Customer Reviews

What Painting Is

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Elkins uses alchemy to interpret and read paintings. It sounds strange, but the way he explains it using such an odd device helped me to expand the way I think about art and paintings. It also is a book about paint- not conceptual or computer art or even theory. It is more concerned with the physical act of pushing paint, the solid matter of pigment, and the artisan-like way a painter opperates in the studio. If youre a person who is interested in the hands-on experience in art, and like thinking about new ideas, this book will be a lot of fun. If you dont like getting your hands dirty, you may want to look elsewhere.

The central premise of the title arises from the authors assertions that Painting and Alchemy are linked. It dealt with the notions of how painting like the scientifically naive Alchemy is rife with guesswork. No joke. It compares (as one of many examples) certain passages of Monet's paintings with the sort of haphazard experimentation that goes on in Alchemy. This is a well-researched book as far as I can tell, but then again I'm no expert on Alchemy.*pause* The book attempts to educate the forlorn and lost artist/art student such as myself on the lost pseudo-science of Alchemy.*pause* I had arrived at the idea that painting and alchemy are analogous in my own artwork; which led me to this book.*pause* I cannot stress enough in this review the extent to which he uses the Alchemy/Painting contrast as a springboard to jump into a bastardized survey course on the history of Alchemy. If you want a speculative art book that attempts to concentrate on the physical act of painting (as opposed to art history & criticism of content) this maybe worth checking out. I do have reservations about the book. Elkins compared the painter's studio to a 'jailhouse' and ascribed to painting self-reflexive connotations of the painted picture. The notions of a painters awkward methods of experimenting with media and it's spiritual connection are liken to the arcane pre-sciencitfic experiments of an Alchemists laboratory. "What painting is" really helps a student or artist ponder their personal feelings toward the actual experience of painting rather than the intellectual side of the content. Recommended simply because this book is really a new type of art book that concentrates a descriptive position paper around the actual activity involved in a favorite artistic media- Not AN ARTSPEAK book, coffee table glossy, "how-to" or technical manual!

The only possible negatives: It can drag on a bit when dealing with "Alchemical history". It can be slavish to the metaphorical relationship of painting to alchemy to a fault, at the expense of discussing the working life of a painter... Bare in mind that the author mentions the life of a painter is lived in oils.

I have been painting for nearly 20 years and this is the first book that I have encountered that has accurately described the material act of painting itself from a painter's perspective. I agree to some extent with other reviewers who complained that the discussions of alchemy were too long and obscure. However, in an age of digital images this foray into obsolete and arcane mucking about is absolutely necessary to explain why paint remains a vital medium. Even without the metaphoric parallels between painting and alchemy, delving into the alchemists kitchen seems like an excellent introduction into the mind of a painter.

I have one serious reservation about this book: I do not think that it would be useful for inexperienced painters. It is all too easy to be utterly seduced by the descriptions of lush thickets of paint and exquisite glazes. These must remain a means to greater understanding rather than an end in themselves. Elkins is aware of the problem and devotes a later chapter to self-reference and narcissism.

I am keen to try this book out on non-painting friends to see what impression it makes on them...

Dear Prospective Readers:

I just finished rereading "What Painting Is." It is a wonderful book! The first time I read it years ago, I liked it a lot, but this second time it hit my heart harder. I suppose the knowledge and experience I have accumulated since my first reading have made me that much more sensitive to what Elkins had to say about painting. In particular, I think he precisely describes how a painter's thoughts transmute the paint into something other than grease, and more importantly, how the paint and the process of painting transmute the painter's thoughts. I take for granted at times that paint is changed from something liquid to something solid when it dries; thus making immutable these otherwise fluid and transient transmutations. The Painter's Stone! Thanks for reminding me about this Dr. Elkins.

The book's chapter about the psychosis of the studio was very meaningful to me, especially the section about how painting could be interpreted as --pardon me--masturbatory or `incestuous' because it cannot help being so self-referential. I can remember when I was a student how hard critiques were to take because of how close I was to my work. I must confess, I still find criticism hard to take even though it is often in a context that is meant to be constructive! From my student days I remember my work being criticized for being `self-indulgent' because my painting surfaces got so thick and clotted. I was a huge fan of those thickly painted, black and white heads by Auerbach and Kossoff, done early in their careers. I still struggle with this to this day, regardless of whether I work in oil or casein.

Last, the chapter on steplessness really got me, too. As I understand it, `steplessness' refers to the impossibility of there being steps-to-make-a-painting. Dr. Elkins legitimately casts doubt as to whether even the old masters from the Renaissance-first half of the 19th century actually worked in steps and had a formula. Moreover, Dr. Elkins dashes--rightly I think--the hopes of there being a formula to making a masterpiece. Understanding painting in steps seems like a non-painter's understanding of how a painting is made, when in actuality the best-laid plans often go awry and become chaotic once a painting gets underway!

I apologize for the length of this note. I write it with some nervousness because, I must confess, I don't think I'm much of a writer! At any rate I feel "What Painting Is" is marvelous as well as brilliant. It so eloquently describes the painting process and thoughts from a painter's perspective. After reading this book, a non-painter or someone who is not at all involved in art, would have insight into what painters do and how they think `through substances.' I'm going to make "What Painting Is" required reading for my painting students. Also, I will buy copies for my brother-a dentist, my mom-a former high school English teacher, my dad-a retired high school algebra teacher, and my wife-a professor and critic of 17th and 18th century British Poetry. These people, who are the most important people in my life, should know more about me as a painter; "What Painting Is" will explain this better than I ever could!



Sincerely,


Mike Ananian
Painter
Associate Professor of Art (Painting & Drawing)
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Elkins gives the artist and nonartist alike a new and unusual perspective on the nature of oil painting. In considering the paint as a substance, and using the language of alchemy, he opens new doors for those who have spent countless hours pushing paint around on a canvas. This is an entertaining read for anyone interested in the more esoteric aspects of painting, and his ability to find meaning in even the smallest aspects of oil painting is refreshing. Although this is not an academic work, his view of painter as alchemist certainly merits discussion in any art school.

[...]

What is painting?

Typically, art historians answer that question with a litany of the who and what for facts of painting--the social, financial, and political forces that conspired to bring a work into being. After all, their job is to securely place a work within the (academically-assigned) progression of human endeavor. An art critic may add nuance to this discussion by dissecting the position of the work on the artist's evolutionary arc or opine on the painting's merit by comparing it in compositional terms to works by other artists.

Authors of painting manuals answer by showing us how to paint--they divulge the secrets of achieving different effects with the many painterly substances.

In his 1999 book What Painting Is, James Elkins takes a different approach. He explores the why of painting, every bit as fascinating and important as the what for and how. Elkins points acknowledges that painting is a metamorphic act, simply put, "the name for what happens when paint moves across a blank canvas." The book is his thesis on the experiential process of transforming basic material substances--once pulverized stone (pigment) and water (oil). In this regard, painters in their studios are very much like alchemists in their labs--they wrestle, coax, redo, and every so often miraculously succeed in converting their raw materials into something of transcendent beauty.

It may seem far-fetched to compare painting and alchemy, particularly in the post-Enlightenment world of chemistry:

"Despite all its bad press, and its association with quackery and nonsense, alchemy is the best and most eloquent way to understand how paint can mean: how it can be so entrancing, so utterly addictive, so replete with expressive force, that it can keep hold of an artist's attention for an entire lifetime. Alchemists had immediate, intuitive knowledge of waters and stones, and their obscure books can help give voice to the ongoing fascination of painting." (p.7)

A Professor of Art History at The School of the Chicago Art Institute who trained as a painter, Elkins does bring substantial authority to his central proposition: that the essence of a painting is in the visible and invisible processes that went into creating it. Using details from range of paintings--from Sasetta, Monet, Debuffet, Pollock, Rembrandt, Nolde, among others--Elkins discusses the similarity in the processes painters (and alchemists) go through to create their magic.

It's a seductive comparison, which largely holds a reader's interest, because most of the discussion on alchemy is kept within range of the uninitiated. Further, Elkins always returns to the discipline of painting, which is the more important topic of the two, afterall. That said, I found some of the alchemic discussions a bit obscure and a few of the analogies to painting slavishly concocted. The chapter on "Moldy material prima" was brilliant, but my interest waned more than a few times in the chapter on "Coagulating, cohobating, macerating, reverberating."

Still, the observations on painting are more often than not heady and inspirational. I suspect painters will nod vigorously in agreement. A long passage on Jackson Pollock winds up this way:

"Thinking of the painting as a layered sequence, it may seem as if Pollock was actually working toward a kind of order, so that the painting would reveal its creation, step-by-step, to a careful investigator. But Pollock was desperately interested in avoiding the normal structure of drawing and painting. It is rarely possible to follow a stream of paint as it winds its way across the canvas (as museum docents often advise visitors to do). Whatever such a layer became too obvious, he obfuscated it, tangling it back into a pattern as if he were stitching a stray thread. Where marks threatened to become too clear, Pollock let a messy beige drip fall just on top of them, or he held the brush still while it spun a thread of paint, piling up like syrup on a pancake. . .

. . . It may be that what Pollock feared, and wanted most to destroy, was the long continuous contour that would imply a human figure. . ." (p.93)

Near the end of the book, Elkins hones in exactly why painters are so addicted to paint:

"Oil paint can't be entrancing just because it can create an illusion, because every medium does that. No: painters love paint iteself, so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to, rather than abandoning it and taking up pencil drawing, or charcoal, or watercolor, or photography. (though I might argue that watercolor is paint. . .)

It is no wonder that painters can be so entranced by paint. Substances occupy the mind profoundly, tethering moods to thoughts, tangling stray feelings with the movement of the body, engaging the full capacity of response and concentrating it on unpromising lumps of paint and color. There is no meaning that cannot seem to flow from the paint iteself. . ."

As a painter, I think his are among the best descriptions of the process of creating with the paint medium out there.

Although the author occasionally gets bogged down in the esoteric notions of alchemy this book may be just the thing you've been looking for if you need to see painting in a new light. There are many insights available here that you won't find in any other book on painting. I highly recommend this book to the serious painter.

Truly excellent book for artists. So many books on art are at best irritating, but this one was wonderful. Sent me into my studio filled with energy and ideas.

Not sure the exact reason, but this is my favorite read this year.
I mix my own paints, and this the only book gets
the joy of mixing oil pigments and experimenting.

I did read this on the Kindle, btw, which was a bit tricky, but
still solid.

This is a serious book for painters. If you are having a problem with what or why you're painting, this book may help. It seeks to explain painting from a truly unique viewpiont. Elkins does an excellent job. A fasinating book. An intellectual exercise.