Summer Art Courses in Brittany, France

Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, Brittany:
Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art located nine kilometers inland from the south coast of Brittany on the Atlantic Ocean invites you to enhance your depth and breadth as an artist. What creates an ideal environment for creativity? After all, every artist is different, every creative process is unique. PASCA invites serious art students and faculty to join its community, allowing them to experience life in a small French village from the inside -- a village that supports artists and takes seriously Gauguin's insistence that artists should have le droit de tout oser, the right to dare anything in their creative process.

Summer Program - Spend your summer in Pont-Aven!
Two Advanced Summer Institutes focusing on project-based work are offered at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art. Our summer programs cover a variety of topics, and may include courses in painting, photography, journaling, printmaking and mixed media.

Students interested in Summer Session I apply directly through PASCA. Classes are small, demanding, and challenge students to experiment with new conceptual and technical approaches. The program is 4 weeks in length and offers 3 to 6 credits. Transferable credit is offered through the Rhode Island School of Design Summer Programs Office. PASCA's Summer Session 1 will explore the notion of the artist in relationship to being displaced from the known, the familiar and the habitual. Our intense, focused studio environment is the ideal arena to investigate what it means to challenge your "original position".

College students who want to receive transfer credit should check with their home institution before applying. For more information on courses we are offering during Summer Session I, visit the course section of this website.For Summer Session II, PASCA is hosting Brown University Summer and Continuing Studies Studio Art Program. 3-6 transferable credit hours will be issued through Brown University and students must apply directly through Brown. For those interested in a longer summer study, the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art and the American University of Paris offer a joint program.

What Would Gauguin Do?
In the mid-1880's Paul Gauguin traveled to the rural town of Pont-Aven to escape the fashions and trends of the Parisian art scene. In Pont-Aven, Gauguin felt free from the constraints of Paris to experiment, invent and develop his work. This course is conceived in the spirit of Paul Gauguin.

In this course, students will develop a body of work based on the information and experiences they glean from their relocation to Pont-Aven. Students will develop an awareness of what they are formulating in drawing and painting and it's relationship to distant and recent history. Students will document their experiences in journals, sketchbooks and photographs. This information will be used as subject matter in their body of work. Students will draw and paint from a number of sources such as observation, photography, and mass media.

Although this course will be taught from a painter's perspective, students will be encouraged to extend the medium beyond "oil on canvas" as well as explore other media. Students will be encouraged to question the medium and its position in the Western continuum as well as its psychological impact on the viewer.

With the co-instructor's direct, studio based mentoring, challenges will be offered to students at all levels. Beginning level work will address the formal qualities of an artwork such as line, shape, value, texture, color, and perspective with intense observational and interpretive "interior and exterior" projects in painting and drawing. Intermediate level students will learn work from observation and a selection of conceptual topics that include the Pont-Aven rural and urban settings, life and visual environment. Students working at a more advanced level will learn to (in relation to the course format) paint and draw from a self-directed approach in combine with peers and faculty.

All students will learn, in the studio environment to critique their work, as well as their peers in individual and group sessions. All course work will be subject to rigorous critique, and students will be available to discuss their work and practice on a daily basis. Students will learn to present their work for portfolio review, and prepare their paintings/drawing for installation and gallery exhibitions.

All students in will be exposed to slides that cover imagery from the Post Impressionist epic, to concurrent contemporary work by living artists. Included in the studio sessions will be slide presentations with discussions addressing pertinent Q and A on technical, material and conceptual issues. All levels will participate in the integration and survey of Historical and Studio relevant topics.

Paul Paiement (Cypress College) and Bob Alderette (USC)
3 credits

Small Places: Outside the Urban Experience:
A dérive (walking through and around the town of Pont Aven), begins this exploration of art in a small place. Readings include two from Lucy Lippard's Lure of the Local, posing questions, "How does a small place shape an artist's vision? Can great art be made when the artist is not in dialogue with art centers? Why do some artists seek out small places? How has technology and the internet changed the ability of artists to create in a small place and remain connected to metropolitan developments?

Can a place be a muse?" Contemporary art from small art centers (such as Pont Aven, Quimper, and the Chateau de Kergehennec) combined with art being created in other small places around the globe, offers students opportunities to see art history/visual culture in a fresh manner. Assigned readings include themes regarding place and time; on-line dialogues with artists in other small places; and field trips, discussions, written responses, make up the course requirements. We will look at the works of contemporary artists including several in Pont Aven, plus Andy Goldsworthy, Skip Schuckmann, James Turrell, Cai Guo Qiang, Wolfgang Laib, Shirin Neshat, Pierre Huyghe, Mirela Ivanciu, and Dan Perjovschi, among others.
Ann Albritton (Ringling College of Art and Design)
3 credits