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On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art
Taylor and Francis 2004; US$ 37.95Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief? On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the... more...
Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?
Taylor and Francis 1999; US$ 37.95With bracing clarity, James Elkins explores why images are taken to be more intricate and hard to describe in the twentieth century than they had been in any previous century. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? uses three models to understand the kinds of complex meaning that pictures are thought to possess: the affinity between the meanings of paintings... more...
What Painting Is
Taylor and Francis 1998; US$ 37.95Unlike many books on painting that usually talk about art or painters, James Elkins? compelling and original work focuses on 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.... more...
Pictures and Tears
Taylor and Francis 2001; US$ 37.95Art Does art leave you cold? And is that what it's supposed to do? Or is a painting meant to move you to tears? Hemingway was reduced to tears in the midst of a drinking bout when a painting by James Thurber caught his eye. And what's bad about that? In Pictures and Tears, art historian James Elkins tells the story of paintings that have made people... more...
Is Art History Global?
Taylor & Francis 2006; US$ 18.95Globalism is arguably the most pressing issue facing art criticism and art history. As the number of art history departments continues to grow, there is a danger art history will become a uniform practice around the world and may soon settle to a global standard. Is Art History Global? stages an international conversation among art historians and critics... more...
How To Use Your Eyes
Taylor and Francis 2007; US$ 45.00James Elkins's How to Use Your Eyes invites us to look at--and maybe to see for the first time--the world around us, with breathtaking results. Here are the common artifacts of life, often misunderstood and largely ignored, brought into striking focus. With the discerning eye of a painter and the zeal of a detective, Elkins explores complicated things... more...
Visual Literacy
Taylor and Francis 2010; US$ 37.95What does it mean to be visually literate? Does it mean different things in the arts and the sciences? In the West, in Asia, or in developing nations? If we all need to become "visually literate," what does that mean in practical terms? The essays gathered here examine a host of issues surrounding "the visual," exploring national and regional ideas... more...
Visual Cultures
Intellect 2010; US$ 20.00Visual Cultures is the first study of the place of visuality and literacy in specific nations around the world, and includes authoritative, insightful essays on the value accorded to the visual and the verbal in Japan, Poland, China, Russia, Ireland, and Slovenia. The content is not only analytic, but also historical, tracing changes in the significance... more...
What Photography Is
Taylor and Francis 2011; US$ 34.95In What Photography Is , James Elkins examines the strange and alluring power of photography in the same provocative and evocative manner as he explored oil painting in his best-selling What Painting Is . In the course of an extended imaginary dialogue with Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida , Elkins argues that photography is also about meaninglessness--its... more...
Art History Versus Aesthetics
Taylor and Francis 2005; US$ 37.95In this unprecedented collection, over twenty of the world's most prominent thinkers on the subject including Arthur Danto, Stephen Melville, Wendy Steiner, Alexander Nehamas, and Jay Bernstein ponder the disconnect between these two disciplines. The volume has a radically innovative structure: it begins with introductions, and centres on an animated... more...









