1 – The Émile Cohl School is dedicated to teaching the arts in various fields of visual creation: painting, posters, illustration of stories and books, editorial cartoons, comic strips, animation, websites, games, and digital books. Generally, the school embraces innovation, provided it has a substantial presence and acceptance by the public.
2 – The Émile Cohl School is a private higher education institution, offering programs lasting three or five years depending on the desired degree. Entry into the curriculum may require a preparatory year focused on fundamental subjects. The school adheres to recognition standards of the best institutions.
3 – The curriculum is structured around a common core, initially focused on learning techniques for representing reality (object drawing, anatomy, perspective, movement studies, framing). Subsequently, students progress toward gradually unleashing their imagination and sensitivity, supported by mastery of their chosen medium.
4 – The studies aim to develop expertise in image production techniques, whether traditional (drawing) or industrial (photography, video, digital). Both approaches combine acquired skills, imagination, and personal culture.
5 – The Émile Cohl School strives to train true professionals—artists or technicians. This demands that students commit to the institution’s requirements for hard work, discipline, punctuality, and personal dedication. Success depends on adhering to administrative and pedagogical rules (attendance, engagement, attentiveness in class, compliance with academic constraints, program content, learning rhythms, and evaluation methods).
6 – Every student at the Émile Cohl School is expected to embrace ethical principles: distancing oneself from selfishness and narcissism; questioning the allure of personal pleasure and the presumption of innate creative “genius”; understanding that producing art involves an exchange between “creator” and “viewer,” as images aim to reveal forms of beauty or truth in the world. Artists should socially engage in re-enchanting the world without resorting to naïve simplicity or magical thinking.
7 – This education requires an intellectual discipline that should not be feared: organizing valid cultural data, maintaining notebooks of sketches and notes, cultivating a permanent desire and curiosity for art history, and critically engaging with reality through artistic media (e.g., photography, cinema).
8 – The Émile Cohl School does not indulge in sterile debates such as “art versus technique” or “misunderstood genius versus craftsman.” An artist synthesizes art and technique. The school rejects myths of the misunderstood genius, emphasizing that there is no inherent difference between an artist and an artisan or between a creator and a producer. The school highlights the fruitful collaboration inherent in collective human efforts, including artistic work.
9 – The school’s teaching also focuses on understanding the origins of practices, theories, and techniques, along with their purpose, potential, and meaning (e.g., why study artistic anatomy, the doctrine of proportions, color theory, or the American shot?). This approach places formal discoveries and innovations in the context of art history, underscoring that nothing in art emerges from nowhere.
10 – Competition among students, naturally present at the Émile Cohl School and in life in general, is constructive (stimulation, emulation, solidarity) rather than destructive (elimination, exclusion). Both students and professors must understand that the success of some and the setbacks of others are shared experiences. Each individual must find the environment best suited to develop and flourish their talents.
11 – The teaching at the Émile Cohl School explicitly aims at professionalizing artistic activity—art is also a craft. This process relies on the principle of reciprocity, positioning students to give back to society what they have already received.
12 – The professors at the Émile Cohl School, bound by an obligation of means, commit to upholding the values that inspire the school’s teaching principles. These include intergenerational solidarity, generosity in sharing knowledge and experience, a collective spirit, intellectual benevolence (to understand different situations), and rigor and seriousness in both their work and evaluation methods.
13 – As an institution, the Émile Cohl School represents an organization whose interests and conditions surpass the sum of its individual members. The school’s operations demand adherence to its unifying principles: unity of place, unity of time, and unity of objectives.
14 – The Émile Cohl School recruits professors who are not only educators but also practitioners, producers, and professional creators. Teaching is deeply enriched by each professor’s practical experience, skills, and the knowledge derived from it.
15 – The ultimate purpose of the Émile Cohl School is to harness both traditional and modern media, indiscriminately, in service of a professional and civic ethic rooted in the pursuit of meaning and otherness.