The artists' writing crystallizes historically in the humanism of the Renaissance to constitute what appears today, with modern
and contemporary periods, as a fertile tradition. The ways taken by artists are multiple and require both the historian of
literature's and the art historian's attention. Being an archive, a document, as well as an aesthetic object, artist's writing invites
every discipline to rethink their limits and concepts.  In Belgium, the proximity between painters and writers has long been
particularly intense and this, since the birth of the nation, facilitating the 'double practice' and the conversions in the course of the
career. In the absence of an actual native literary tradition, painting immediately occupied a dominant position in the hierarchy
of arts in an uprising Belgium, imposing itself upon the writers as a model. In Belgian critical literature, the recurrence of the
figure of the 'painter that writes,' invited to wonder whether the situation of the Belgian cultural domain had facilitated or
even brought additional value to painters' writing.  If the analysis of the 'art literature', of the 'mixed' practices or of the
works of 'double artists' generated some important critical works, so far the study of Belgian painters' writings did not give place
to a systematic study. In the context of a Fonds spécial de recherche (FUNDP), in 2005 we started the 'Pictoriana' project. This
project was made possible because of this report and also because of the limits of the French-speaking Belgian literary corpus,
thus authorizing the ambition of an exhaustive research. Our first objective consisted in the elaboration of a database dedicated to
the Belgian writing artists. This tool was conceived with the aim of listing the various types of writings produced by the artists
in Belgium, from 1830 onwards and to understand the conditions of emergence, the modalities and the reception. Developed with the
cooperation of a half-time researcher and of an IT specialist (2005'2008), the 'Pictoriana' database is henceforth accessible
through consultation and through contributions (www.pictoriana.be). The mandat d'impulsion scientifique  of the FNRS (2009-2011) will
allow us to pursue, with the help of Bibiane Fréché, scientific collaborator, the enrichment and the development of
'Pictoriana'. The process of increase will be done from chronological (with particular attention to the 1900'1950 period) but also
disciplinary viewpoints. One of the aims wo