Lectures – James Elkins

James Elkins

After 17 years of work, my experimental novel with images and music has been published by Unnamed Press. It’s a complex novel, and I have posted charts of its structure, characters, themes, length, and lots more here (click and scroll down). Unnamed has also put out a vinyl record with some of the music that’s in the novel.

I have uploaded 75 short videos on art theory to Youtube. These are for art students. They cover media, politics, gender, the sublime, skill, formal analysis, craft, time, narrative, Eurocentrism, style, research, the body… lots of subjects.

My email is listed in the vita.

[Updated February 2024. Pages with information about the novel update live.]

Also out: an experimental textbook with Oxford Press, co-authored with Erna Fiorentini, called Visual Worlds. This is not an ordinary textbook, but an exploration of visuality in a very wide range of fields, from law to medicine to literature. It can be used by readers at any level to question received ideas about vision and imaging.

In progress, 2020-present: an international project to write a radical new world art history textbook. For information please contact me.

New book: my summary of art writing around the world, The End of Diversity in Art Historical Writing.

Recent uploads: the books Pictures and Tears, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?, How to Use Your Eyes, and an essay on the complicity between torture and formal analysis. Another entire book free, on Academia: What is Interesting Writing in Art History? It’s on ways to write experimental art history .(There is also a website with reviews of contemporary piano music.)

Theory in art history

This is a lecture on the history of theories and methods in art history, with some remarks on the current place of theories in the discipline.

Science and art

I have a number of texts and lectures on this topic. On this site, see especially: (1) The book Visual Worlds (2) The book Visual Practices Across the University (3) The essay “The Drunken Conversation of Science and Art“ This is an essay about the mutual misunderstandings between chaos theory, fractal dynamics, and painting in the 1990s. […]

Lectures

This interactive calendar lists public lectures and travels. If you click on the links you can get more information about venues and schedules of events. If you’d like to invite me to lecture or for a reading, please check availability, and then send an email (email addresses are on the vita). Readings Readings of fiction […]