French designer, visual artist and set designer Pierre Charpin has released a new monograph titled Avec le dessin, charting the evolution of his drawing practice from 2005 to 2022. We delve deep into his vast body of work, exploring the many styles and approaches he takes when painting.
In the book’s preface, Charpin details his earliest memories of this medium. Like any child, I drew. Drawing comes before writing. A sort of original gesture, a primitive impulse, the imperative of projecting the concrete forms of one’s own experience and being into the world outside oneself, for oneself and others. is. ”
I grew up in a creative family, including my father who was a sculptor, lithographer and engraver. his mother, a weaver; Charpin, with his older brother who became an architect, was surprisingly slow to claim his passion for a particular field.
He wrote that it was only years later that he entered the world of furniture and object design and began to “take charge of his own destiny.” Alongside his newfound appetite for design, he discovered that even when he was studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in the 80s, he had never been told or shown that drawing was a practice in itself. I have come to understand that
Since then, Charpin has never settled on one style, constantly experimenting with shapes, colors and compositions, honing his particularly versatile approach to drawing. At Avec le dessin, this adaptability is evident, the works exhibiting a myriad of techniques, making it hard to believe that they all came from the same hand. Charpin says that this is the result of a certain way of thinking, and never valuable about the drawings so far.
He explains: This is undoubtedly the variety of techniques and tools I use (coloured pencils, graphite, pens, felt-tip pens, pens, grease chalk, dry chalk, sumi, color inks), plus a certain versatility in my work. is to explain. Whether it’s line art, loops, ribbons and arabesques, black line art, colored line art, series of line art, vectors, repeating basic shapes…”
Interestingly, much like his relationship with painting as a child, Charpin maintains a decidedly uneducated perspective on this medium. Simply and refreshingly, his enthusiasm for painting outweighs any theoretical or practical considerations. For me, the drive and urge to make myself available to draw and bring it to life creates the accuracy of drawing. It is an act of life that unfolds in and for itself without a pre-defined planned, financial purpose. ”
Avec le dessin is published by Editions B42. editions-b42.com
