.

Most art education oscillates between two opposing tendencies: on the one hand, a laissez-faire pedagogy built on the idea of a naturally artistic child who has nothing to learn from adults; on the other, a pedagogy of knowledge transmission, most often in art history, which leaves little room for personal appropriation of the works.

This book proposes a mid-way approach to teaching and learning, inviting the reader to take possession of the language of art with a two-pronged approach: a reasoned approach that strives for objectivity, and a sensitive, imaginary approach that, unlike the first, seeks complete subjectivity. The aim is not to advocate pure formalism or exclusive expressionism.

To be an art expert is to have artistic knowledge. But there's more to it than that. People with no artistic training are often unaware that, first and foremost, it's about allowing oneself to express one's sensibility by putting the right words to what the body perceives, and by giving time to the expression of one's own inner need, because, as Bachelard rightly said, imagination always goes too fast. Making use of our sensitivity to create or appreciate a work of art is therefore not a prerequisite for learning, but an apprenticeship in itself.

Based on the devolution of an aesthetic experience, this book is aimed at all those who wish to learn how to exploit the richness of plastic language in their creative or appreciative activities.