Elkins

Abstract of the book:

Questo libro racconta i modi di preparazione della pittura. Descrive i processi che gli artisti compiono, nei loro studi, per trasmutare istanze e significati di materie elementari, acqua, terra, aria e fuoco. È la cucina della pittura. James Elkins, professore e pittore, esamina quadri di Leonardo, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Monet, Dubuffet, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud. Ne rileva gli ingredienti, le dosi, gli utensili, ma anche la gestualità e gli umori. Ricette difficili da tramandare, come in ogni cucina che si rispetti, che qui hanno una chiave di volta nel confronto con l’alchimia, cultura dei comportamenti e delle trasformazioni della materia. Elkins va incontro agli storici dell’arte, che si sentono a disagio con gli “impasti” dell’opera, ma vorrebbero capirci di più. Reinterpreta la filosofia dell’immaginazione. E soprattutto dota i semiologi di nuovi strumenti d’analisi, in grado di esplicitare i programmi narrativi della pittura: operazioni concatenate – macerare, miscelare, separare, distillare… – e transizioni di fase – congelazione, sublimazione, precipitazione, putrefazione. Ecco un libro per pensare la pittura dall’interno, prima che diventi historia e per l’incidenza che ha su di essa.
C’è una scienza del concreto che finora non ha avuto il giusto credito.

This article examines the relationship between reflecting and making in the context of the new institutional connection between research and art/design. The article argues that while this new dispensation offers exciting possibilities for fruitful cross- and interdisciplinary development, caution is necessary to ensure that the artistic domain retains a level of autonomy within the broader university.

For elucidation, the article initially looks to the early history of education in our fields and to Pierre Bourdieu’s account of the “early moments of the autonomization of the artistic field,” in his critique of the “scholastic disposition.” Bourdieu recognises “a repression of the material determinations of symbolic practices” within those early developments: in effect, a repression of those embodied, situated, and practical aspects of art and design production. He regards such repression as a trait of the broader academy, both then and in subsequent and recent periods. The article argues that this attitude still provides the impetus for what James Elkins refers to as “the incommensurability of studio art production and university life.”

The article further argues that a parity of esteem between reflecting and making is vital not only for the sake of the stability of the fields of art and design but for the ongoing development of the broader university. In this argument the article looks to the work of John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Publishers Description: ""Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series, and the seminars on which they are based, brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This third volume in the series, What Do Artists Know?, is about the education of artists. The MFA degree is notoriously poorly conceptualized, and now it is giving way to the PhD in art practice. Meanwhile, conversations on freshman courses in studio art continue to be bogged down by conflicting agendas. This book is about the theories that underwrite art education at all levels, the pertinent history of art education, and the most promising current conceptualizations.  The contributors are Glenn Adamson, Rina Arya, Louisa Avgita, Jan Baetens, Su Baker, Jeroen Boomgaard, Brad Buckley, William Conger, John Conomos, Anders Dahlgren, Laurie Fendrich, Michael Fotiadis, Christopher Frayling, Charles Green, Vanalyne Green, Tom McGuirk, Robert Nelson, Hákan Nilsson, Peter Plagens, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Howard Singerman, Henk Slager, George Smith, Martin Søberg, Roy Sorensen, Bert Taken, Janneke Wesseling, Frances Whitehead, Gary Willis, and Yeung Yang."  The Editor James Elkins "is E. C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He coedited the previous volumes in the series, Art and Globalization (Penn State, 2010) and What Is an Image? (Penn State, 2011).""