Pierre Francastel

Today I’m going to talk about Pierre Francastel. Pierre Francastel was the first art theorist considered as an art sociologist for historians, and considered as an art historian for the sociologists. He belonged to the first generation of art theorists, when the art began to be understood like a study object freed it from the area of aesthetics studies.

Before to get into university, my interests about art developed. In my high school my art teacher was the Roberto Matta’s niece, she taught me all I know about painters, art movements, technique and styles. When I got into university I tried to conjugate my art interests with sociology. At the beginning it was a difficult challenge because the first year of this career is terrible and the courses are very general.

The last year, in the epistemology course, I had the opportunity for made and free topic essay and I decided to wrote about the “strangeness epistemological” typical of art or art work like a study objet for sociology. In this context I got to know him. Hi was an incredible difficult way to write (well, as a good French theorist, he must to have a complex style to write haha) so I had to get used to his language by an exhaustive reading of all his translated texts.

I admired him for his revolutionary contribution about the “Plastic Imagination” that shows to us the need to understand  the  intrinsic value of the art work expressed in the denial of dichotomy between the form and the content.