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One might expect that French middle and high school students, who have far more hours in French than in visual arts or art history, will be less comfortable with painting than ‘with literature, very studied from the sixth grade (and already in primary school).<\/p>\n
In particular, we could expect that, for some of them, they would be very helpless or even reluctant in the face of religious painting, of which they do not know the characters and the situations it shows.\u00a0And that abstract painting, in the sense of that which does not represent reality, disconcerts them.<\/p>\n
One of my<\/a>\u00a0recent\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0shows that it is not.\u00a0I will give here some of the conclusions.<\/p>\n With the help of their French teacher, I confronted 350 students of third and second of the academy of Cr\u00e9teil with a painting reproduction and an extract of literary text.\u00a0The instruction was to write about ten lines independently to comment on each of the two objects, or, at a minimum, to give some of his impressions.<\/p>\n Participants were allowed to deal with only one of the two items, provided they explained why.\u00a0Note that each student worked, following a preliminary analysis, on one of the six tables and one of the six literary extracts that I had chosen and presenting equivalent difficulties for students of this level.<\/p>\n What does the\u00a0comparison<\/a>\u00a0of student responses show?\u00a0First, it is surprising to note that pictorial works are much less often avoided than literary works: 30.5% of pupils choose not to treat the literary work, whereas this is the case for only 5, 5% of them for the pictorial work.<\/p>\n More precisely, 38% of the pupils who were to work on an extract from the\u00a0Imaginary Malade<\/em>\u00a0by Moli\u00e8re (1673), which was very often studied in class, chose to leave it aside.\u00a0While this is the case for only 1.5% of the students for\u00a0La Nativit\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0ou\u00a0Le Nouveau-N\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0by Georges de la Tour (circa 1635) and 12% for\u00a0La Crucifixion blanche<\/em>\u00a0by Chagall (1938), which combines iconographic references from Christianity and Judaism.<\/p>\n In this study, the pupils discover the work of Chagall (here, the ceiling of the Opera painted by the artist). Gabriel Bouys \/ AFP<\/p><\/div>\n Religious painting is therefore not avoided, any more than non-figurative painting:\u00a0Landscape in the Rain<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Kandinsky (1913) is neglected by only 8% of students, while this is the case for 44.5%. for the extract of\u00a0Orph\u00e9e<\/em>\u00a0by Cocteau (1927).\u00a0The adolescents surveyed would therefore feel more inclined and more competent in the exercise when it relates to painting than when it relates to literature.\u00a0This is even more true in very popular recruiting colleges: 47.5% choose not to process the text, against only 1.5% for the table.<\/p>\n But are they actually doing better?\u00a0It is difficult to answer this question in absolute terms, since there are many ways to welcome the arts.\u00a0But the research focused on what is expected at school, more precisely in French, a discipline whose programs provide for what is called\u00a0image reading<\/a>\u00a0, in connection with reading literature (in both cases, it s ‘is an analytical and interpretative approach to the object, which I call here commentary).<\/p>\n To have a benchmark against which to compare student comments, I did a survey of just over 200 teachers in the discipline.\u00a0The vast majority of them say that their expectations regarding reading painting are adapted from the expectations they have in literature.\u00a0You must:<\/p>\n I have defined indicators corresponding to all these criteria: my study shows that the pupils are overwhelmingly closer to what teachers expect for painting than for literature.\u00a0The gap is widening further in favor of the highly popular recruiting college painting.<\/p>\n You might think that everything is explained by the difference between the two objects.\u00a0Unlike literary language, which relies on a language whose words have a meaning that preexists their use, pictorial language can seem more open.\u00a0But the effects of the difference in the semiotic nature of languages \u200b\u200bare complex and debated.\u00a0In any case, in my opinion, you have to look for subjects and not just objects.<\/p>\n Les adolescents n\u2019h\u00e9sitent pas \u00e0 commenter la peinture de Georges de La Tour (1593-1652). La Madeleine \u00e0 la Veilleuse, Georges de la Tour — Mus\u00e9e du Louvre<\/p><\/div>\n One could be satisfied to say that the culture of the image being the prerogative of the younger generations, the painting speaks to them more.\u00a0But we must not forget that painting, which does not always make an image, especially when it is not figurative, and which produces meaning other than by representing, requires very specific cultural knowledge (for example, it is necessary to know, for classical painting, iconographic references).<\/p>\n Bourdieu and Darbel showed in 1966 that the frequentation of art museums is mainly due to the dominant classes, more recent sociological surveys show that this is still the case.\u00a0So painting is at least as far from the culture of the pupils, especially from the working class, as literature.<\/p>\n The explanation which in my research appeared to me to be the most probable is the following: the pupils do not have the same relation to the two objects at all;\u00a0the\u00a0relationship they have with painting<\/a>\u00a0means that they understand, accept or allow themselves better to invest in giving meaning to the works.\u00a0One can think that the fact that painting is very little present in the school tests, therefore in the evaluations, is not for nothing: they are less afraid of making mistakes, they are more confident, which is necessary to answer teachers’ expectations.<\/p>\n The interviews that I conducted with some of the students in my survey show this clearly.\u00a0I give a few examples here.\u00a0While the teachers say they expect a personal interpretation, without limiting it to what one might think corresponds to the author’s intentions, the pupils, for their part, often affirm, like Sarah: \u201cOn a blackboard, it’s us, our imagination. , it is our opinion, we are free, whereas a text is the opinion of the author \u201d.\u00a0Or “you have to say, thinks Fatiha, what the teacher expects, otherwise it’s wrong”.<\/p>\n While each viewer can have their point of view, many readers of a text should, according to many students, stick to the single meaning of the words.\u00a0Thus, according to Odile: \u201cThe painting depends on the person, what she feels, it depends on the sensitivity of the person.\u00a0She will see the colors, the designs, how it’s done\u2026 [\u2026] A text, the words are the same, they mean the same thing for everyone.\u00a0”<\/p>\n Many students explain to me that it is because the painting is not written that it leaves room for the spectator’s writing, even encourages it, unlike the text, which is already written \u201d.\u00a0This is the case of Am\u00e9lie: “on the board there is nothing written, it is up to us to write”.\u00a0Kourosh takes this as proof that “in the texts we have words to understand while on a blackboard it is we who are going to write”.<\/p>\n It is difficult for these students, given this conception of the text, to meet the expectations of their teachers!\u00a0The conclusion I draw from my research is that the school could rely more on the\u00a0conception<\/a>\u00a0that adolescents have of painting and of their rights to appropriate it as a lever to help them build. such a relationship to literature and to understand what is expected of them.\u00a0Perhaps other arts could play the same role: other research will say so!<\/p>\nInvestigation<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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A more familiar object?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Authorization to interpret<\/strong><\/h4>\n