What Painting Is
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
Unlike many books on painting that usually talk about art or painters, James Elkins compelling and original work focuses on alchemy, for like the alchemist, the painter seeks to transform and be transformed by the medium.
Read more
In What Painting Is, James Elkins communicates the experience of painting beyond the traditional vocabulary of art history. Alchemy provides a magical language to explore what it is a painter really does in her or his studio - the smells, the mess, the struggle to control the uncontrollable, the special knowledge only painters hold of how colours will mix, and how they will look.
Written from the perspective of a painter-turned-art historian, What Painting Isis like nothing you have ever read about art.
"
Liked What Painting Is? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked What Painting Is. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings Shares art, art theory, art history -
The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1960-1993 Shares art, art theory, nonfiction -
On Painting Shares art, nonfiction, art theory -
Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice Shares art, painting, nonfiction
