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What painting is : how to think about oil painting, using the language of alchemy /

By: Publisher: New York : Routledge, [1999]Copyright date: 1999Description: x, 246 pages, 15 pages of plates : color illustrations ; 21 cmISBN:
  • 0415926629
  • 9780415926621
  • 0415921139
  • 9780415921138
Subject(s): LOC classification:
  • ND1135 .E44 1999
Contents:
Short course in forgetting chemistry -- How to count in oil and stone -- Mouldy materia prima -- How do substances occupy the mind -- Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating -- Studio as a kind of psychosis -- Steplessness -- Beautiful reddish light of the philosopher's's stone -- Last words.
Summary: Here, Elkins argues that alchemists and painters have similar relationships to the substances they work with. Both try to transform the substance, while seeking to transform their own experience.Summary: "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. 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 Is is like nothing you have ever read about art." -- Publisher's description
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Book Book Whitecliffe Library General Shelves General ND 1135 ELK (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Issued 15/04/2024 0007124

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-231) and index.

Short course in forgetting chemistry -- How to count in oil and stone -- Mouldy materia prima -- How do substances occupy the mind -- Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating -- Studio as a kind of psychosis -- Steplessness -- Beautiful reddish light of the philosopher's's stone -- Last words.

Here, Elkins argues that alchemists and painters have similar relationships to the substances they work with. Both try to transform the substance, while seeking to transform their own experience.

"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. 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 Is is like nothing you have ever read about art." -- Publisher's description

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