What are the plastic arts?

The plastic arts encompass art forms that physically manipulate malleable materials like clay, wax, or paint to create three dimensional works of art. The term “plasticity” refers to the ability of these media to be shaped and molded, often creating only the illusion of depth. The plastic arts more often refer to the visual arts, such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, architecture, film, and photography, rather than literary and musical arts.

The term “plastic arts” (which encompasses techniques like drawing and sculpting) can be used interchangeably with “modelling.” In two dimensional mediums like painting, these principles describe how artists create the illusion of three dimensionality by depicting natural variations in light and shadow.

While drawing is a two dimensional art form, it is typically executed on three dimensional surfaces such as paper or canvas. Drawing can be produced using a range of media, from pencil and charcoal to pastels. Printmaking, on the other hand, is the process of creating images on various surfaces, including paper and fabric, through techniques like relief printing, intaglio, and lithography.

Materials for use in the plastic arts, most commonly include those that can be carved, shaped or layered. The visual artist works with paper, paint, ink, charcoal, graphite, plaster, clay, rocks, wood, minerals and metals, to produce their pieces. Often materials such as clay, sand, stones or fabric will be added to a medium such as paint.

Ma'loula 52 | 42cm x46cm | Oil on wood
Ma'loula 52 | 42cm x46cm | Oil on Wood

History of plastic art and art forms

 The emergence of plastic arts is directly related to the evolution of the human species. Earliest examples of use of plasticity in art date back 30,000 years, or 32,000 BCE. The word plastic derives from the Greek plastikos, which means to mold or shape. This definition has long preceded the current meaning as a synthetic material.

The term plastic arts has been used historically to denote visual art forms (painting, sculpture, and ceramics) as opposed to literature or music. The related terms plasticity and plasticism became more widely used in the early 20th century by critics discussing modern painting, such as the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906).

The artist who worked in the method of plasticity, or plastic drawing, meant to illustrate how they perceived what they saw. They believed in painting from life, whether in the studio or outside, and their often used method was to build up areas of the canvas in blocks of colour, layer upon layer.

After Ahmad Madoun’s death, the 1960s witnessed a completely new type of plastic art known as Land Art (Earthworks or Environmental Art), practised by plastic artists like Robert Smithson (1938-73), and Andy Goldsworthy (b.1956).

The Land (1980) | 115cm x 90cm | Oil on Canvas | Dummar Museum for the Arts, Damascus
The Land (1980) | 115cm x 90cm | Oil on Canvas | Dummar Museum for the Arts, Damascus

The Plastic Arts Movement in Syria

In Syria, the plastic arts encompass the creation of expressive artworks. These works employ techniques that manipulate perceptions and materials to depict evocative forms and images, embodying a poetic aesthetic. Plastic drawing, a significant movement in the early days of Syrian modern art, seeks to bridge the past and present by expressing the essence of line, form, light, and colour. Visit this Atassi Foundation post for more information on modern and contemporary Syrian art.

Artists devoted to the Syrian art movement, such as Ahmad Madoun, embraced a profound vision of painting as a means to express human concerns, aspirations, and dreams, rather than simply depicting reality. They believed artworks in this style should convey the artist’s unique perspective on the world. This approach reflected the movement’s passionate ties to Syria’s cultural, historical, and national identity.

A manifesto for the Plastic Arts Movement was written in 1962 by Abdul Aziz Aloun, Mahmoud Daadouch, and Fateh Moudarres.  We have included the manifesto below. Abdul Aziz Aloun had this to say about article 10 of the manifesto, which addresses the importance of the role of critics to artistic culture and the artist:

“Artistic culture – art history, aesthetics, and art criticism – is one link in the chain that binds the artist to the public; when a person possesses this culture, there is no need to put their humanity to the test. We reject art criticism based on stylistic impressions; in our view, the task of art criticism is to observe direct radiation in the artwork. The critic must discover the indirect and objective aesthetic elements within the piece. We pity the critic who does not believe in time’s arrow, and we call on them to see a window in every artwork, flung open to the future.”

Portfolio Galleries

The Manifest of Syrian Artists (April 9, 1962)

(Signed: “Mahmoud Daadouch, Fateh Moudaress, Abdel Aziz Aalwan”)

1. Art is a transparent humanity connected to the 4th dimension of the existence
2. The role of Art is to enrich the human culture and to add more emotions to life with small and big creative hints
3. The real art is a part of the creative process of the world:
  • When an artist creates, he lives a momentum of loneliness independent of material things and external effects.
  • An artistic trace does not stop when it radiates but it must keep growing up
4. Art is a contemporary mysticism:
  • We must take off the dryness of the painting material caused by industrial production and give it a divinity through the power of what it is able to do when it is included in the artist production.
  • Each dead material becomes as divine as the human skin when it is included in a creative art.
  • We do not believe in the death of things, but in their birth and motion.
  • We are connected to life inside the walls of life, architects still building ugly walls which impede the space of the Universe; we ask architects to assume their responsibility of building a world which can breath beauty, and to follow our manifest.
5. We believe that tomorrow will be powerful and spontaneous to find new dimensions and connect the depths of our souls with the Universe:
  • We believe in the cultural superiority of an artist;
  • We refuse symbols;
  • We follow Cézanne in his refusing of the literary reflection;
  • We consider the artist as a perforating head in the human machine to puncture the wall of time;
  • Humanity adopts the artistic creation and works to make it continue and grow up;
6. Art and artists are the two arcs of the same circle
7.  An artist does not think of community when he is creating because community is living inside him:

We deplore human beings who are passive with art because the universal dimensions are eclipsed inside them

8. An artist is responsible of both colours, physical and social, of the sun radiation on the spot where he lives, because it is a source of enrichment of the human culture;

We can not forgive the fault of Arabic artists to use these colors: yellow, golden, and purple

9. Mating of things in the nature to be united in the human brain, then to break down again and decompose, must push the artist to keep a childish mist making him swinging between shapes and no shapes:
  • Non-form is an entity like form that is totally accepted in an artistic work, and it is made of the recurrence of a movement destroying the recurrence of the precedent movement, a form disappears when the center of recurrence is lost
  • When a human being is born, he understands the form in a global and instinctive way, but when he grows up the third dimension grows up with him too, then he starts to analyze subjects and refuses to do it inside the form, which makes the form disappear, and the human being can live inside the non-form world as he lives in the transparency of the space of the Universe
10. We consider the artistic culture: critics, science of beauty and history of art, as a part of the connection between the artist and his public. Having an artistic culture allows the person to test his humanity:
  • We believe that the role of art critics is the observation of the radiation in artworks
  • We feel sorry for art critics who do not believe in the evolution and can not see in a new artwork a window opened on the future
11. We consecrate freedom of human beings and more specifically artists, because freedom is the natural atmosphere for art:
  • Freedom is a requirement in the life of an artist
  • The revolutionary spirit of art is evidence, as each artwork is a human position in front of the existence
  • We believe that there is a revolution inside each artwork which needs a total and unlimited freedom
  • Traditions are chains and we are free to take them or leave them

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