Art and illusion: A reflection on the pictorial representation.
Méan, Francis (Belgium)
Visual arts
English

We have scheduled this workshop as follow:
A series of 4 workshops (total number of workshops) in 4 days, so each day is1 workshop hour.

This workshop has been placed in the following category:
Visual arts.

Maximum number of participants:
12.

The needed artistic level of this workshop is:
A minimum knowledge of art-history.

The skills criteria for participants to follow this workshop are:
Everybody can discover something new.

You will have learned after doing this workshop:
You will have learned to have a different look on artwork, to discover and detect the tricks and symbols.

What materials/equipment you need to bring to be able to do this workshop:
None.

Other important things a participant should know to be able to do this workshop:
A minimum knowledge of art-history.

The content of this workshop is:
Drawing - painting - caricature. The power of imagination. Analyse of the artistical view. The difficulties of the third dimension.
An anecdote to illustrate this workshop: during the opening of an exhibition of the well-known painter Matisse, a lady mentioned to the painter: "the arm of the women you painted is to long". The artists replay was: "you're wrong, madam, this is not a women, this is a painting."
Art has not to prove itself. The artist creates his own vision of the world, using his own sensitivity, and he doesn't care if an arm or a leg is too long!
In my reflection on "art and illusion" we'll explore art-history asking ourselves the sense of the artistic creation. We'll see a lot of unusual, interesting and unknown documents, from the caricature to the contemporary art.
Does creativity has to look a like? What's the spectators part in an art-piece?
I'll talk also about Pygmalion, the famous sculptor who carve a women out of ivory and falls in love with it. He asks Venus to give him a wife similar to his sculpture. Venus takes pity on him and brings the statue to life. A nice story, a fairy tale but an illusion, isn't it?