What Painting Is

James Elkins

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Hardback

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English

Routledge
05 December 2019

Art styles not defined by date; Painting & paintings; Art techniques & principles

In this classic text, James Elkins communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history. Alchemy provides a strange language to explore what it is a painter really does in the 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, this anniversary edition includes a new introduction and preface by Elkins in which he further reflects on the experience of painting and its role in the study of art today.

By: James Elkins
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: 2nd edition
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
Weight: 1.190kg
ISBN: 9781138319899
ISBN 10: 1138319899
Pages: 262
Publication Date: 05 December 2019
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Introduction to the 20th Anniversary edition Introduction A Short Course in Forgetting Chemistry How to Count in Oil and Stone The Mouldy Materia Prima How do Substances Occupy the Mind? Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating The Studio as a Kind of Psychosis Steplessness The Beautiful Reddish Light of the Philosopher’s Stone Last Words

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 How to Use Your Eyes, What Photography Is,Visual Literacy,and Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction, among other titles.

Reviews for What Painting Is

"""One of the few essential books on oil painting....In passages from which every critic should learn, Elkins tries to decode the exact physical gestures that produced what he sees....He makes readers feel they are truly tasting a viewpoint of reality alien to the modern scientific world view."" --San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle ""A truly original book. It will make you look at paintings differently and think about paint differently."" -- Boston Globe ""Wandering in the Metropolitan, needing a break from looking at art, I went to the shop, purchased What Painting Is, and sat down and started to read. When then I got up again, the art looked different. Elkins's best writing teaches you how to look more closely and see more.""--David Carrier, Art Journal ""What Painting Is succeeds very well in evoking the odors, stickiness, and intense attraction of the paint itself.""--Katerina Duskova, The Art Bulletin"