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English Literature, Semiotics, Rhetoric (Languages and Linguistics), Biochemistry, Botany, Psychology, and 89 moreCognitive Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics, Optics, Quantum Physics, Health Sciences, Medical Sciences, Music, Anthropology, Computer Vision, Literacy, 21st Century Literacies, Visual Studies, Photographs, Cosmology (Physics), Visual Anthropology, Media Studies, Humanities, History of Thought, Space and Music, Sound and Image, Image Processing, Languages and Linguistics, Art, Medical Imaging, Remote Sensing, Romanticism, Rhetoric, Modernism (Literature), Architecture, Art Theory, Irish (early and modern), Irish Literature, Globalization, Visualization, Film Theory and Practice, Photography, Eye tracking, Internet Studies, Facial Recognition, Video Game Platforms for Artwork--using them for art not just gaming and for gaming new styles of artwork, Digital Media, Pain, Postcolonial Literature, Installation Art, Collection Extremes--world's Xiest things concentrated, Chinese Studies, Structuralism (Architecture), Vision Science, Rhetoric of Science, Book History, Literature, Colour Science, Colour Vision, Image Science, Digital Photography, Archaeology, Graphs Theory, Writing Systems & Decipherment, Particle Physics, The Novel, Indigenous Languages, Border Studies, Critical European Studies, Glocalization, Avant-garde writing, Visual Music, Microscopy, Experimental Media Arts, Intermediality, Belarusian Studies, Post-colonial Studies (Belarusian Studies), History (Architecture), Endangered Languages, Nationalism, Biology, Agriculture, Multispectral Imaging, History, Data Visualization, Catherine Malabou, Avital Ronell, Lauren Berlant, Artificial Neural Networks, Astronomy, and Astrophysics edit
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Most recent posts are on experimental writing. See "Papers" section.edit
This is an uncorrected reader's proof copy of the novel, which will be published by Unnamed Press in LA. I'm posting excepts here on Academia for comments. The layout, font, and distribution of images is still not set. All comments are... more
This is an uncorrected reader's proof copy of the novel, which will be published by Unnamed Press in LA. I'm posting excepts here on Academia for comments. The layout, font, and distribution of images is still not set. All comments are welcome!
Research Interests:
These are uncorrected reader's copy proofs of an experimental novel I have coming out next winter. It contains photos, charts, music, and diagrams. This excerpt is a chapter involving diagrams: first a real one (seen by the characters in... more
These are uncorrected reader's copy proofs of an experimental novel I have coming out next winter. It contains photos, charts, music, and diagrams. This excerpt is a chapter involving diagrams: first a real one (seen by the characters in the novel) and later an imaginary one (visualized by a character). I don't know any precedents for this, and I'd be interested to hear what everyone thinks. There are other excerpts from the book posted under "Drafts."
Research Interests:
These are uncorrected reader's proofs for an experimental novel coming out in winter 2023 from Unnamed Press in LA. The novel has some new moves in literary fiction. These pages are from a longer section of the book that has sheet music.... more
These are uncorrected reader's proofs for an experimental novel coming out in winter 2023 from Unnamed Press in LA. The novel has some new moves in literary fiction. These pages are from a longer section of the book that has sheet music. The music is all for piano, and most of it could be played, but it's designed just to be seen on the page. The composers' names are real but all these pieces are modified or invented. All comments and suggestions are welcome!
Research Interests:
This is a study of what counts as "fiction" in the work of Gerald Murnane. I think Murnane has one of the strangest senses of "fiction," the "real world," and "imagination" of any writer. His explanations of those terms have involved his... more
This is a study of what counts as "fiction" in the work of Gerald Murnane. I think Murnane has one of the strangest senses of "fiction," the "real world," and "imagination" of any writer. His explanations of those terms have involved his file of imaginary horse races. If he wasn't so often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel, this might not matter: but I think it's a category error to think of his work as postmodern fiction or metafiction.
A version is online (see the opening line of the essay) and all comments are welcome there.
A version is online (see the opening line of the essay) and all comments are welcome there.
Research Interests:
World's longest art critique! In 2020, a group based at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago spent a total of 16 hours on a single painting, this one, by Deanna Miera. The 16-hour format was a special project: the idea was to talk... more
World's longest art critique!
In 2020, a group based at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago spent a total of 16 hours on a single painting, this one, by Deanna Miera.
The 16-hour format was a special project: the idea was to talk until no one could think of any additional plausible meaning. When this works it's an amazing experience: you see how the meanings of a work of art aren't infinite, and how we all think along well-worn paths even when we imagine we're all unique.
The document I'm linking here shows the results, and also includes guidelines to do your own totally masochistic, annoying, boring, and possibly totally revelatory long-form critique.
In 2020, a group based at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago spent a total of 16 hours on a single painting, this one, by Deanna Miera.
The 16-hour format was a special project: the idea was to talk until no one could think of any additional plausible meaning. When this works it's an amazing experience: you see how the meanings of a work of art aren't infinite, and how we all think along well-worn paths even when we imagine we're all unique.
The document I'm linking here shows the results, and also includes guidelines to do your own totally masochistic, annoying, boring, and possibly totally revelatory long-form critique.
Research Interests:
This is a description of a set of over 70 videos on art theory and art history.
Research Interests:
This is an experimental novel, told in dreams and photos, with 150 images, diagrams, equations, and sheet music (playable on piano). The unhappy story of a person pursued by dreams of burning. This is the result of 15 years of work &... more
This is an experimental novel, told in dreams and photos, with 150 images, diagrams, equations, and sheet music (playable on piano). The unhappy story of a person pursued by dreams of burning. This is the result of 15 years of work & teaching the history of fiction with images, from Rodenbach to Sebald, Cole, and Rankine. It's intended to break new ground in the use of images and narrative. The first page here is the epigraph. The second page is near the end. The penultimate paragraph of that page is a reference to a well-known work of 19th c. fiction. First person to guess it gets a free copy! Preorders are open now via Unnamed Press, tinyurl.com/longstrangebook. More at jameselkins.com/ writing-schedule.
Research Interests:
After fifteen years of work the novel will appear in November! This is the cover, table of contents, and epigraph. The book has 200 photos, diagrams, charts, maps, and sheet music. I will be posting excerpts in Academia and FB. Preorders... more
After fifteen years of work the novel will appear in November! This is the cover, table of contents, and epigraph. The book has 200 photos, diagrams, charts, maps, and sheet music.
I will be posting excerpts in Academia and FB. Preorders are accepted at Unnamed Press, tinyurl.com/longstrangebook
I will be posting excerpts in Academia and FB. Preorders are accepted at Unnamed Press, tinyurl.com/longstrangebook
Research Interests:
Uploading an entire book on ways art history, theory, and criticism can be written more experimentally, in response to contemporary experimental writing in other fields. This exists as a bound book, but it's rare, and the entire... more
Uploading an entire book on ways art history, theory, and criticism can be written more experimentally, in response to contemporary experimental writing in other fields.
This exists as a bound book, but it's rare, and the entire lecture series at the University of Edinburgh was canceled sometime afterward. So I'm posting it here for free.
Earlier drafts of these chapters, along with about a dozen more related chapters, are online at 305737.blogspot.com.
Please send me all comments by email, jelkins@saic.edu.
This exists as a bound book, but it's rare, and the entire lecture series at the University of Edinburgh was canceled sometime afterward. So I'm posting it here for free.
Earlier drafts of these chapters, along with about a dozen more related chapters, are online at 305737.blogspot.com.
Please send me all comments by email, jelkins@saic.edu.
Research Interests:
This is from a book on forms of art historical writing worldwide. This section is on the fact that English has become the common language for art historical conferences and even publications. This raises questions not only of continuing... more
This is from a book on forms of art historical writing worldwide. This section is on the fact that English has become the common language for art historical conferences and even publications. This raises questions not only of continuing Eurocentrism (or America-centrism), but also of limitations on careers caused by relative lack of facility in reading, writing, and speaking.
The book is available on Amazon.
The book is available on Amazon.
Research Interests:
This is an excerpt from a book on art historical writing in different parts of the world. In this chapter I provide brief definitions of some of the most common concepts in conversations on world or global art history. The book is... more
This is an excerpt from a book on art historical writing in different parts of the world. In this chapter I provide brief definitions of some of the most common concepts in conversations on world or global art history.
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110681102
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110681102
Research Interests:
This is an excerpt from a book on art historical writing in different parts of the world. In this section I argue that art theory is remarkably uniform: no matter where the writing is done, if it draws on theory, its sources are likely to... more
This is an excerpt from a book on art historical writing in different parts of the world. In this section I argue that art theory is remarkably uniform: no matter where the writing is done, if it draws on theory, its sources are likely to be French postwar texts. There are just a few exceptions that prove this rule (Walter Benjamin, for example). This seems to me to be an important and overlooked component of the dimishing diversity of art writing worldwide.
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110681102
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3110681102
Research Interests:
My co-author Erna Fiorentini and I have been working six years on this textbook for Oxford University Press. This is the table of contents, just sent to us Nov. 20, 2019. The book will be published in 2020. Thanks everyone who commented... more
My co-author Erna Fiorentini and I have been working six years on this textbook for Oxford University Press. This is the table of contents, just sent to us Nov. 20, 2019. The book will be published in 2020. Thanks everyone who commented on drafts of chapters we've posted here, on Facebook, Twitter, and on my website over the last six years!
Research Interests:
This is a chapter from the book Visual Worlds (Oxford, 2020), a textbook on forms of visual practice in art, science, medicine, the miltary, law, and other fields. The book is available on Amazon. In it we survey several principal forms... more
This is a chapter from the book Visual Worlds (Oxford, 2020), a textbook on forms of visual practice in art, science, medicine, the miltary, law, and other fields. The book is available on Amazon.
In it we survey several principal forms of the theory of the gaze, including psychoanalytic (and feminist), and positional (perspectival), in an attempt to decide if the "theory of the gaze" is a coherent subject, or actually several theories traditionally named as one.
In it we survey several principal forms of the theory of the gaze, including psychoanalytic (and feminist), and positional (perspectival), in an attempt to decide if the "theory of the gaze" is a coherent subject, or actually several theories traditionally named as one.
Research Interests:
This is a chapter from a textbook called Visual Worlds, co-authored with Erna Fiorentini. The book covers theories and practices of seeing and vision in many fields, including art, business, science, medicine, law, the military. The... more
This is a chapter from a textbook called Visual Worlds, co-authored with Erna Fiorentini. The book covers theories and practices of seeing and vision in many fields, including art, business, science, medicine, law, the military.
The entire book is on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199390916
The entire book is on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199390916
Research Interests:
This is a chapter of a textbook co-written with Erna Fiorentini, called Visual Worlds. It's about the history and theory of how people have worshipped and destroyed images. We focus in particular on five concepts: iconoclasm, idolatry,... more
This is a chapter of a textbook co-written with Erna Fiorentini, called Visual Worlds. It's about the history and theory of how people have worshipped and destroyed images. We focus in particular on five concepts: iconoclasm, idolatry, iconophilia, iconophobia, and iconoclash.
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199390916
The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199390916
Research Interests:
This is an essay on the military uses of images: videos in missiles, drones, infrared vision, laser targeting, high-speed photography of projectiles, multiscreen battlefield planning -- and the relation between all those and contemporary... more
This is an essay on the military uses of images: videos in missiles, drones, infrared vision, laser targeting, high-speed photography of projectiles, multiscreen battlefield planning -- and the relation between all those and contemporary art that uses, or comments on, military imagery.
It's a chapter from the book "Visual Worlds," co-authored with Erna Fiorentini. The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Worlds-Looking-Images-Disciplines/dp/0199390916
It's a chapter from the book "Visual Worlds," co-authored with Erna Fiorentini. The book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Worlds-Looking-Images-Disciplines/dp/0199390916
Research Interests:
Military History, Military Science, Strategy (Military Science), Air Force Studies, Testimony, and 21 moreCensorship, Visualization, Contemporary Art, Information Visualization, War Studies, Infrared Optics, Information Visualisation, Rocket and Missile Technologies, Data Visualization, UAV and Aircraft control, Infographics and data visualization, Army, Explosives Engineering, Defense and National Security, Drones, Targeted Killing, Ethics of War, Weapons technology, Guided Missile, Defense and Strategic Studies, Armaments and Defense Industry, High Speed Photography, and Streak Camera
This is a chapter from a textbook called Visual Worlds, co-written with Erna Fiorentini. The book covers a very wide range of practices of seeing, including fine art, art history, medicine, law, literature, and several sciences, and it... more
This is a chapter from a textbook called Visual Worlds, co-written with Erna Fiorentini. The book covers a very wide range of practices of seeing, including fine art, art history, medicine, law, literature, and several sciences, and it includes discussions of art theory, politics, and the science of vision.
The entire book is available on Amazon.
The entire book is available on Amazon.
Research Interests:
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Psychoanalysis, Gender Studies, and 30 morePhilosophy, Art History, Photography, Literature, Contemporary Art, Painting, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Feminism, Drawing, History of Art, Studio Practice, Contemporary Poetry, Theory and Practice of Visual Arts, Visual Arts, Body representations in art, cinema and literature, Installation, Materialities, Writing about/with art, Art and Memory, Studio Arts, Art History, Drawing and Painting, Art and Film, Politics of Aesthetics, Presence/absence, Visibility/invisibility, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, POST WAR ART, Discourse of Art, Destabilization of Hierarchical Relationships and Borders, and Relationship Between Art Theory and Practice
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Intellectual History, Gender Studies, and 28 morePhilosophy, Art History, Art Theory, Film Theory, Literature, Contemporary Art, Functional Anatomy, Modern Art, Graphic Design, Phenomenology, Human Anatomy (Biological Anthropology), History of Art, Modernism (Art History), Phenomenology of the body, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Affect Theory, Philosophy of perception, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Affect (Cultural Theory), Skin and the Body, Medical Humanities, Representations of the Body, History of Media Technology, Phenomenology (of Perception), Picture Theory, Photography, Gross Anatomy, Global Circulation, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and Theories of Imagination
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 24 moreArt History, History of Ideas, Empathy (Psychology), Literature, Contemporary Art, Renaissance Art, Video Art, History of Art, Phenomenology of the body, Italian Renaissance Art, Body in Performance, Contemporary Poetry, Facial expression, Medieval Art, Visual Arts, Aby Warburg, Gestures, Facial expressions, Facial Expressions and Emotions, Pathosformeln, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Empathy Theory, Representation of the Passions In Art, and Memory and History In Art
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Neuroscience, Psychoanalysis, Perception, History of Medicine, Pain, and 48 moreContemporary Art, Synaesthesia, History of Science, Embodiment, Painting, Phenomenology, Performativity, Trauma Studies, Biology, Neuroarthistory, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gender Theory, Feminism, Cultural Memory, Drawing, Phenomenology of the body, Artistic Research, Social History of Medicine, Merleau-Ponty, History of Medicine and the Body, Body representations in art, cinema and literature, Somaesthetics, Memory, Narrativity, Installation, Anatomy, Vision, My main research interest is to about the representation of the human body, human anatomy, and the relationship between figuration and abstraction. I have an MA on this subject from Chelsea School of Arts and Design of London, UK., Materialities, Writing about/with art, Colour, Andreas Vesalius, Lightness, Forensic Illustration and Medical Art, Intermedia Art, Medical illustration in education, Haptic Visuality, Multisensoriality, Presence/absence, Visibility/invisibility, Material Perception, Expanded Fields of Painting/drawing, Theory of Power, Percpetion, Blind Vision, Luce Irigary, Destabilization of Hierarchical Relationships and Borders, and Relationship Between Art Theory and Practice
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This chapter covers the history... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This chapter covers the history of racial research in the 19th and 20th centuries and the artistic possibilities of pornography.
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 19 moreArt History, Sex and Gender, Art Theory, Literature, Contemporary Art, Race and Racism, Gender and Sexuality, Critical Race Theory, Class, Race and Ethnicity, Postmodernism, Photography Theory, Literature and Visual Arts, Art Criticism, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Race, and Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use. All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Philosophy, Art History, Literature, Microscopy, Conceptual Metaphor, and 14 moreTerminology, Analogy (Cognitive Psychology), Theory of Metaphor and Rhetorics, Metaphor, Cognitive Linguistics, Contemporary Poetry, Analogy (Philosophy), Visual Arts, Monsters and Monster Theory, Protozoology, History of microbiology, Ciliated Protozoa, Monsters and the Monstrous, and Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2013 revision. (The... more
This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art.
This is the 2013 revision. (The last two chapters were not updated in 2021.) The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print.
All comments & questions are welcome!
This is the 2013 revision. (The last two chapters were not updated in 2021.) The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print.
All comments & questions are welcome!
Research Interests:
Here's the entire book, for free. I found it posted several places on the internet, so even though it's still in copyright, I thought I'd post it here. I am currently working on a book that's a kind of sequel, except the new book will... more
Here's the entire book, for free. I found it posted several places on the internet, so even though it's still in copyright, I thought I'd post it here.
I am currently working on a book that's a kind of sequel, except the new book will be on a much larger scale. It's called, tentatively, "Our Visual World." My co-author is the historian Erna Fiorentini, and our publisher is Oxford. There's more about it on this site, and also on my website at
http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php/experimental-writing/257-our-visual-world
All comments are welcome! (Except comments on the chapter "How to Look at an Engineering Drawing": that chapter has an error, and if you're clever enough to find it, you're lucky.)
I am currently working on a book that's a kind of sequel, except the new book will be on a much larger scale. It's called, tentatively, "Our Visual World." My co-author is the historian Erna Fiorentini, and our publisher is Oxford. There's more about it on this site, and also on my website at
http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php/experimental-writing/257-our-visual-world
All comments are welcome! (Except comments on the chapter "How to Look at an Engineering Drawing": that chapter has an error, and if you're clever enough to find it, you're lucky.)
Research Interests:
Engineering, Botany, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Optics, and 19 moreArt History, Visualization, Vision Science, History of Science, Egyptian Archaeology, Painting, Weather Risks, Art and Science, Natural History, Periodic Table Of The Elements, History of Art, Machine Vision, Astronomy, Butterflies, Color in Art and Science, Animal Vision, Color Psychology and Use of Colour, Color Science, and Moths
The book is a study of the range of image-making and image-interpreting practices in an average university, with no particular stress on art. There are chapters by doctors, lawyers, scientists of all sorts, engineers, humanists, social... more
The book is a study of the range of image-making and image-interpreting practices in an average university, with no particular stress on art. There are chapters by doctors, lawyers, scientists of all sorts, engineers, humanists, social scientists... it is a cross-section of the actual production of images in the university, and a corrective to the special interests of visual studies.
This file contains the opening pages, table of contents, preface, and the lengthy introduction, which assesses the state of scholarship on art / science links, including critical reviews of scholars who write on the "science of art" or vice versa. The introduction also draws out common themes in the 30 disciplines that participated in the exhibition, arguing that it is possible to consider images in various fields without using tropes from the humanities or social sciences as explanatory tools--in other words, by letting the different disciplines speak in their own languages.
The ultimate purpose of the introduction, and the book as a whole, is to justify a university-wide course on visual experience, which would introduce students to work in all faculties or divisions of the university. Such a course would be a corrective to the almost exclusively humanities-based perspective of existing "visual culture" courses; and it would also be an interesting acknowledgment of the visual nature of much of contemporary research and experience (running, as it would, against the grain of other freshman courses, in which words and equations continue to be preeminent).
This file contains the opening pages, table of contents, preface, and the lengthy introduction, which assesses the state of scholarship on art / science links, including critical reviews of scholars who write on the "science of art" or vice versa. The introduction also draws out common themes in the 30 disciplines that participated in the exhibition, arguing that it is possible to consider images in various fields without using tropes from the humanities or social sciences as explanatory tools--in other words, by letting the different disciplines speak in their own languages.
The ultimate purpose of the introduction, and the book as a whole, is to justify a university-wide course on visual experience, which would introduce students to work in all faculties or divisions of the university. Such a course would be a corrective to the almost exclusively humanities-based perspective of existing "visual culture" courses; and it would also be an interesting acknowledgment of the visual nature of much of contemporary research and experience (running, as it would, against the grain of other freshman courses, in which words and equations continue to be preeminent).
Research Interests:
Geology, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy of Science, Visual Studies, and 11 moreVisualization, Science Education, Visual Culture, Information Visualization, Biology, Biology Education, Data Visualization, Deconstruction- The Idea of the University-Kant-Newman- Education- Georges Bataille- economic ideologyideconom, Inquiry Based Science Teaching, Scientifical Images, and Statistical Treatments In Biology
This second part contains these chapters, in two files: 1 Chemistry: Reading Spectrograms 2 Performance Art: Problems of Documentation 3 Field Geology: Deductions from Beach Stones 4 Economics: Sirens in Classics, in Philosophy, and... more
This second part contains these chapters, in two files:
1 Chemistry: Reading Spectrograms
2 Performance Art: Problems of Documentation
3 Field Geology: Deductions from Beach Stones
4 Economics: Sirens in Classics, in Philosophy, and in Economic Theory
5 Linguistics: Medieval Irish Color Terms
6 Astrophysics: Doppler Tomography of Accretion Disks
7 Law: Video-game Technology in the Irish Bloody Sunday Tribunal
8 Computer Science: Visualizing the Internet
9 Occupational Therapy: Exercises in Doing, Being, and Becoming
10 Speech and Hearing Science: Speech Spectrograms
11 Restorative Dentistry: Matching Colours in Porcelain Crowns
12 Radio Astronomy: Observations of the Galactic Center
13 Archaeology: Imaging and Mapping Practices
14 Mapping: Uses of Geological Maps
15 Art History: Iconographic Analysis
16 Civil Engineering: A High Resolution Aerial Photograph
Originally published as Visual Practices Across the University, with contributions by thirty-five scholars (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007).
1 Chemistry: Reading Spectrograms
2 Performance Art: Problems of Documentation
3 Field Geology: Deductions from Beach Stones
4 Economics: Sirens in Classics, in Philosophy, and in Economic Theory
5 Linguistics: Medieval Irish Color Terms
6 Astrophysics: Doppler Tomography of Accretion Disks
7 Law: Video-game Technology in the Irish Bloody Sunday Tribunal
8 Computer Science: Visualizing the Internet
9 Occupational Therapy: Exercises in Doing, Being, and Becoming
10 Speech and Hearing Science: Speech Spectrograms
11 Restorative Dentistry: Matching Colours in Porcelain Crowns
12 Radio Astronomy: Observations of the Galactic Center
13 Archaeology: Imaging and Mapping Practices
14 Mapping: Uses of Geological Maps
15 Art History: Iconographic Analysis
16 Civil Engineering: A High Resolution Aerial Photograph
Originally published as Visual Practices Across the University, with contributions by thirty-five scholars (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007).
Research Interests:
Civil Engineering, Archaeology, Inorganic Chemistry, Restorative Dentistry And Endodontics, Radio Astronomy, and 14 moreLanguages and Linguistics, Remote Sensing, Performance Art, Environmental modeling, Environmental Monitoring, Field Geology, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Digital mapping, Intranet, Spectrograph, Security Model for University Intranet, Geodesy and Global Positioning System (GPS) and Their Applications In Earth Sciences, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
This third part contains these chapters: 17 Anatomy: Fluorescence Microscopy 18 Aerodynamics: Video Analysis of Pigeon Flight 19 Mathematics: Visual Solutions to a Logic Problem 20 Applied Social Studies: Masks in Social Work 21... more
This third part contains these chapters:
17 Anatomy: Fluorescence Microscopy
18 Aerodynamics: Video Analysis of Pigeon Flight
19 Mathematics: Visual Solutions to a Logic Problem
20 Applied Social Studies: Masks in Social Work
21 Pathology: Diagnosis of a Kidney Disease
22 Epigraphy: Three-Dimensional Laser Scanning of Inscribed Stones
23 Geochemistry: Deformation of Grains in Sandstone
24 Food Science: Electrophoresis Gels of Cheddar Cheese 25 Zoology: Automated Recognition of Individual Cetaceans
26 Art History: Political Meanings of John Heartfield’s Photographs
27 Microbiology: Visualizing Viruses
28 Oceanography: Imaging the Sea Bed Using Side-Scanning Sonar
29 Philosophy: Arabic and Russian Visual Tropes
30 Legal pedagogy: Teaching Visual Rhetoric to Law Students
This file also contains the Afterword, which is an essay on the politics of publishing in different countries. In the Afterword, I justify my choice of a German publisher, and write about which presses are considered appropriate for young scholars in the U.S., U.K., and German-speaking countries. The politics is a sensitive issue, and as far as I know it hasn't been addressed elsewhere.
17 Anatomy: Fluorescence Microscopy
18 Aerodynamics: Video Analysis of Pigeon Flight
19 Mathematics: Visual Solutions to a Logic Problem
20 Applied Social Studies: Masks in Social Work
21 Pathology: Diagnosis of a Kidney Disease
22 Epigraphy: Three-Dimensional Laser Scanning of Inscribed Stones
23 Geochemistry: Deformation of Grains in Sandstone
24 Food Science: Electrophoresis Gels of Cheddar Cheese 25 Zoology: Automated Recognition of Individual Cetaceans
26 Art History: Political Meanings of John Heartfield’s Photographs
27 Microbiology: Visualizing Viruses
28 Oceanography: Imaging the Sea Bed Using Side-Scanning Sonar
29 Philosophy: Arabic and Russian Visual Tropes
30 Legal pedagogy: Teaching Visual Rhetoric to Law Students
This file also contains the Afterword, which is an essay on the politics of publishing in different countries. In the Afterword, I justify my choice of a German publisher, and write about which presses are considered appropriate for young scholars in the U.S., U.K., and German-speaking countries. The politics is a sensitive issue, and as far as I know it hasn't been addressed elsewhere.
Research Interests:
Pathology, Geochemistry, Oceanography, Logic, Social Work, and 13 moreGenetic Algorithms, Legal Theory, Cheese Making, Fluorescence Microscopy, Image Analysis, Aerodynamics, Philosophy of Logic, Latin Epigraphy, Medicine, Food Science and Technology, Optimization, Gel electrophoresis, and Band Detection
This is a translation of the Preface from the book "Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History," with an introduction by Jennifer Purtle (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). It was published in World Sinology 9 (2012):... more
This is a translation of the Preface from the book "Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History," with an introduction by Jennifer Purtle (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).
It was published in World Sinology 9 (2012): 118–27. This also has a Chinese translation of Jennifer Purtle’s introduction.
It was published in World Sinology 9 (2012): 118–27. This also has a Chinese translation of Jennifer Purtle’s introduction.
Research Interests:
This is the Envoi to the 7-book series called "The Art Seminar." It was published at the end of the 7th book, "Re-Enchantment." It reflects on the whole series; each book had a different theme, but they were united by something very and... more
This is the Envoi to the 7-book series called "The Art Seminar." It was published at the end of the 7th book, "Re-Enchantment." It reflects on the whole series; each book had a different theme, but they were united by something very and abstract: each subject had its own kind of incoherence. I thought it was characteristic of contemporary art theory that there is no center, no set of common concepts or methods, no agreed-upon set of rival theories.. the art world, in terms of theory, is more incoherent than a simple pluralism.
Originally in: Re-Enchantment, co-edited by David Morgan, vol. 7 of The Art Seminar, with contributions by Thierry de Duve, Boris Groys, Wendy Doniger, Kajri Jain, and others (New York: Routledge, 2008). Later republished in “Incoherences of the Art World,” Práticas da Teoria no. 10 (2012) (Lisbon, Instituto de História da Arte: Edição, 2014).
Originally in: Re-Enchantment, co-edited by David Morgan, vol. 7 of The Art Seminar, with contributions by Thierry de Duve, Boris Groys, Wendy Doniger, Kajri Jain, and others (New York: Routledge, 2008). Later republished in “Incoherences of the Art World,” Práticas da Teoria no. 10 (2012) (Lisbon, Instituto de História da Arte: Edição, 2014).
Research Interests:
Aesthetics, Art History, Art Theory, Photography, Contemporary Art, and 17 moreHistoriography, Literary Criticism, Modern Art, Photography Theory, Landscape Theory, Relativism, History of Art, Art Criticism, Italian Renaissance Art, World Art History, Modernism, Pluralism, Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory, Contemporary Asian Art, Art and Globalization, Post-Colonialism, Religion and Art, Sanskrit Studies, Sanskrit Aesthetics, Indian Philosophy, Indian Music, Dance and Arts, Art and Religion, Global Art History, and Historiography of Art History
This is the first third of the book. (The whole thing is on Amazon.)
Research Interests:
Visual Studies, Art History, Art, Film Studies, Photography, and 13 moreContemporary Art, Digital Cinema, Philosophy of Film, Metaphysics of Time, Photography Theory, Cultural Memory, History of Art, Philosophy of Time, Cinema, History of photography, Fine Art Photography, Photography (Visual Studies), and Memory
This link goes to about 100 pages of material from the book "Artists with PhDs," which is available in full on Amazon. The chapters on this site are my own contributions to the book; the entire book has about 25 chapters. The chapters... more
This link goes to about 100 pages of material from the book "Artists with PhDs," which is available in full on Amazon. The chapters on this site are my own contributions to the book; the entire book has about 25 chapters. The chapters here include: a list of all PhD programs worldwide; a discussion of criticisms of the PhDs; and a conceptual analysis of the possible forms of the dissertations. (Basically it's about half the book.)
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 28 moreArt History, Art, Art Theory, Literature, Higher Education, Arts Education, Doctoral Supervision, Student Engagement, Phd Writing, Art and Design Education, Contemporary Poetry, Art Education, Visual Arts, Arts Education and Pedagogy, Critical Thinking in Doctoral studies, Practice-led art research, Arts Practice-Led Interdisciplinary Research, Particularly in Relation to Deep Mapping, Career Development, PhD Dissertation in Visual Arts, UCSD, Doctoral education, Phd, Doctoral thesis, Practice-led research, Art Education and the world of the artists, Practice-led research in creative arts, PhD for Artists;, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and International Doctoral Students
This is the entire book. "Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" is an attempt to understand why scholars have begun writing at such tremendous length on individual pictures. Before the 20th c., one of the longest texts on a single painting... more
This is the entire book.
"Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" is an attempt to understand why scholars have begun writing at such tremendous length on individual pictures. Before the 20th c., one of the longest texts on a single painting was Vasari's description of Leonardo's "Last Supper." In the last forty years it has become common for historians to write entire books on individual artworks.
Why have we started experiencing images as so complex? Why do they seem to us like puzzles, waiting to be solved? Why doesn't it concern us that previous generations did not think of writing at such length?
This book also has a couple of chapters on what I consider to be psychotic behavior about images: compulsive sighting of supposedly hidden images, and a crazy art historical book about a painting written by Dalí. So I have tagged the book with psychoanalytic terms.
The book itself is still in print and in copyright, but I found a full pdf of this on the internet (for example on scribd), so I decided to post it on here on academia.edu, where at least it can have the correct context and links.
"Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" is an attempt to understand why scholars have begun writing at such tremendous length on individual pictures. Before the 20th c., one of the longest texts on a single painting was Vasari's description of Leonardo's "Last Supper." In the last forty years it has become common for historians to write entire books on individual artworks.
Why have we started experiencing images as so complex? Why do they seem to us like puzzles, waiting to be solved? Why doesn't it concern us that previous generations did not think of writing at such length?
This book also has a couple of chapters on what I consider to be psychotic behavior about images: compulsive sighting of supposedly hidden images, and a crazy art historical book about a painting written by Dalí. So I have tagged the book with psychoanalytic terms.
The book itself is still in print and in copyright, but I found a full pdf of this on the internet (for example on scribd), so I decided to post it on here on academia.edu, where at least it can have the correct context and links.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Clinical Psychology, Family Therapy, and 23 moreGender Studies, Philosophy, Visual Studies, Art History, Visual Anthropology, Art, Psychosis, Literature, Visual Culture, Sexology, Painting, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Affect (Cultural Theory), adult ADHD, OCD, anxiety spectrum disorders, Medical Psychology, Logical Puzzles, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Behaviour Cognitive Therapy, Elderly Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychotherapy, and Neurologic Basis of Mental Disorders
The link here is to chapters from the second edition of the book. The third, final, edition is available on Amazon. The book contains a history of critiques; different forms of critiques worldwide; analyses of transcribed critiques; a... more
The link here is to chapters from the second edition of the book. The third, final, edition is available on Amazon.
The book contains a history of critiques; different forms of critiques worldwide; analyses of transcribed critiques; a chapter on the differences between critique, criticism Kritik, and criticality; theories about criticism that might be pertinent to critiques; conceptual models for critiques (that they are like seductions, like legal cases, etc.); lists of words and judgments heard in critiques; ideas for new kinds of critiques, etc. I think it's the only book of its kind.
The book contains a history of critiques; different forms of critiques worldwide; analyses of transcribed critiques; a chapter on the differences between critique, criticism Kritik, and criticality; theories about criticism that might be pertinent to critiques; conceptual models for critiques (that they are like seductions, like legal cases, etc.); lists of words and judgments heard in critiques; ideas for new kinds of critiques, etc. I think it's the only book of its kind.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Frankfurt School (Philosophy), Literary Criticism, Arts Education, Art Criticism, and 10 moreIdeology Critique, Art and Design Education, Critique, Frankfurt School, Institutional Critique, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Sociologie du journalisme, Crits, Sémiologie Des Médias, and Enjeux De La Participation Citoyenne Et Des Réseaux Sociaux
This is a guide for art students. It's the second edition; a new edition appears every year. These chapters include a four page long list of ways to fail, and a description of a kind of critique in which the teacher remains silent.... more
This is a guide for art students. It's the second edition; a new edition appears every year.
These chapters include a four page long list of ways to fail, and a description of a kind of critique in which the teacher remains silent.
The book contains a history of critiques; different forms of critiques worldwide; analyses of transcribed critiques; a chapter on the differences between critique, criticism Kritik, and criticality; theories about criticism that might be pertinent to critiques; conceptual models for critiques (that they are like seductions, like legal cases, etc.); lists of words and judgments heard in critiques; ideas for new kinds of critiques, etc. I think it's the only book of its kind.
These chapters include a four page long list of ways to fail, and a description of a kind of critique in which the teacher remains silent.
The book contains a history of critiques; different forms of critiques worldwide; analyses of transcribed critiques; a chapter on the differences between critique, criticism Kritik, and criticality; theories about criticism that might be pertinent to critiques; conceptual models for critiques (that they are like seductions, like legal cases, etc.); lists of words and judgments heard in critiques; ideas for new kinds of critiques, etc. I think it's the only book of its kind.
Research Interests:
Visual Studies, Art Theory, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, Critical Pedagogy, and 29 moreArts Education, Art Studio, Participation, New Media Art, Conceptual Art, Art Education, Experimental Film, Institutional Critique, Activism, Fine Arts, Visual Art, Creative Process, Artes plásticas, Artist, Studio Arts, Art History, Drawing and Painting, Artes Visuais, Helena Almeida, Atelier, Art & Politics, Artista, Art History, Studio Arts, Studio Arts, Studio Art, WHY ART CANNOT BE TAUGHT critique, Art Critique, Art Object, Processo Criativo, Objecto Artístico, and Francisco Cardoso Lima
The link above is to a chapter from the book. The entire book will be published by Laboratory Books. It is a commentary on a mysterious 18th c. manuscript, consisting of a title page and fifty small round watercolor paintings, with no... more
The link above is to a chapter from the book.
The entire book will be published by Laboratory Books. It is a commentary on a mysterious 18th c. manuscript, consisting of a title page and fifty small round watercolor paintings, with no explanation. The artist isn't known, and the pictures are wonderfully mysterious, and also very beautiful.
The entire book will be published by Laboratory Books. It is a commentary on a mysterious 18th c. manuscript, consisting of a title page and fifty small round watercolor paintings, with no explanation. The artist isn't known, and the pictures are wonderfully mysterious, and also very beautiful.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 18 moreArt History, Theology, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, History of Christianity, Christian Mysticism, Eighteenth Century History, Alchemy, Biblical Studies, Mysticism, Spirituality & Mysticism, Visions And Dreams, Contemporary Poetry, Watercolors, Bible, Visual Arts, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations
See the description for part 1.
Research Interests:
See the description for part 1.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, Gnosticism, History, Gender Studies, and 17 morePhilosophy, Art History, Literature, Mysticism, Emblem studies, Sufism, Proclus, Contemporary Poetry, Neoplatonism, Visual Arts, Emblems and Alchemical Symbolism, Iamblichus, Western Esotericism, Hermeticism, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Hermetic Corpus, and Henotheism
See the description for part 1. This is the last Huffington Post column on this book. I quit because it became apparent that readers weren't prepared to follow serialized posts. In 2010-2011, when I was posting, there was a sense that... more
See the description for part 1.
This is the last Huffington Post column on this book. I quit because it became apparent that readers weren't prepared to follow serialized posts. In 2010-2011, when I was posting, there was a sense that the enormous public of Huffington Post (26,000,000 unique monthly visitors) would enable any kind of posts, including longer, less newsworthy, more complex, and more continuous arguments -- but in this case that kind of reader never materialized.
This is the last Huffington Post column on this book. I quit because it became apparent that readers weren't prepared to follow serialized posts. In 2010-2011, when I was posting, there was a sense that the enormous public of Huffington Post (26,000,000 unique monthly visitors) would enable any kind of posts, including longer, less newsworthy, more complex, and more continuous arguments -- but in this case that kind of reader never materialized.
Research Interests:
This is the third chapter from this book posted on this website. It concerns the possibility that numbers, writing, and pictures are related to one another in the Western tradition. Writing and picturing are often associated, but... more
This is the third chapter from this book posted on this website.
It concerns the possibility that numbers, writing, and pictures are related to one another in the Western tradition. Writing and picturing are often associated, but counting is rarely spoken about in the same context, so this is an intriguing possibility.
The argument turns on an analysis of Denise Schmandt-Besserat's theories of the origins of counting in the Ancient Middle East. The details of her theories, and their reception, are not of as much interest here as the philosophic possibility that an account like hers lets us posit a common origin for pictures (or images), numbers (or mathematics), and writing.
The idea of the book as a whole is to try to rethink some of the received ideas about pictures and their relation to language. There are a couple of chapters in the book that try to do that by considering prehistoric, or protohistoric, practices. So it's more about contemporary understanding than about what might have happened in the cultures Schmandt-Besserat studied.
It concerns the possibility that numbers, writing, and pictures are related to one another in the Western tradition. Writing and picturing are often associated, but counting is rarely spoken about in the same context, so this is an intriguing possibility.
The argument turns on an analysis of Denise Schmandt-Besserat's theories of the origins of counting in the Ancient Middle East. The details of her theories, and their reception, are not of as much interest here as the philosophic possibility that an account like hers lets us posit a common origin for pictures (or images), numbers (or mathematics), and writing.
The idea of the book as a whole is to try to rethink some of the received ideas about pictures and their relation to language. There are a couple of chapters in the book that try to do that by considering prehistoric, or protohistoric, practices. So it's more about contemporary understanding than about what might have happened in the cultures Schmandt-Besserat studied.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Archaeology, Gender Studies, and 20 morePhilosophy, Iconography, Art History, History of Mathematics, Literature, Philosophy Of Mathematics, Symbolism, History of Reading and Writing, History of Mathematics (History), History of Art, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Middle Eastern Archaeology, Rock Art, Petroglyphs, History and theory of images (14th-16th centuries), History of Numbers, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Chinese Mirrors, and Origins of Writing
This is the introduction and chapter 1 of the book "What Painting Is," in Italian. La pittura cos’è, introduction by Tiziana Migliore, translated by George and Giuliana Camerino, with a new Preface for the Italian edition (Gemona del... more
This is the introduction and chapter 1 of the book "What Painting Is," in Italian.
La pittura cos’è, introduction by Tiziana Migliore, translated by George and Giuliana Camerino, with a new Preface for the Italian edition (Gemona del Friuli: Mimesis Edizioni, 2012).
La pittura cos’è, introduction by Tiziana Migliore, translated by George and Giuliana Camerino, with a new Preface for the Italian edition (Gemona del Friuli: Mimesis Edizioni, 2012).
Research Interests:
This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc. This chapter introduces the problematic: there is very little writing... more
This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc.
This chapter introduces the problematic: there is very little writing about the logic of teaching in art schools, except for some art education literature which tends to be abstract and disconnected from the ordinary conversations and concerns of the studio. The Introduction tells the relevant history of art academies and art schools--that is, the portions of that history that still effect the present. It's like an archaeology of the studio exercises that are given to students in first year (foundation) programs, and a history of the ideas that led up to the BFA (art major) and MFA (graduate degree).
This chapter introduces the problematic: there is very little writing about the logic of teaching in art schools, except for some art education literature which tends to be abstract and disconnected from the ordinary conversations and concerns of the studio. The Introduction tells the relevant history of art academies and art schools--that is, the portions of that history that still effect the present. It's like an archaeology of the studio exercises that are given to students in first year (foundation) programs, and a history of the ideas that led up to the BFA (art major) and MFA (graduate degree).
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 26 moreArt History, Design History, Literature, Arts Education, Art Studio, Art and Design Education, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Fine Arts, Visual Art, Creative Process, Artes plásticas, Artist, Studio Arts, Art History, Drawing and Painting, ARTES PLÁSTICAS, ESCULTURA, Artes Visuais, Helena Almeida, Atelier, Artista, Art Object, Processo Criativo, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Objecto Artístico, Francisco Cardoso Lima, Atchitecture and Cinema, and Philosophy of Art and Design Education
This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc. This chapter is about commonly recurring questions among art students:... more
This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc.
This chapter is about commonly recurring questions among art students: What does it mean to be an average artist? Is art connected to larger problems and issues in society? What role does skill play in art education? What is the relationship between media? What kinds of things can't be learned in art school?
The first two chapters introduce the problematic: there is very little writing about the logic of teaching in art schools, except for some art education literature which tends to be abstract and disconnected from the ordinary conversations and concerns of the studio. The first chapter tells the relevant history of art academies and art schools (that is, the portions of that history that still effect the present).
This chapter is about commonly recurring questions among art students: What does it mean to be an average artist? Is art connected to larger problems and issues in society? What role does skill play in art education? What is the relationship between media? What kinds of things can't be learned in art school?
The first two chapters introduce the problematic: there is very little writing about the logic of teaching in art schools, except for some art education literature which tends to be abstract and disconnected from the ordinary conversations and concerns of the studio. The first chapter tells the relevant history of art academies and art schools (that is, the portions of that history that still effect the present).
Research Interests:
"This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc. This chapter is the central argument of the book: art cannot be taught,... more
"This is from the book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). The book is available on amazon, etc.
This chapter is the central argument of the book: art cannot be taught, logically speaking, because (1) the teacher does not know exactly when she is giving the crucial information to the students (compare, for example, a math teacher, who knows everyone has to understand the quadratic theorem before it's possible to go on), and (2) the student does not know when she is receiving the crucial information for her art practice (she may look back, years later, and remember a random moment as crucial). This chapter has most of that argument, but it is also distributed through the book.
This chapter is the central argument of the book: art cannot be taught, logically speaking, because (1) the teacher does not know exactly when she is giving the crucial information to the students (compare, for example, a math teacher, who knows everyone has to understand the quadratic theorem before it's possible to go on), and (2) the student does not know when she is receiving the crucial information for her art practice (she may look back, years later, and remember a random moment as crucial). This chapter has most of that argument, but it is also distributed through the book.
Research Interests:
This is the introduction to the book "Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic." In it, I make an attempt to list the various revivals of beauty, and the forms of affect theory.
There is more information on the URL listed above.
There is more information on the URL listed above.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 21 moreAesthetics, Art History, Art Theory, Literature, Contemporary Art, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, Aesthetics and Politics, Contemporary Poetry, The Sublime, Frankfurt School, Visual Arts, Beauty, theories of, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Art and Nature, German romanticism and idealism, German literature of the Goethezeit, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Portraiture and the Problematic of Representation, Theory of Sublime, and Philosopical and Cultural Conceptions of Ageing
This is available on the URL listed above. This book is the most comprehensive look at definitions of the BFA, MFA, and PhD, and the most comprehensive review of the pertinent histories of art education and how they influence the... more
This is available on the URL listed above.
This book is the most comprehensive look at definitions of the BFA, MFA, and PhD, and the most comprehensive review of the pertinent histories of art education and how they influence the present.
It is volume 3 of the Stone Art Theory Seminars.
This book is the most comprehensive look at definitions of the BFA, MFA, and PhD, and the most comprehensive review of the pertinent histories of art education and how they influence the present.
It is volume 3 of the Stone Art Theory Seminars.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 15 moreEpistemology, Art History, Education, Literature, Higher Education, Sociology of Knowledge, Arts Education, Art Studio, Student Centered Learning, Bologna Process, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Quality Assurance, Academies of Fine Art in Britain and USA c.1800-1900, and Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations
This is the third of three introductions to the book. The first introduction is uploaded as "Theorizing Visual Studies, part one." The second was written by Kristi McGuire; this is the third, which is about the possibility that images can... more
This is the third of three introductions to the book. The first introduction is uploaded as "Theorizing Visual Studies, part one." The second was written by Kristi McGuire; this is the third, which is about the possibility that images can produce or embody arguments--that they can theorize, that they can drive arguments and not just exemplify, illustrate, or serve as memory aids. It's a promise visual studies has often made.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Cultural Sociology, Art, and 31 moreFilm Studies, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, Visual Rhetoric, Visual Literacy, Cultural Theory, Visual Semiotics, Painting, Performativity, Trauma Studies, Anthropology Of Art, Science Fiction, Performance, Visual Communication, Cultural Memory, Phenomenology of the body, Affect Theory, Artistic Research, Conceptual Art, Visual Arts, Psychical Research, Memory, Narrativity, Visual Art, Telepathy, Creative Practice, Visuality, Intermedia Art, Haptic Visuality, Visual Anthropology and Sociology, and Technological Futurism
From the first paragraph: "Art criticism is in worldwide crisis. Its voice has become very weak, and it is dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism. But its decay is not the ordinary last faint push of a... more
From the first paragraph: "Art criticism is in worldwide crisis. Its voice has become very weak, and it is dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism. But its decay is not the ordinary last faint push of a practice that has run its course, because at the very same time, art criticism is also healthier than ever. Its business is booming: it attracts an enormous number of writers, and often benefits from high-quality color printing and worldwide distribution. In that sense art criticism is flourishing, but invisibly, out of sight of contemporary intellectual debates. So it’s dying, but it’s everywhere. It’s ignored, and yet it has the market behind it."
The pamphlet proposes that art criticism has changed fundamentally in the last forty years, from an activity whose primary and sometimes final purpose was to judge, to an activity whose relation to judgment is more circumspect and much harder to define. That proposition has been proven statistically, by a survey of North American art critics, and it appears to be true in many parts of the world.
The definitionless, directionless, unconceptualized set of practices that currently gets called "art criticism" is produced in enormous quantities, and yet it goes largely unread. This pamphlet ponders these and other odd traits of current art criticism.
A revision of part of it has appeared in The State of Art Criticism, co-edited with Michael Newman, with contributions by Stephen Melville, Dave Hickey, Irit Rogoff, Ted Cohen, Guy Brett, Katy Deepwell, Joseph Masheck, Peter Plagens, Julian Stallabrass, Alex Alberro, Whitney Davis, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, and others, vol. 4 of The Art Seminar (New York: Routledge, 2007).
The pamphlet proposes that art criticism has changed fundamentally in the last forty years, from an activity whose primary and sometimes final purpose was to judge, to an activity whose relation to judgment is more circumspect and much harder to define. That proposition has been proven statistically, by a survey of North American art critics, and it appears to be true in many parts of the world.
The definitionless, directionless, unconceptualized set of practices that currently gets called "art criticism" is produced in enormous quantities, and yet it goes largely unread. This pamphlet ponders these and other odd traits of current art criticism.
A revision of part of it has appeared in The State of Art Criticism, co-edited with Michael Newman, with contributions by Stephen Melville, Dave Hickey, Irit Rogoff, Ted Cohen, Guy Brett, Katy Deepwell, Joseph Masheck, Peter Plagens, Julian Stallabrass, Alex Alberro, Whitney Davis, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, and others, vol. 4 of The Art Seminar (New York: Routledge, 2007).
Research Interests:
Ethics, Communication, Art History, Media Studies, Social Policy, and 24 moreJournalism, Feminist Theory, Art Theory, Marxism, Development communication, Feminist Philosophy, Sexuality, Philosophy of Art, Media Education, Gender, Media Literacy, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Media, Art Criticism, Social and Political Philosophy, Solidarity Economy, Media Research, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, Theories of Socialism, Alternate Media, Antiglobalization Social Movements, and Latin American feminisms
This is available at the URL above. Chapter 3, "Politics," considers theories of the shape of twentieth-century painting that stress the political engagement or pertinence of the art. "Politics" in this sense includes social art... more
This is available at the URL above.
Chapter 3, "Politics," considers theories of the shape of twentieth-century painting that stress the political engagement or pertinence of the art. "Politics" in this sense includes social art history in a general sense, and also more specific enterprises such as institutional critique. The chapter includes discussion of Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, T.J. Clark, and others, and proposes that Thomas Crow's account may be the most demanding and interesting. The chapter concludes with thoughts on political art that is not of interest in academic criticism, including recherché political art, patriotic art, and popular art with nationalistic themes; I argue that some social art history does not possess reasons to bypass such work, and that some forms of social art history have an allegiance to forms of the avant-garde is not a necessary part of their logic.
Chapter 3, "Politics," considers theories of the shape of twentieth-century painting that stress the political engagement or pertinence of the art. "Politics" in this sense includes social art history in a general sense, and also more specific enterprises such as institutional critique. The chapter includes discussion of Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, T.J. Clark, and others, and proposes that Thomas Crow's account may be the most demanding and interesting. The chapter concludes with thoughts on political art that is not of interest in academic criticism, including recherché political art, patriotic art, and popular art with nationalistic themes; I argue that some social art history does not possess reasons to bypass such work, and that some forms of social art history have an allegiance to forms of the avant-garde is not a necessary part of their logic.
Research Interests:
Ethics, Feminist Theory, Political Theory, Marxism, Feminist Philosophy, and 15 morePolitical Science, Sexuality, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Marxist theory, Michel Foucault, Avant-Garde, Social and Political Philosophy, Solidarity Economy, 20th century Avant-Garde, Hal Foster, Theories of Socialism, T J Clark, Antiglobalization Social Movements, and Latin American feminisms
This is a book about people who have had strong emotional reactions to artworks. It tells a history of times and places when strong passions were expected, and contrasts them with the habits of the last hundred years. The book also has... more
This is a book about people who have had strong emotional reactions to artworks. It tells a history of times and places when strong passions were expected, and contrasts them with the habits of the last hundred years. The book also has letters from people who have cried, and those who haven't or wouldn't.
Chapter 5 is "Crying Over Bluish Leaves." It is about my own experiences in the Frick Collection, looking at Giovanni Bellini's "Ecstasy of St. Francis." At first I had a very strong reaction to the painting, but it was diluted and finally dispersed as I read art historical accounts of the painting, and of Bellini's cultural context. Art history is pictured here as a kind of poison well, which endangers certain kinds of responses.
The book is in print and on Kindle; this is the only chapter I'm posting here. This upload lacks an illustration of Giovanni Bellini's Ecstasy of St. Francis, which is easily available in high resolution online. (Try the Google Art Project.)
Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Chapter 5 is "Crying Over Bluish Leaves." It is about my own experiences in the Frick Collection, looking at Giovanni Bellini's "Ecstasy of St. Francis." At first I had a very strong reaction to the painting, but it was diluted and finally dispersed as I read art historical accounts of the painting, and of Bellini's cultural context. Art history is pictured here as a kind of poison well, which endangers certain kinds of responses.
The book is in print and on Kindle; this is the only chapter I'm posting here. This upload lacks an illustration of Giovanni Bellini's Ecstasy of St. Francis, which is easily available in high resolution online. (Try the Google Art Project.)
Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (New York: Routledge, 2001).
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Psychoanalysis, Gender Studies, and 43 morePhilosophy, Visual Studies, Art History, Art, Literature, Emotional intelligence, Cultural Theory, Painting, Renaissance Art, History Of Emotions, Trauma Studies, Science Fiction, Performance, Sociology of Arts, Emotions (Social Psychology), Feminism, Crying (Psychology), Drawing, Sociology of Art, Anthropology of emotions, Italian Renaissance Art, Affect Theory, Contemporary Poetry, Conceptual Art, Affect/Emotion, Visual Arts, Affect (Cultural Theory), Psychical Research, Installation, Visual Art, Subjectivity, Materialities, Writing about/with art, Passion, Telepathy, Creative Practice, Visuality, Presence/absence, Visibility/invisibility, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Destabilization of Hierarchical Relationships and Borders, Relationship Between Art Theory and Practice, and Technological Futurism
"Stories of Art" is an answer to E.H. Gombrich's "Story of Art." "Stories of Art" is a look at ways people have told the history of art outside the West, and outside the bounds of Gombrich's narrative of naturalism. The book is meant as a... more
"Stories of Art" is an answer to E.H. Gombrich's "Story of Art." "Stories of Art" is a look at ways people have told the history of art outside the West, and outside the bounds of Gombrich's narrative of naturalism. The book is meant as a gadfly, an accompaniment to Gombrich's ubiquitous volume.
Chapter 1, "Intuitive Stories," is about an exercise I have found very useful in seeing how people visualize the history of art. The exercise is to draw the history of art as a landscape or some other kind of picture, and label the parts of the landscape with the periods, artists, and styles that you feel most comfortable with. I have tried this with students at all levels, and with faculty; I've tried it throughout the U.S., and in Europe and China. The results are always fascinating. It is the opening chapter of the book because it's intended to help readers find their own sense of the shape of art history before they explore other people's ideas.
Originally published as Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Chapter 1, "Intuitive Stories," is about an exercise I have found very useful in seeing how people visualize the history of art. The exercise is to draw the history of art as a landscape or some other kind of picture, and label the parts of the landscape with the periods, artists, and styles that you feel most comfortable with. I have tried this with students at all levels, and with faculty; I've tried it throughout the U.S., and in Europe and China. The results are always fascinating. It is the opening chapter of the book because it's intended to help readers find their own sense of the shape of art history before they explore other people's ideas.
Originally published as Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 22 moreArt History, Literature, Historiography, Arts Education, Historiography (in Art History), Art and Design Education, Contemporary Poetry, History of Historiography, Visual Arts, Arts Education and Pedagogy, Educación, Emprendimiento, Arte, Trabajo Social, Liderazgo, Gerencia, Responsabilidad Social, Polìtica, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Investigaciòn, Desarrollo Sociopolìtico cultural y econòmico, and Gestiòn
"Master Narratives and Their Discontents" is a look at the major accounts of visual art, and especially painting, in the last hundred years. The idea is to collect and compare the most coherent and elaborated accounts of the shape of the... more
"Master Narratives and Their Discontents" is a look at the major accounts of visual art, and especially painting, in the last hundred years. The idea is to collect and compare the most coherent and elaborated accounts of the shape of the twentieth century.
Chapter 1 is a survey of theories of modernism, including accounts by E.H. Gombrich, T.J. Clark, Michael Fried, Robert Rosenblum, and Clement Greenberg. The chapter considers different starting-points for modernism in painting: the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, the mid-nineteenth century, the generations of Cézanne and Picasso; and there is also a discussion of the uneven dissemination of Clement Greenberg's theories in different parts of the world.
Chapter 1 is a survey of theories of modernism, including accounts by E.H. Gombrich, T.J. Clark, Michael Fried, Robert Rosenblum, and Clement Greenberg. The chapter considers different starting-points for modernism in painting: the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, the mid-nineteenth century, the generations of Cézanne and Picasso; and there is also a discussion of the uneven dissemination of Clement Greenberg's theories in different parts of the world.
Research Interests:
Art History, Art Theory, Contemporary Art, Poetry, Modern Art, and 9 morePostmodernism, Art Criticism, Modernism, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Gombrich, E. H. Gombrich, Critical Poetics, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, and Modernism and Posmodernism in Post World War Two North America
This chapter is available at the URL listed above.
Chapter 3, "Politics," is a survey of ideas about the history of modernism and postmodernism that privilege the social and political valence of the artwork.
Chapter 3, "Politics," is a survey of ideas about the history of modernism and postmodernism that privilege the social and political valence of the artwork.
Research Interests:
Critical Theory, Postmodernism, Honneth, Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, and 16 moreLevinas, Baudrillard, Modernism, Socio-cultural theory, Adorno, Arthur Danto, Rosalind Krauss, Arthur C. Danto, McLuhan, October, Aesthetics and Theories of Art (A. Warburg, L. Buñuel, W. Benjamin, G. Bataille); Philosophy of Art (G. Didi Huberman, R. Krauss) Film Philosophy and Film Theory (S. M. Eisenstein, and Socio Political Philosophy
"The Importance of Skill" is a polemic. A survey of theories of modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts might not pay attention to skill, because it would be seen as an ideologically overdetermined category that remains, outside... more
"The Importance of Skill" is a polemic. A survey of theories of modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts might not pay attention to skill, because it would be seen as an ideologically overdetermined category that remains, outside the avant-garde and the international art world, as a remnant of nineteenth-century European and North American art academies.
I wanted to include a chapter on skill for two reasons: first, several of the contributors to this series, including Richard Shiff, are engaged with issues of skill and depiction; but more importantly, I think that naturalistic depiction remains the most widespread criterion in the judgment of painting worldwide. It seemed important to remain aware of the much larger artworld outside the one countenanced in academic writing and in "biennale culture."
This chapter mentions Tom Wolfe, Deborah Solomon (a reporter who wrote for the New York Times), and various realist artists including the well-organized groups of "starving artists" who sell in hotels and malls. There is also a discussion of the role of naturalistic skill, or the lack of it, in Duchamp, Magritte, and other modernists.
I wanted to include a chapter on skill for two reasons: first, several of the contributors to this series, including Richard Shiff, are engaged with issues of skill and depiction; but more importantly, I think that naturalistic depiction remains the most widespread criterion in the judgment of painting worldwide. It seemed important to remain aware of the much larger artworld outside the one countenanced in academic writing and in "biennale culture."
This chapter mentions Tom Wolfe, Deborah Solomon (a reporter who wrote for the New York Times), and various realist artists including the well-organized groups of "starving artists" who sell in hotels and malls. There is also a discussion of the role of naturalistic skill, or the lack of it, in Duchamp, Magritte, and other modernists.
Research Interests:
See note to the introduction, also uploaded on this page. Five of the chapters of this book are uploaded here, but academia doesn't let you re-order entries, so the chapters are scattered. This is the concluding seminar, held in... more
See note to the introduction, also uploaded on this page. Five of the chapters of this book are uploaded here, but academia doesn't let you re-order entries, so the chapters are scattered.
This is the concluding seminar, held in Ireland after the lectures were given; in it several faculty members debate the issues in the book.
[Revised March 2013]
This is the concluding seminar, held in Ireland after the lectures were given; in it several faculty members debate the issues in the book.
[Revised March 2013]
Research Interests:
This is a manifesto, which I wrote to help me articulate my dissatisfactions about contemporary fiction, and to guide me in my own fiction project. The four proposals are sour and stringent because I'm skeptical of the idea that one of... more
This is a manifesto, which I wrote to help me articulate my dissatisfactions about contemporary fiction, and to guide me in my own fiction project. The four proposals are sour and stringent because I'm skeptical of the idea that one of the main purposes of novels is to help us understand the world (its places, its people). I'm interested in how complex novels can become, how challenging, how historically responsive.
My notion is to make it harder to write novels.
My notion is to make it harder to write novels.
Research Interests:
A brochure for the novel, "Weak in Comparison to Dreams" (LA, Unnamed Press). Finally complete after 18 years of work! All comments welcome, as always.
Research Interests:
This is an essay describing the reasons I have stopped actively researching art history, and focused instead on experimental writing and fiction. It has excerpts from my novel "Weak in Comparison to Dreams" (Unnamed Press) in order to... more
This is an essay describing the reasons I have stopped actively researching art history, and focused instead on experimental writing and fiction. It has excerpts from my novel "Weak in Comparison to Dreams" (Unnamed Press) in order to show how images can have very different relations to their surrounding text, and how academic writing might be expanded to accommodate other voices.
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This is a never-ending essay or book project, revised many times. It concerns the relation between studio art (and studio art departments) and the history of art. It is a curious and significant fact that most art historians have never... more
This is a never-ending essay or book project, revised many times. It concerns the relation between studio art (and studio art departments) and the history of art. It is a curious and significant fact that most art historians have never tried to make art: curious because a large number of people who teach literature and literary criticism have written fiction or poetry, and a large number of people who teach music theory or music history play an instrument; and significant because that means the experience of making is seldom part of what art historians consider historically significant.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 14 moreArt History, Art, Art Theory, Literature, Arts Education, Art Studio, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Phenomenology of the body, Studio Practice, Contemporary Poetry, Visual Arts, Studio Arts, Art History, Drawing and Painting, and Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations
The essay argues that the sublime, and especially the postmodern sublime, is an intricate and unresolved concept, and that it is not often coherent or necessary to import it into discourse on contemporary art. This was also published as... more
The essay argues that the sublime, and especially the postmodern sublime, is an intricate and unresolved concept, and that it is not often coherent or necessary to import it into discourse on contemporary art.
This was also published as “Gegen das Erhabene," in Das Erhabene in Wissenschaft und Kunst: Über Vernunft und Einbildungskraft, edited by Roald Hoffmann and Iain Boyd Whyte (Berlin: Surhkamp: 2010): 97–113.
This was also published as “Gegen das Erhabene," in Das Erhabene in Wissenschaft und Kunst: Über Vernunft und Einbildungskraft, edited by Roald Hoffmann and Iain Boyd Whyte (Berlin: Surhkamp: 2010): 97–113.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 25 moreAesthetics, Art History, Art Theory, Literature, Drama, Aesthetics and Ethics, Heidegger, Contemporary Poetry, The Sublime, Visual Arts, Modern and Contemporary Greek poetry, Film, Sublime, Art and Nature, German romanticism and idealism, Literature and the Sacred, Contemporary Sublime, The sublime now, German literature of the Goethezeit, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Sublime and Transendence, Spirituality and Film, Portraiture and the Problematic of Representation, Theory of Sublime, and Philosopical and Cultural Conceptions of Ageing
This is an exercise for first-year art students. Each student gets their own timeline (on a digital platform). It's pre-populated with the periods, artsts, and styles the class will cover. Then the srtudents each add their own artwork,... more
This is an exercise for first-year art students. Each student gets their own timeline (on a digital platform). It's pre-populated with the periods, artsts, and styles the class will cover. Then the srtudents each add their own artwork, and artists they like (Instagram artists, anime, manga, etc.). The exercise is to link up their art, and their interests, to the art history they will learn.
Research Interests:
This is a chapter in the book "Art Critiques: A Guide." The entire book (third edition) is on Amazon.
Research Interests:
Art History, Art, Art Theory, Contemporary Art, Learning and Teaching, and 13 moreArts Education, Arts Administration, Art Criticism, Skill Acquisition, Theory and Practice of Visual Arts, Art Education, Arts Education and Pedagogy, Genius (Psychology), Gifted and Talented Education, Art Theory and Criticism, Contemporary Art Teaching, Art and Language Teaching, and Art Teaching
This paper revisits the edited volume "Theorizing Visual Studies." It ends with suggestions for scholars who would like to push forward visual studies' promise to be radical in relation to art history and related fields. The... more
This paper revisits the edited volume "Theorizing Visual Studies." It ends with suggestions for scholars who would like to push forward visual studies' promise to be radical in relation to art history and related fields. The link for it is above, or here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4259n982. It was originally written for "Refract" (published by U.C. Santa Cruz), vol. 1, no. 1.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
INTRODUCTION I 1 Histories 5 2 Conrersations 41 3 Theories 91 Contents 4 Critiques 1n 5 Suggestions 167 Conclusions 189 NOTES 193 INDEX 209 ... This little book is about the way studio art is taught. It's a manual or survival guide.... more
INTRODUCTION I 1 Histories 5 2 Conrersations 41 3 Theories 91 Contents 4 Critiques 1n 5 Suggestions 167 Conclusions 189 NOTES 193 INDEX 209 ... This little book is about the way studio art is taught. It's a manual or survival guide. intended for people who are directly ...
Research Interests:
This essay is for introductory classes. It includes discussions of the time of viewing and of narrative forms in art.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Music, Gender Studies, and 32 morePhilosophy, Aesthetics, Art History, New Media, Literature, Digital Media, Gesture, Visual Culture, Multimedia, Poetry, Embodiment, Narrative and Design, Bakhtin, Sound, Machinima, Performance, Reading, History of Art, Philosophy of Time, Contemporary Poetry, Narrative Theory, Dialogism, Art and technology, Virtual Worlds, Introduction to Art for College Freshman, Visual Arts, Fine Arts, Cyborgs, Game Spaces, Spatial Story Telling, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and Art Appreciation
This essay is intended for introductory courses, to take the place of art appreciation surveys.
Research Interests:
This is a two-part essay on the current condition and prospects of art criticism around the world.
Research Interests:
This is a condensed excerpt from the book "Why Art Cannot be Taught" (on Amazon). I argue that no one knows how to teach art, yet everyone behaves as if art schools and departments are doing something other than teaching techniques,... more
This is a condensed excerpt from the book "Why Art Cannot be Taught" (on Amazon). I argue that no one knows how to teach art, yet everyone behaves as if art schools and departments are doing something other than teaching techniques, theories, and art discourse.
Research Interests:
This is an excerpt from a 30-page essay on the history of the department where I work, from 1980, when it was founded, to 2010, when the full version of this essay was written. Some of what follows is specific to our department, but I'm... more
This is an excerpt from a 30-page essay on the history of the department where I work, from 1980, when it was founded, to 2010, when the full version of this essay was written. Some of what follows is specific to our department, but I'm posting it on academia because it makes a larger point: I'm interested in the way that art history is becoming normalized, not only in North America, but worldwide. I have a book on that subject coming out, called The Impending Single History of Art. One aspect of the increasing uniformity of the discipline is the way art history is taught. Because I've spent my career teaching in a large art school, I have been able to observe the increasing dominance of a set of ideals for the discipline that comes largely from a half-dozen principal research universities in North America and the U.K.. When I started teaching, my colleagues' interests and methods were well suited to teaching artists, and less compatible with disciplinary norms. Several of them probably couldn't have found jobs in larger universities. Over the last two decades I've watched as art history departments that serve mainly visual art students (not just in North America but also Latin America, Europe, and Asia) have become more closely aligned to the model of art history as it's practiced in the principal North American and European research universities. The Impending Single History of Art is mainly about how art history is written, but there is a parallel in the ways it is taught: we are losing diversity in the name of disciplinary norms.
Research Interests:
An essay about the ways that artists are educated at the college level (MFA, PhD). For the past 15 years or so there has been a steep rise in quantified evaluations of art students: more rubrics, capstone achievements, learning outcomes... more
An essay about the ways that artists are educated at the college level (MFA, PhD). For the past 15 years or so there has been a steep rise in quantified evaluations of art students: more rubrics, capstone achievements, learning outcomes and goals, assessment criteria. The education of artists for the next generation is becoming a matter of standardized, comparable criteria--a bureaucratization of art.
Research Interests:
Oulipo has had tremendous influence on writing in the nearly 60 years since it began, but the idea of inventing condtraints for yourself, and then talking only about the constraints and not the literature that they produce (except as trhe... more
Oulipo has had tremendous influence on writing in the nearly 60 years since it began, but the idea of inventing condtraints for yourself, and then talking only about the constraints and not the literature that they produce (except as trhe outcomes of constraints) produces the strange situation of a literature whose literary qualities are not mentioned. This is an attempt to understand that,
Research Interests:
This is a long essay on just the first book (out of seven) of Arno Schmidt's enormous novel "Bottom's Dreram." My thesis is that the book asks to be read extremely slowly and carefully, following as many of the thousands of citations as... more
This is a long essay on just the first book (out of seven) of Arno Schmidt's enormous novel "Bottom's Dreram." My thesis is that the book asks to be read extremely slowly and carefully, following as many of the thousands of citations as possible, because it presents an argument about Poe (that is, it isn't just a novel that can be read for its characters). The text is online, at http://writingwithimages.com/4-7-arno-schmidt. All comments welcome, as always.
Research Interests:
German Literature, Literary Criticism, Typography, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Postmodernism, and 10 morePostmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, German Literature and Culture, Paper-Making & Book-Binding, Arno Schmidt, Novels, Typeface and Typography, Postwar literature, Maximalism, and Book Design
The pdf is linked above. This is an essay on the globalization of art theory, in French. It will appear in the official book to commemorate the launch of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It is excerpted from a work in progress called The... more
The pdf is linked above.
This is an essay on the globalization of art theory, in French.
It will appear in the official book to commemorate the launch of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It is excerpted from a work in progress called The Impending Single History of Art : North Atlantic Art History and its Alternatives. Information about that book, and chapters in English, are on my website. Please send comments to me via the contact form on the website.
This is an essay on the globalization of art theory, in French.
It will appear in the official book to commemorate the launch of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It is excerpted from a work in progress called The Impending Single History of Art : North Atlantic Art History and its Alternatives. Information about that book, and chapters in English, are on my website. Please send comments to me via the contact form on the website.
Research Interests:
This is a brief essay on the implications of Deleuze's book on Bacon for innovative configurations of word & image in art theory, history, criticism, etc. The argument is that the way Deleuze arranged the images in the original French... more
This is a brief essay on the implications of Deleuze's book on Bacon for innovative configurations of word & image in art theory, history, criticism, etc. The argument is that the way Deleuze arranged the images in the original French edition is intended to exemplify, or enact, the theory of sensation in the text: something art history could consider in other contexts.
From "Art History after Deleuze and Guattari," edited by Sjoerd van Tuinen and Stephen Zepke (Leuven: Leuven University Press 2017), pp. 61-67.
From "Art History after Deleuze and Guattari," edited by Sjoerd van Tuinen and Stephen Zepke (Leuven: Leuven University Press 2017), pp. 61-67.
Research Interests:
The full file is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1638911421 "Prae" is one of the most interesting prewar modernist novels, along with Finnegans Wake, The Man Without Qualities, and In Search of Lost Time. (Although those... more
The full file is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1638911421
"Prae" is one of the most interesting prewar modernist novels, along with Finnegans Wake, The Man Without Qualities, and In Search of Lost Time. (Although those comparisons are all misleading, they are necessary, I think, to begin the kinds of conversation that are needed.) In 2014 volume 1 of "Prae" was finally published in English. Note: please don't write asking for a copy; the link is above, labeled URL.
"Prae" is one of the most interesting prewar modernist novels, along with Finnegans Wake, The Man Without Qualities, and In Search of Lost Time. (Although those comparisons are all misleading, they are necessary, I think, to begin the kinds of conversation that are needed.) In 2014 volume 1 of "Prae" was finally published in English. Note: please don't write asking for a copy; the link is above, labeled URL.
Research Interests:
This is an essay on a suggestive parallel between photographs of the Chinese torture and execution known as the "death by a thousand cuts"; and the routine protocols of art history known as formal analysis and iconography. I attempt to... more
This is an essay on a suggestive parallel between photographs of the Chinese torture and execution known as the "death by a thousand cuts"; and the routine protocols of art history known as formal analysis and iconography. I attempt to demonstrate that art history's most fundamental, apparently neutral, preparatory exercises in seeing and analysis, taught to every beginning student, carry a burden of invasiveness and pain.
An anthology of my writing, mostly from books, in Russian.
When Gombrich died in 2001 it was widely assumed that there would be a memorial volume, and several were mooted. This essay was requested by the College Art Association for their website; it was intended to collect responses that would... more
When Gombrich died in 2001 it was widely assumed that there would be a memorial volume, and several were mooted. This essay was requested by the College Art Association for their website; it was intended to collect responses that would form the basis of conferences or publications. It remains unpublished.
The essay is available at the URL listed here.
The essay is available at the URL listed here.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Art history lacks a persuasive account of the nature of graphic marks, and that limits what can be said about pictures. This essay gathers some of the principal sources. An expanded version appeared in the book "On Pictures, And the Words... more
Art history lacks a persuasive account of the nature of graphic marks, and that limits what can be said about pictures. This essay gathers some of the principal sources. An expanded version appeared in the book "On Pictures, And the Words That Fail Them."
Research Interests:
... James Elkins Art History without Theory a moment), he acknowledges this problem: "Nobody ... can deny that historicism answers a real need. We have to satisfy this need by offering something better before we can seriously hope to... more
... James Elkins Art History without Theory a moment), he acknowledges this problem: "Nobody ... can deny that historicism answers a real need. We have to satisfy this need by offering something better before we can seriously hope to get rid of historicism" (P, p. 148). Gombrich's ...
Research Interests:
... Page 5. 594 James Elkins Critical Response ... No: the drawing is a stubborn, silent object. It resists, and that resis-tance is crucial. The unnamed marks remain, and (as EH Gombrich once said about the unread classics on his... more
... Page 5. 594 James Elkins Critical Response ... No: the drawing is a stubborn, silent object. It resists, and that resis-tance is crucial. The unnamed marks remain, and (as EH Gombrich once said about the unread classics on his bookshelf) they stare at us reproachfully. ...
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1. Art Hist. 1984;7(2):176-86. Michelangelo and the human form: his knowledge and use of anatomy. Elkins J. PMID: 11616641 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]. Publication Types: Biography; Historical Article. MeSH Terms. Anatomy ...
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This is a double review: partly it's on Marilyn Nonken's book "The Spectral Piano," which is a history of spectralism and proto-spectralism from Liszt to the present; and partly it's on Tristan Murail's "Territoires de l'oubli," one of... more
This is a double review: partly it's on Marilyn Nonken's book "The Spectral Piano," which is a history of spectralism and proto-spectralism from Liszt to the present; and partly it's on Tristan Murail's "Territoires de l'oubli," one of spectral music's principal works. It's a new contribution to the site "Piano Notes."
(Note: the paper is online: see link above.)
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(Note: the paper is online: see link above.)
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This is an essay on the illustrations in Kobo Abe's wonderful novel. He took the photographs themselves, but they are hard to connect with the novel. I include some rarely seen reproductions of Abe's photographs from an exhibition in... more
This is an essay on the illustrations in Kobo Abe's wonderful novel. He took the photographs themselves, but they are hard to connect with the novel. I include some rarely seen reproductions of Abe's photographs from an exhibition in Japan.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project, www.writingwithimages.com. All comments welcome!
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project, www.writingwithimages.com. All comments welcome!
Research Interests:
This is a very rare book (scans are available on the internet) in which a pine tree lectures a little girl on geometry and physics, for 1,800 pages. This is part of the "Writing with Images" project, because the book is illustrated with... more
This is a very rare book (scans are available on the internet) in which a pine tree lectures a little girl on geometry and physics, for 1,800 pages.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project, because the book is illustrated with photographs of the girl and the landscape. All comments welcome, either on this site or www.writingwithimages.com.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project, because the book is illustrated with photographs of the girl and the landscape. All comments welcome, either on this site or www.writingwithimages.com.
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This is an "artist's book" but it's also a good example of conceptual writing and unoriginality, in Marjorie Perloff's sense. These thoughts are part of the project "Writing with Images." All comments welcome.
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Art Theory, Contemporary Art, Academic Writing, Norwegian Literature, and 9 moreContemporary Literature, Contemporary Poetry, Book History (History), Women Artists, Book Reviews, Experimental Writing, Art Theory and Criticism, Contemporary Art Art History Art Theory Writing in Visual Art Art writing Artistic Research Artists’ Books Curation Art ‘beyond the gallery’ Culture Gender Interdisciplinarity Visual Studies, and Artists’ Books
The full file is here: http://www.jameselkins.com/pianofiles/?p=238 This is a work in progress: reviews of all the collections of postwar piano music I could find. There are about 20 anthologies listed here, a total of about 40... more
The full file is here: http://www.jameselkins.com/pianofiles/?p=238
This is a work in progress: reviews of all the collections of postwar piano music I could find. There are about 20 anthologies listed here, a total of about 40 individual books. Each one is an interesting portrait of its time and place, because each tried to be "avant-garde" or "contemporary" or "experimental."
It's as complete as I could make it--but all comments, additions, criticism, etc., is welcome.
This is a work in progress: reviews of all the collections of postwar piano music I could find. There are about 20 anthologies listed here, a total of about 40 individual books. Each one is an interesting portrait of its time and place, because each tried to be "avant-garde" or "contemporary" or "experimental."
It's as complete as I could make it--but all comments, additions, criticism, etc., is welcome.
Research Interests:
Note: don't click on "Download PDF" -- the text is available online (see link).
This is a brief essay on Steinberg's writing: it's part of the larger project on experimental and interesting writing in art history. All comments welcome!
This is a brief essay on Steinberg's writing: it's part of the larger project on experimental and interesting writing in art history. All comments welcome!
Research Interests:
Note: the full talk is only available at the URL I've posted here. This is a talk on the current euphoria for visualization, especially big-data visualization and infographics. I touch briefly on a number of fields (mathematics,... more
Note: the full talk is only available at the URL I've posted here.
This is a talk on the current euphoria for visualization, especially big-data visualization and infographics. I touch briefly on a number of fields (mathematics, economics, physics, biology, literary criticism) on the way to a critique of the notion that the world is available to visualization.
This is version 1; the talk is currently in version 2, which includes a report on the conference you see in the video.
This is a talk on the current euphoria for visualization, especially big-data visualization and infographics. I touch briefly on a number of fields (mathematics, economics, physics, biology, literary criticism) on the way to a critique of the notion that the world is available to visualization.
This is version 1; the talk is currently in version 2, which includes a report on the conference you see in the video.
Research Interests:
Scientific Visualization, Physics, Chemistry, Art History, Art Theory, and 27 moreVisualization, History of Mathematics, Mathematics Education, Literary Criticism, Visual Literacy, Biology, Art and Science, 3D visualisation, Information Visualisation, Scientific Visualisation, Molecular modeling, Data Visualization, Representation, Literature and the Visual Arts, Infographics and data visualization, Infographics, Big Data, Art Theory and Criticism, Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization, Art and Science Relationships, Arts and science, Big Data Analytics, Theory of Art, Interface of Art and Science/technology, Big Data Visualisation, Art and Art History, and Infographics Journalism Advertising Graphic Design
Note: don't click on "Download PDF" -- the text is available on the link I've posted here. This is a brief essay on an edition that includes Webern's own annotations to the score and performance notes. When that edition appeared in the... more
Note: don't click on "Download PDF" -- the text is available on the link I've posted here.
This is a brief essay on an edition that includes Webern's own annotations to the score and performance notes. When that edition appeared in the 1970s, it was taken as evidence that the interpretation of Webern as an emotionally detached structural genius needed reconsideration. Now, almost 50 years later, it may be of interest to see just how far toward Webern's emotionalism we might want to go.
This is a brief essay on an edition that includes Webern's own annotations to the score and performance notes. When that edition appeared in the 1970s, it was taken as evidence that the interpretation of Webern as an emotionally detached structural genius needed reconsideration. Now, almost 50 years later, it may be of interest to see just how far toward Webern's emotionalism we might want to go.
Research Interests:
This is a website with analytic and critical texts on 20th and 21st century piano music, including performance notes. The site includes a list of solo piano music from c. 1900 to the present. Additions and comments welcome!
Research Interests:
Music, Music Theory, Musicology, Piano, Microtonal Music, and 26 moreHistory of Music Theory, Atonal Music, History of music theory (Music), Contemporary Music, Pianists and Piano Literature, Piano Pedagogy, Critical Musicology, Elliott Carter, Classical Music, Piano performance and repertoire, 1980s New Complexity, New Musicology, Spectralism, New Music, Piano Technique, Piano Performance, Serialism, Boulez, Serialism in the 1950s, Brian Ferneyhough, Pierre Boulez, Conlon Nancarrow, Avant Garde Music, Conlon Nancarrow Music for Player Piano, New Complexity (Music), and George Perle
This is a one-page introduction to the reasons I am moving out of art history, and into fiction and experimental writing. (Scroll down to "Writing schedule.")
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Visual Studies, Art History, Structuralism (Literary Criticism), and 20 moreVisual Culture, Poststructuralism, Historiography, Literary Criticism, Visual Culture in Education, Academic Writing, History of Art, Creative thinking, History of Historiography, Literary Nonfiction, Poststructural Philosophy, Poststructuralist Theory, Critical, constructivist and poststructuralist approaches, Bildwissenschaft, Experimental Writing, Experimental Writing, Creative Writing Workshops, and Avant-Garde Texts, History of Art History, Visual Culture and Media Studies, Visual Cultures, and Art and Art History
This 6-volume book is becoming Norway's most celebrated contemporary experimental novel, or anti-novel. This essay is a review of vol. 1 in English, with appendices on the most reflective reviews of vols. 2 and 3. This is part of a... more
This 6-volume book is becoming Norway's most celebrated contemporary experimental novel, or anti-novel. This essay is a review of vol. 1 in English, with appendices on the most reflective reviews of vols. 2 and 3.
This is part of a larger reviewing project of contemporary experimental novels on Goodreads and LibraryThing.
This is part of a larger reviewing project of contemporary experimental novels on Goodreads and LibraryThing.
Research Interests:
Fiction Writing, Comparative Literature, English Literature, Literature, Literary Criticism, and 12 moreTranslation theory, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Norwegian Literature, Norwegian History, Novel, Theory of translation, Fiction, Experimental Writing, Contemporary Novel, Norwegian Language, and Karl Ove Knausgård
"Crystallography" is one of the most important examples of conceptual poetry, and it uses images in a number of intetesting ways. This essay is part of the "Writing with Images" project: other texts are on this site, and there is an... more
"Crystallography" is one of the most important examples of conceptual poetry, and it uses images in a number of intetesting ways.
This essay is part of the "Writing with Images" project: other texts are on this site, and there is an overall explanation on www.jameselkins.com. All comments are welcome!
This essay is part of the "Writing with Images" project: other texts are on this site, and there is an overall explanation on www.jameselkins.com. All comments are welcome!
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Mineralogy, Crystallography, Avant-garde writing, Experimental Media Arts, and 16 morePataphysics, Literary Criticism, Crystal Growth, Poetics, Postmodernism, Crystallization, Contemporary Poetry, Postmodern Literature, Conceptual Poetry, Christian Bök, Conceptual writing, Concrete Poetry, Contemporary Canadian Writing, Experimental Writing, Creative Writing Workshops, and Avant-Garde Texts, Critical Poetics, and Bravais Lattice
This is a chapter from a book on artistic research, "SHARE: Handbook for Artistic Research Education," edited by Mick Wilson and Schelte van Ruiten (2013). My contribution is on "flavors" of the PhD for artists around the world -- i.e.,... more
This is a chapter from a book on artistic research, "SHARE: Handbook for Artistic Research Education," edited by Mick Wilson and Schelte van Ruiten (2013). My contribution is on "flavors" of the PhD for artists around the world -- i.e., different cultures, customs, or kinds of the PhD that I think are emerging as the degree spreads.
The full book is available online as a free pdf:
http://www.elia-artschools.org/images/products/120/share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition.pdf
The full book is available online as a free pdf:
http://www.elia-artschools.org/images/products/120/share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition.pdf
Research Interests:
Higher Education, Third Level Teaching, Arts Education, Phd Writing, Art and Design Education, and 11 moreArtistic Research, Art Education, Arts Education and Pedagogy, Practice-led art research, Art-practice led interdisciplinary research, Education of Fine Arts, Fine Arts Education, Practice-led research, Practice-led research in creative arts, Artistic Based Research, and Philosophy of Art and Design Education
This is a draft of a chapter from the Writing with Images project, www.writingwithimages.com. All comments welcome on that website, or via Facebook.
Research Interests:
There is a lively conversation in literary studies and literary theory about whether the novel is a worldwide phenomenon, or if it has important regional variants that amount to separate practices. In this essay I use some of that... more
There is a lively conversation in literary studies and literary theory about whether the novel is a worldwide phenomenon, or if it has important regional variants that amount to separate practices.
In this essay I use some of that literature to try to understand the discussions in art history about global art.
This document is a chapter in a work in progress. The part on the global novel is the last (fourth) part of this chapter. The first three parts were all posted separately. The three links just below this one on Academia are to earlier versions of the first three parts. I'm keeping them all online because they are on separate subjects -- they're separately tagged, and they might interest different readers. This version is the one that is kept up to date.
Please send all comments etc. via my website, www.jameselkins.com, or by Facebook.
In this essay I use some of that literature to try to understand the discussions in art history about global art.
This document is a chapter in a work in progress. The part on the global novel is the last (fourth) part of this chapter. The first three parts were all posted separately. The three links just below this one on Academia are to earlier versions of the first three parts. I'm keeping them all online because they are on separate subjects -- they're separately tagged, and they might interest different readers. This version is the one that is kept up to date.
Please send all comments etc. via my website, www.jameselkins.com, or by Facebook.
Research Interests:
World Literatures, Literature, The Novel, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, and 14 moreTheory of the Novel, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Globalization And Postcolonial Studies, World Literature, Postmodern Literature, Globalization and literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Literatura, Global Literature, Franco Moretti, Global Anglophone Literature, Immanuel Wallerstein, David Damrosch, and World Languages and Literatures
This is a chapter in the book "The End of Diversity in Art Historical Writing," available at the URL listed here.
Research Interests:
This is part of a project called "Writing with Images." This chapter is an attempt to make two very provisional lists: 1. How images work in nonfiction, like art history, art criticism, and cultural studies 2. How images work in... more
This is part of a project called "Writing with Images." This chapter is an attempt to make two very provisional lists:
1. How images work in nonfiction, like art history, art criticism, and cultural studies
2. How images work in fiction, such as W.G. Sebald and others, where photographs and other images go alongside narratives.
All comments welcome on my website or on Facebook!
1. How images work in nonfiction, like art history, art criticism, and cultural studies
2. How images work in fiction, such as W.G. Sebald and others, where photographs and other images go alongside narratives.
All comments welcome on my website or on Facebook!
Research Interests:
Ontology, English Literature, Art History, Publishing, Book History, and 20 moreLiterature, History of the Book, Literary Criticism, Literary Stylistics, Surrealism, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Modernism (Art History), Modernism, Printing History, Conceptual Art, Philosophy of Images, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, W.G. Sebald (Area Studies), André Breton, Concrete Poetry, Post-modernism, Dadaism & Surrealism, W.G. Sebald, and Book Design
This is widely taken to be the first novel written with photographs in it. It may have been influential for Breton, W.G. Sebald, and many others. These notes are a first attempt at reading the images slowly and carefully, to see how they... more
This is widely taken to be the first novel written with photographs in it. It may have been influential for Breton, W.G. Sebald, and many others.
These notes are a first attempt at reading the images slowly and carefully, to see how they work alongside the text. Previous readings have either ignored the images, or treated them separately from the narrative.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project that is being developed live online; all comments are welcome on my website (jameselkins.com) or Facebook.
These notes are a first attempt at reading the images slowly and carefully, to see how they work alongside the text. Previous readings have either ignored the images, or treated them separately from the narrative.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project that is being developed live online; all comments are welcome on my website (jameselkins.com) or Facebook.
Research Interests:
"Nadja" is one of Breton's two illustrated books. It is central in Surrealism and had measurable influence on later generations of writers who use images. My own sense of it is that it's a consistently non-visual book: Breton has only a... more
"Nadja" is one of Breton's two illustrated books. It is central in Surrealism and had measurable influence on later generations of writers who use images. My own sense of it is that it's a consistently non-visual book: Breton has only a cursory interest in the visual; he uses photographs as "documents" of places, objects, and people, and he rarely looks closely at what he is reproducing.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project; more posts are here, and on writingwithimages.com. All comments welcome.
This is part of the "Writing with Images" project; more posts are here, and on writingwithimages.com. All comments welcome.
Research Interests:
The Novel, Surrealism, Science Fiction, Dada, Dada In Europe & New York (Man Ray & M. Duchamp), and 8 moreAndré Breton, Paul Eluard, Experimental Writing, Experimental Writing, Creative Writing Workshops, and Avant-Garde Texts, Illustrated Books, Surrealist Art Theory (A. Breton, M. Ernst, Man Ray)., Dadaism & Surrealism, and Nadja
This is a class that uses the text "The End of Diversity in Art Historical Writing." It is intended to survey styles of art historical writing worldwide.
Research Interests:
This is a syllabus for one of my grad-level classes on experimental writing. This one is on texts with images, and it includes fiction and hybrid forms. It's intended as a survey of contemporary writing that contains images (mainly... more
This is a syllabus for one of my grad-level classes on experimental writing. This one is on texts with images, and it includes fiction and hybrid forms. It's intended as a survey of contemporary writing that contains images (mainly photographs).
Research Interests:
This is a syllabus for one of my survey classes of world art history, from its beginnings to c. 1850. I wonder if it might be one of the longer syllabi out there?
Research Interests:
This is an older (2010) syllabus for a class I taught introducing visual studies.