Product Description

Written from the perspective of a painter-turned-art-historian, James Elkins’ highly original work communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history by focusing on alchemy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131285 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Publisher
Review from Dispatch, Columbus, OH 12/98
"The best books often introduce new worlds. What Painting Is exposes the reader to painting materials, brushstroke techniques and alchemy (of all things), in a book filled with rich description and illuminatiaong insight. Read this and you'll never look at paintings in the same way again."

From the Back Cover
What is painting really? Daubs of sticky oils and crushed rock, blobs that form and reform, colors that look one way on a palette, another way on canvas, a different way still in relation to other bits of color beside them. Books on painting usually talk about Art, or about painters. But in this compelling and original work, art historian James Elkins turns to alchemy, for like the alchemist, the painter seeks to transform and be transformed by the medium.

In What Painting Is, James Elkins communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history. Alchemy provides a magical language to explore what it is a painter really does in her or his studio--the smells, the mess, the struggle to control the uncontrollable, the special knowledge only painters hold of how colors will mix, and how they will look. Written from the perspective of a painter-turned-art historian, What Painting Is is like nothing you have ever read about art. Also includes a 4-page color insert.

About the Author
James Elkins is Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including The Poetics of Perspective (1994), The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (1996), Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing(1997) and Why are Our Pictures Puzzles? forthcoming from Routledge.

Customer Reviews

U CALL YOURSELF A PAINTER?
I revisit this book every year or so to remind myself of the lure of the studio and all the craziness that happens within. This is a marvelous read if you've ever experienced the pitfalls and joys of painting at all hours of the day. You call yourself a painter? Well, read this book and see if you relate. Painting in the historical sense carries with it a certain spiritual connection and this book connects contemporary pursuits with historical/traditional/sentimental efforts that have preceded you and i. bravo!