“Craftsmanship first. Freedom appears as soon as the inflexible material order gives us support,” Alain recalled in Système des beaux-arts (1920). The creator always engages in a struggle with matter, whatever its nature, because matter possesses certain physical properties and, far from being inert, it has a life of its own. Perhaps the most striking passages in Eugène Delacroix’s diary are those in which the artist describes his struggle with matter as he was making the fresco Jacob’s struggle with the angel in the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Whether one is an artist, a theorist, a critic or a mere spectator, one cannot completely ignore the physical dimension of a picture. Anne-Marie Christin has also constantly reminded us of the importance of the medium of writing and images, as a way of emphasising the essential role of materiality. Like the French term “support” the term “material” is a leitmotif in her theoretical work, whereas she more sparingly uses the term “medium”, which has nevertheless imposed itself following the iconic turn of the 1990s. In the introductory section of L’invention de la figure, Anne-Marie Christin sums up her thinking as follows: “Iconic space is above all a site of random and multipolar paths, determined as much by the material – stone, paper, screen, etc. – of its medium as by the expressive needs specific to visual thought.” (p. 13)

In this panel proposed by the Centre d’Etude de l’Ecriture et de l’Image, particular attention will be paid to the process of creating images in relation to materiality and to the written word, whether it is incorporated into the work, or extrinsic to it, in the form of artists’ and theorists’ writings showing how the material may exhibit forms of lability or resistance: the wood engraver confronted with a medium that is by no means passive, the fresco artist battling with a wall, the engraver, or even the printer of periodicals and posters, the Harimaze- e prints in Japan where different printed motifs

Round table

"Points de vue, récits et expériences : Écriture et image. Labilité et résistance de la matière":

• Cyril DEVES - Matière et matérialité dans les films d’animation de fin d’études en école d’art : enjeux narratif, sensoriel, pédagogique et professionnel.
• Ada TELLER - Quand le langage devient une matière plastique : le récit-page ou récit toile
• Dylan CARUSO - Faire avec
• Paul-Henri Souvenir ASSAKO ASSAKO - La matérialité urbaine dans la pratique des arts et du design au Cameroun
• Stéphanie BOULARD - Matière et création : le fait pictural chez Pascal Quignard ou l’art et les commencements
• Luc BACHELOT - La matière qui parle entre philosophie, sciences physiques et archéologie