The "Viseur

"For, to say it finally and with verve, man only plays where he is man in the full meaning of the word, and he is only fully man where he plays. It is therefore one of the most important tasks of culture to subject man to form even in his purely physical life and to make him, as far as the realm of beauty can only ever reach, aesthetic, because only from the aesthetic, but not from the physical, state can the moral develop.“

Friedrich Schiller, who wrote this in a letter to Goethe on August 31, 1794, was convinced that beauty is the decisive condition of full humanity, and that without beauty any attempt at reform is doomed to failure.

The Viseur, which was developed in 1993 for pedagogical instruction in the Espace de l'Art Concret, is basically about play and beauty. The person who plays also plays because he is in search of the better. The playing person tries to give form to his dreams through play. A person who really plays, for whom playing is an existential necessity, will experience his physical and psychological existence in harmony. Body and soul become one in the game, become a whole. His consciousness is strengthened. The Viseur is a game to learn to see. Looking does not mean seeing. Studies have shown that only 10% of what happens in the brain are verbal processes. A large part of the rest are pictures, visual associations. Pictures are the bridge between the processes to which we do not have access and consciousness. Holistic processes can therefore best be captured in images because they contain simultaneity.

The contents of the Viseur are primeval forms and primeval colours. It is about the child, about the playing person getting a relationship to the archetypes, to the primary colours of everything visual. With circle, square and triangle, with blue, yellow, red and green one can accustom the eyes to the pure form, one can teach the eyes to play with the basic, with the alphabet of all visual things. You can arrange these forms on the table or on the floor, but you can also combine them in the open air, in dialogue with nature, with relish and with imagination to form an entity. It does not require any specific talent or exceptional ability. It is a game for everyone, every woman, for children, adults, disabled, non-disabled and people of all ages. The Viseur is a game without rules, without regulations.

Gottfried Honegger says: "The Viseur opens our imagination, the visual paradise. The Viseur fills our loneliness with meaning. The Viseur is communication, is a form of contemplation. The Viseur is a source of poetry, of music. The Viseur promotes education. The Viseur teaches us to see."

The Viseur has been successfully used for more than 20 years in the children's studios of the Espace de l'Art Concret in Mouans-Sartoux, Côte d'Azure/France. The Espace de l'Art Concret (EAC) was awarded for its cultural contribution by the European Cultural Foundation Pro Europa in 2008. The Foundation for Art Therapeutic Pedagogy (today FONDATION GOTTFRIED HONEGGER) produced these games and gave away more than 5000 Visitors to kindergartens, homes for the elderly, art therapists, pedagogues, organisations for the disabled and aid agencies worldwide. The FONDATION GOTTFRIED HONEGGER continues to do this and is permanently dependent on fundraising, donations, sponsoring and financial support.