Deducing the forms of a work, situating it within its history, putting into words an aesthetic experience, proposing and confronting interpretations, even conceiving, producing and assessing a work of art within a creative process, comparing the artistic productions of one art to those of another, etc mobilize the capabilities of reading, oral expression and writing while also calling upon a demanding practice of both verbal language and other languages - graphical, sensitive, bodily - in complex activities of semiotic transposition. Thus, literacy (understood as the broad competence for thinking, learning and self-construction in the elaborate uses of every system of signs) is at the heart of the practices of art present not only in the specialized subject areas but also in the subject areas of language and the human sciences. Learners have to learn to talk and write about art in stimulating situations which are likely to offer students an original yet demanding way of developing their competences. This paper argues for the development of art related literacy practices at the end of compulsory education and analyses the French School system from this point of view.