James Elkins
News:
New book! What Heaven Looks Like. Passed the 300,000 word mark on my work in progress. Writing every day! Please use the contact form to schedule lectures, studio visits, or seminars. I'm using Academia.edu as a message board. If you download something of mine that's posted there, send me a note: I'm always glad to answer questions. See Lectures page for my travel schedule.
I have decided not to find a publisher for The Impending Single History of Art. (Too many years spent pursuing academic publishers.) It's the last of my art history books, and the one with the most information about global art history. I'm going to be posting it in its entirety on this site and on Academia. The chapters are on Google Drive, so they're live and always up to date. Please send comments & criticism here.
Latest uploads:
The book Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?; the book How to Use Your Eyes; and an essay on the complicity between torture and formal analysis. (There is also a website with reviews of contemporary piano music.)
Live Writing Projects:
I am experimenting with writing live on the internet. These texts update live, and you can contribute to them & be thanked when the book is published. (1) What is Interesting Writing in Art History?, (2) Writing with Images. Other live writing projects are finished: Visual Worlds, and The Impending Single History of Art. Thanks everyone for contributing!
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 638
An essay on the ordinary condition of most artists: being average, statistically normal, moderately successful--and not an outlier like Pollock.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 991
An essay on reasons to mistrust claims that that (Western) artists have used science in their art, or that current art and science are linked.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 1264
An essay on the overuse, or misuse, of Charles Sanders Peirce's sign system in art history.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 1234
On the German Expressionist Emil Nolde, and his use of color, which was neither entirely unnatural nor abritrary.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 9708
On the confused uses of fractals by artists, and some mathematicians' sense of art: on productive misunderstandings.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 9333
A perennially unfinished project: an essay (or a lecture, or a book) giving reason why art historians should practice what they study.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 10005
A reply to a very eccentric proposal: that the Venus of Willendorf and associated "Venus" figurines are self-portraits.
- Details
- Parent Category: Writing
- Hits: 7462
A lecture on the limits of historians' acknowledgment of their own involvement and motives in their work.
