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9Chapter Nineteen On Some Limits of Materiality in Art History (2008)In Giovanni Aloi & Susan McHugh (eds.), Posthumanism in art and science: a reader, Columbia University Press. pp. 121-126. 2021.
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112 Aesthetics and the Two Cultures Why Art and Science Should Be Allowed to Go Their Separate WaysIn Francis Halsall, Julia Alejandra Jansen & Tony O'Connor (eds.), Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice, Stanford University Press. pp. 34-50. 2008.
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7Visual LiteracyRoutledge. 2007.What 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 of visuality and charting out new territories of visual literacy that lie far beyond art history, such as law and chemistry. With an afterword by Chr…Read more
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4How to Use Your EyesRoutledge. 2000.I hope this book will inspire every reader to stop and consider things that are...so clearly meaningless that they never seemed worth a second thought.... Grass, the night sky, a postage stamp, a crack in the sidewalk, a shoulder. Ordinary objects of everyday life. But when we look at them--really look at them--what do we see? In the tradition of John Berger's bestselling Ways of Seeing,James Elkins'sHow to Use Your Eyesinvites us to look at--and maybe to see for first time--the world around us,…Read more
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9Are Art Criticism, Art Theory, Art Instruction, and the Novel Global Phenomena?Journal of World Philosophies 3 (1): 79-92. 2018.As visual art becomes more international, ways of writing about art become more uniform. This essay proposes that two disciplines concerned with contemporary visual art, art criticism and art theory, are on the verge of being effectively homogeneous around the world. They share concepts, artists, artworks, institutions, and bibliographic references. For comparison, I consider two other fields that may also be increasingly uniform: studio art instruction and the novel. The last, in particular, is…Read more
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86James Elkins has shaped the discussion about how we—as artists, as art historians, or as outsiders—view art. He has not only revolutionized our thinking about the purpose of teaching art, but has also blazed trails in creating a means of communication between scientists, artists, and humanities scholars. In Six Stories from the End of Representation , Elkins weaves stories about recent images from painting, photography, physics, astrophysics, and microscopy. These images, regardless of origin, a…Read more
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10Theoretical Remarks on Combined Creative and Scholarly PhD Degrees in the Visual ArtsJournal of Aesthetic Education 38 (4): 22. 2004.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theoretical Remarks on Combined Creative and Scholarly PhD Degrees in the Visual ArtsJames Elkins (bio)The PhD in visual arts is inescapable: it is on the horizon. In just a few years, there will be a number of such programs in the United States, and if the trend mirrors the expansion of MFAs after the mid-1960s, then in a few decades the PhD will be the consensus "terminal" degree for artists. Given that, it is pressing to consider …Read more
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6The Poetics of Perspective. 1994.Elkins provides an abundantly illustrated history of the theory and practice of perspective. Looking at key texts from the Renaissance to the present, he traces a fundamental historical change that took place in the way in which perspective was conceptualized; first a technique for constructing pictures, it slowly became a metaphor for subjectivity.
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33Did Leonardo develop a theory of curvilinear perspective?: Together with some remarks on the 'angle' and 'distance' axiomsJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1): 190-196. 1988.
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19In a wide-ranging argument moving from Sumerian demons to Lucian Freud, from Syriac prayer books to John Carpenter's film The Thing, this book explores the ways the body has been represented through time. A response to the vertiginous increase in writings on bodily representations, it attempts to form a single coherent account of the possible forms of representation of the body. This work brings together concerns, images, and concepts from a wide range of perspectives: art history and criticism,…Read more
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5Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as WritingPennsylvania State University Press. 1997.How do psychoanalytic, semiotic, deconstructive, and other interpretations represent works of art? What can they see, and what must they miss? In _Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts_, Elkins suggests that the philosophic problems posed by these questions are essentially insuperable because philosophy makes demands of visual artifacts that they can answer only by becoming mirror images of philosophic discourse. Elkins argues that writing is what art historians produce, and, whether such writin…Read more
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37Four Ways of Measuring the Distance between Alchemy and Contemporary ArtHyle 9 (1). 2003.Alchemy has always had its ferocious defenders, and a small minority of artists remain interested in alchemical meanings and substances. In this essay I will suggest two reasons why alchemy is marginal to current visual art, and two more reasons why alchemical thinking remains absolutely central. Briefly: alchemy is irrelevant because (1) it is has been a minority interest from early modernism to the present, and therefore (2) it is outside the principal conversations about modernism and postmod…Read more
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32On Monstrously Ambiguous PaintingsHistory and Theory 32 (3): 227-247. 1993.Certain artworks appear to have multiple meanings that are also contradictory. In some instances they have attracted so much attention that they are effectively out of the reach of individual monographs. These artworks are monstrous.One reason paintings may become monstrous is that they make unexpected use of ambiguation. Modern and postmodern works of all sorts are understood to be potentially ambiguous ab ovo, but earlier--Renaissance and Baroque--works were constrained to declare relatively s…Read more
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23Theoretical remarks on combined creative and scholarly phd degrees in the visual artsJournal of Aesthetic Education 38 (4): 22-31. 2004.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theoretical Remarks on Combined Creative and Scholarly PhD Degrees in the Visual ArtsJames Elkins (bio)The PhD in visual arts is inescapable: it is on the horizon. In just a few years, there will be a number of such programs in the United States, and if the trend mirrors the expansion of MFAs after the mid-1960s, then in a few decades the PhD will be the consensus "terminal" degree for artists. Given that, it is pressing to consider …Read more
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38Logic and images in art historyPerspectives on Science 7 (2): 151-180. 1999.: This essay is an attempt to see how some of Galison's ideas and analyses look from the vantage of art history. If there's to be dialogue between the history of science and the history of art, it will be necessary to find historically recognizable senses for words like "logic" and "homologous." I also propose how Galison's kinds of images might fit into larger classifications of images known to the history of art
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5Aesthetics and the two cultures : why art and science should be allowed to go their separate waysIn Francis Halsall, Julia Alejandra Jansen & Tony O'Connor (eds.), Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice, Stanford University Press. pp. 34-50. 2008.
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22Picturing Science, Producing Art by Caroline A. Jones; Peter Galison (review)Isis 91 318-319. 2000.
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29Ten Reasons Why E. H. Gombrich is not Connected to Art HistoryHuman Affairs 19 (3): 304-310. 2009.Ten Reasons Why E. H. Gombrich is not Connected to Art History This is a speculative essay on the place of E. H. Gombrich in art history. Gombrich is universally known, and still often studied at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is indispensable for the historiography of the discipline. But at the same time, he is not often cited, and his work is not usually part of the ongoing conversations of the current state of art history or visual studies. This brief essay questions that condition…Read more
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33Marks, Traces, "Traits," Contours, "Orli," and "Splendores": Nonsemiotic Elements in PicturesCritical Inquiry 21 (4): 822-860. 1995.
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21Art History without TheoryCritical Inquiry 14 (2): 354-378. 1988.The theories I have outlined suggest that by displacing but not excluding theory, art historical practice at once grounds itself in empiricism and implies an acceptance of theory’s claim that it cannot be so grounded. But beyond descriptions like this, the theories are not a helpful way to understand practice because they cannot account for its persistence except by pointing to its transgressions and entanglements in self-contradiction. Nor does it help to say, pace Steven Knapp, Walter Benn Mic…Read more
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9Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic (edited book)Pennsylvania State University Press. 2013.Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series—and the seminars on which they are based—brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This fourth volume in the series, _Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic_, focuses on questions revolving around the concepts of the aesthetic, the anti-…Read more
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824Whitney Davis's General Theory of Visual Culture (review)College Art Association Books Reviews. 2012.This is a brief essay on Whitney Davis's book. A shorter version, edited down by the College Art Association, is on their online book reviews site (protected by a paywall).
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School of the Art Institute of ChicagoDepartment of Art History, Theory and CriticismRegular Faculty
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Architecture and Design |
Literature |
Music |
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Arts and Humanities, Misc |