James Elkins

Religion has a "strange" place in art because work that subscribes to a major religion is not often accepted in the international art market.

A book about people who have had strong emotional reactions (including crying) looking at paintings, and about the relatively tearless twentieth century.

A book about the hypnotic attraction of oil and tempera: why painters love paint, even before the painting is half-finished.

A book of commentary on a beautiful and mysterious manuscript in a library in Scotland.

An argument about what's taught in art schools and departments, and what isn't, or can't be.

An answer to the perennially popular book by E.H. Gombrich, Stories of Art.

A book written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida. This is a pendant, of sorts, to What Painting Is.

A large-format book with color pictures of common objects often overlooked: sand, a twig, the night sky, the inside of your own eye.