The Artist's Book as an innovative teaching resource and its therapeutic potential

Abstract

The artist's book is a means of expression with parameters totally different from those we traditionally know, such as painting, sculpture or traditional literary works. From this differentiation, a new and independent artistic genre is born necessarily, which is fundamentally interdisciplinary and which allows crossings between different fields of art, design and crafts come together to develop an idea. The book is made aware of as its own independent artistic entity within contemporary art.

This work arises as a need to clarify concepts about the borders that define this genre and to share observations, impressions and projections based on the experience carried out through workshops on the subject. It aims to attend to its multidisciplinary possibility in the construction of language and expression and rescue its qualities as an optimal innovative didactic resource for the educational area as well as an excellent means to express unconscious questions or elaborate emotional problems.

As it is not stratified within the norms, regulations and deregulations that other disciplines suffer, this genre enjoys a certain lightness, the priority is in the expression, and the possibilities of execution to materialize it are multiple. There are sound books, others that represent theatrical scenarios, playful forms that need mathematical or geometric precision for their execution, etc. This openness to diversity enables multidisciplinary work integrating different areas of knowledge: music, theater, literature, art, computing, mathematics and others.

In working with children, ages 8 to 12, they included and made the most of plastic and literary resources in a natural way, telling stories that expressed their fantasies, fears and desires. The adolescents were able to express their ideas, emotions and feelings freely and without inhibitions in personal and collective creations. In workshops for adults, a tendency was observed to create books of intimate confessions or to “ritualize” past experiences through creation. In all the groups, the camaraderie and the positive evaluation of their own work and that of others stood out.