In this “remarkable tour de force” (Publishers Weekly)-a “ceaselessly thought-provoking book” (Kirkus Reviews)-art historian James Elkins marshals psychology, philosophy, science, and art history to show how seeing alters the thing seen and transforms the seer. Black-and-white photographs.

The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing

Arts & Photography

Elkins, James

History & Criticism

HarperOne

Ideal for first-year university students from diverse backgrounds, Visual Worlds: Looking, Images, Visual Disciplines provides a full introduction to the visual world across all the fields that theorize it. In contrast with typical visual culture texts, it looks beyond the arts, taking a comparative approach that considers a number of fields including art history and theory but also epistemology, ontology, vision science, neurology, cognitive psychology, law, advertising, medicine, warfare, and more.

Visual Worlds: Looking, Images, Visual Disciplines

Fiorentini, Erna

Oxford University Press

What Painting Is Ebook

Medical Books

Routledge

Renaissance Theory presents an animated conversation among art historians about the optimal ways of conceptualizing Renaissance art, and the links between Renaissance art and contemporary art and theory. This is the first discussion of its kind, involving not only questions within Renaissance scholarship, but issues of concern to art historians and critics in all fields. Organized as a virtual roundtable discussion, the contributors discuss rifts and disagreements about how to understand the Renaissance and debate the principal texts and authors of the last thirty years who have sought to reconceptualize the period. They then turn to the issue of the relation between modern art and the Renaissance: Why do modern art historians and critics so seldom refer to the Renaissance? Is the Renaissance our indispensable heritage, or are we cut off from it by the revolution of modernism?  The volume includes an introduction by Rebecca Zorach and two final, synoptic essays, as well as contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers on Renaissance art including Stephen Campbell, Michael Cole, Frederika Jakobs, Claire Farago, and Matt Kavaler.

Renaissance Theory (Art Seminar)

In this smart survival guide for students and teachers--the only book of its kind--James Elkins examines the "curious endeavor to teach the unteachable" that is generally known as college-level art instruction. This singular project is organized around a series of conflicting claims about art: "Art can be taught, but nobody knows quite how." "Art can be taught, but it seems as if it can't be since so few students become outstanding artists." "Art cannot be taught, but it can be fostered or helped along." "Art cannot be taught or even nourished, but it is possible to teach right up to the beginnings of art so that students are ready to make art the moment they graduate." "Great art cannot be taught, but more run-of-the-mill art can be." Elkins traces the development (or invention) of the modern art school and considers how issues such as the question of core curriculum and the intellectual isolation of art schools affect the teaching and learning of art. He also addresses the phenomenon of art critiques as a microcosm for teaching art as a whole and dissects real-life critiques, highlighting presuppositions and dynamics that make them confusing and suggesting ways to make them more helpful. Elkins's no-nonsense approach clears away the assumptions about art instruction that are not borne out by classroom practice. For example, he notes that despite much talk about instilling visual acuity and teaching technique, in practice neither teachers nor students behave as if those were their principal goals. He addresses the absurdity of pretending that sexual issues are absent from life-drawing classes and questions the practice of holding up great masters and masterpieces as models for students capable of producing only mediocre art. He also discusses types of art--including art that takes time to complete and art that isn't serious--that cannot be learned in studio art classes. Why Art Cannot Be Taught is a response to Elkins's observation that "we know very little about what we do" in the art classroom. His incisive commentary illuminates the experience of learning art for those involved in it, while opening an intriguing window for those outside the discipline.

Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students

Study & Teaching

University of Illinois Press

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 writing is a transparent vehicle for the transmission of facts or an embattled forum for the rehearsal of institutional relations and constructions of history, it is an expressive medium, with the capacity for emotion and reflection. Therefore, it needs to be taken seriously for its own sake: it is the testament of art history and of individual historians, and it is only weakened and slighted by versions of history that imagine it either as uncontrolled dissemination or objective discovery and reporting. Elkins's investigation is not a prescription for opening art history to new influences or for focusing it on particular problems. It is a plea for circumspection in the entire endeavor of trying to force images into words, and in the curious vocation of writing the history of art.

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing

Penn State University Press

In today's world, lawyers tend to become identified more with law and less with people, the public interest, social welfare and the common good. However, many lawyers are sensitive, people-oriented professionals who relate to their clients as persons and not as problems. The authors argue that counseling is the heart and soul of lawyering, and that it is an integral part of the legal education.

Legal Interviewing and Counseling in a Nutshell (Nutshells)

Shaffer, Thomas

Legal Education

West Academic Publishing

Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?

With bracing clarity, James Elkins explores why images are taken to be more intricate and hard to describe in the twentieth century than they had been in any previous century. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? uses three models to understand the kinds of complex meaning that pictures are thought to possess: the affinity between the meanings of paintings and jigsaw-puzzles; the contemporary interest in ambiguity and 'levels of meaning'; and the penchant many have to interpret pictures by finding images hidden within them. Elkins explores a wide variety of examples, from the figures hidden in Renaissance paintings to Salvador Dali's paranoiac meditations on Millet's Angelus, from Persian miniature paintings to jigsaw-puzzles. He also examines some of the most vexed works in history, including Watteau's "meaningless" paintings, Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, and Leonardo's Last Supper.

Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?: On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elkins, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Elkins, James

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elkins, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing

Visual Worlds: Looking, Images, Visual Disciplines

What Painting Is Ebook

Renaissance Theory (Art Seminar)

Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students

Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing

Legal Interviewing and Counseling in a Nutshell (Nutshells)

Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?: On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity

Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?