Avec le dessin

The first publication devoted to the drawing work of designer Pierre Charpin, this book brings together a selection of almost 120 works from different series produced between 2005 and 2022. If drawing is an artistic discipline, it is also a major step in the practice of design. However, Pierre Charpin has never considered drawing as a simple step in the production process of an object, but rather as a practice in its own right, reflecting the designer’s singular relationship with form. Directly linked to his intuitions and thoughts, drawing is perceived as an immediate, intuitive and natural means of bringing to light a form that doesn’t yet exist. Unlike applied drawing, drawing as such no longer serves to represent form; it is itself form.
The works shown in this book are distinguished not only by the variety of techniques used – colored pencils, graphite, pen, felt-tip pen, fountain pen, fat chalk, dry chalk, Indian ink, colored ink – but also by the permanence of certain motifs such as lines and loops, ribbons or arabesques, with black or colored drawings, produced in series, often representing elementary forms.