Customer Reviews

Pictures and Tears : A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

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Jame Elkins has written a book that should be in the librairies of schools, art historians, incipient and experienced art lovers. In a winning conversational style of writing Elkins makes the case for subjective response to paintings, both past and present. And in doing so he gives a brief course in at history (he is an art historian, actively teaching) that is less a chronological evaluation of politics and sociology and techniques of painting than it is a survey of how people have responded to paintings through time. His precis: we are in this century prevented from "experiencing" paintings, so immersed are we in swallowing the opinions of scholars and critics and our own spiritual aridity. He examines why certain people are able to cry in their encounter with paintings, others are moved to physiologic reactions, while others speedily walk past image after image in their need to huury past another obligatory check point in claiming cultural awareness. In many ways this is a sad treatise on the fact that we have arrived at a time when we don't embrace our vulnerability, don't admit that something so apparently inanimate as an old master painting - if given the quantity and quality of time to absorb it - can touch inner secret caves and cause us to light up our souls and our existence by responding with unfettered eyes and heart.

Elkins investigates the various responses (including his own) to the Rothko Chapel, to Giotto, to Renaissance paintings, to the Romantics, to Friedrich, and to Picasso's "Guernica". These are in the form of summation of letters written to him in response to his question "Have you ever cried at paintings?" sent to previous students, art historians, and friends. His findings show that art historians in general have encouraged us to examine paintings as examples of technique, of historical settings, of schools of thought in the past: such academic dissection has replaced the individual response to the visual image. And fortunately for us the author concludes that the visceral response to paintings is more important than the cell of academic cold shelter.

For those of us who have committed our lives to bridging the gap between the painter and the public, encouraging everyone to go to the museums, galleries, schools, and churches to experience the indefinable majesty of emotional response to art, this little book is a godsend. Buy it, read it slowly, break down your own barriers, open your mind, and you will find validation of your inner artist. This is a "beautiful presence" of an artistic expression and we are indebted to Elkins for his courage in writing it.

"Pictures and Tears" is a rare book, smart, knowledgeable and soulful, an eloquent homage to the mysteries of art. I bought it several times and gave it to friends, most of them painters. I also gave it to Oliver Sacks, who I interviewed for a German magazine, after he told me he was working on a book on tears.

This book is beautifully illustrated with paintings by Caravaggio, Greuze, Bellini (Giovanni), Bouts, and Friedrich along with a picture of a chapel designed by Mark Rothko.

As the blurb states, it is a "strange and wonderful investigation into paintings and the emotions they conjure."

The book is eloquently written by the author James Elkins who is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has also authored "How To Use Your Eyes" and "What Painting Is".

This is a highly affecting book and will give hours of pleasure to those discerning readers who have the privilege to read the author's opus.

Timothy Wingate from OTTAWA CANADA

Help! Someone please refund my money on this book! Better yet...the time I wasted reading it.

Elkins is a fine educator and writer, but this book does not fall into either category. This is 250+words of over-intellectualizing on "why" certain paintings move people to tears.

As a professional painter for over two decades, a former Arts Ambassador for the USIA, as well as a world traveler with a love for art, allow me to save potential readers from wasting $19.95, and to give Prof. Elkins' brain a rest.

"I have seen fabulously created art that does not sell or hold its viewers, and poorly created art that does both. Whether a painting brings you to tears or to purchase, it is because the energy the artist held while creating that work stays in that work forever. If the artist was angry at the world, no matter how perfectly that work may be to the trained eye, its energy will be angry and repel its viewers. Joy, loss, and deep spirituality, when held in the heart during creation, is what will bring a viewer to tears." Uriel Dana