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What Painting Is
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.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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1238 people want to read
About the author
James Elkins
101 books219 followersJames Elkins (1955 – present) is an art historian and art critic. He is E.C. Chadbourne Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He also coordinates the Stone Summer Theory Institute, a short term school on contemporary art history based at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
August 29, 2007
A must for painters. It has changed my view of painting and art making.
May 31, 2016
I found myself skipping around in this book for the parts that interested me. For those who don't know me well, I'll explain...I never do that. I like to enjoy a book's progression from beginning to end. I like to see the author develop their ideas and expand on them. I figure that's the reason they wrote it that way, in the order they chose to write it. So, to say that I did what I did, is not high praise. That said, he has some interesting and thought provoking things to say about painting, and about alchemy. Just a bit too much about alchemy and not enough about painting for me to think that this book merits the title that was chosen for it. Perhaps, "How Alchemy Is Like Painting", or some such title. I might go back to it someday, I might not, but I'll probably never get through it from the beginning to the end like a proper reader.
Times change and people too. I regret this earlier review because after all I've gone back to this book several times since. Leaving my previous review nonetheless as a reminder of the peregrinations of the human mind.
Times change and people too. I regret this earlier review because after all I've gone back to this book several times since. Leaving my previous review nonetheless as a reminder of the peregrinations of the human mind.
November 10, 2018
I picked up this book in the middle of an arduous film painting job. The kind that stretches out for months and ends up involving little more than ageing props in shades of brown and black. I’ve finally finished it in the Scandinavian wilderness, many months later.
I don’t know what I expected, but in retrospect I should have used the hour of alertness after work for painting rather than reading about it. Perhaps it was my constantly resurfacing arrogance; I read more than any of my co-workers and sometimes I catch myself hoping that eventually this will make me a better artist than them.
But nothing makes a good painter but painting.
Elkins even mentions this once or twice which makes the whole point of this meandering academic book a little bit moot.
I do think he’s captured some of the endless thoughts that flow trough you while really in the zone. Even if his thoughts are 200% more intelligent than mine. I enjoyed reading about the alchemy of paints, but the whole book could have been a booklet and still contained the same salient information.
I don’t know what I expected, but in retrospect I should have used the hour of alertness after work for painting rather than reading about it. Perhaps it was my constantly resurfacing arrogance; I read more than any of my co-workers and sometimes I catch myself hoping that eventually this will make me a better artist than them.
But nothing makes a good painter but painting.
Elkins even mentions this once or twice which makes the whole point of this meandering academic book a little bit moot.
I do think he’s captured some of the endless thoughts that flow trough you while really in the zone. Even if his thoughts are 200% more intelligent than mine. I enjoyed reading about the alchemy of paints, but the whole book could have been a booklet and still contained the same salient information.
September 14, 2012
There are passages where he talks about painting that get me so excited. Then he'll go for 20 pages breaking down the history of Alchemy and I get a glaze over looked in my eyes. Then he'll bring it back to painting, and it's as if someone yanked on a hook that i forgot was in my mouth. If you can get through the alchemy the parts on painting are like poetry.
January 3, 2013
What Painting Is is James Elkins' excellent effort to explore the practice of Oil Painting by using analogies from Alchemical practices of the past. He shows these analogies primarily through a discussion of substances and how they "occupy the mind" of both painter and alchemist.
This is a heady, but not overly intellectual exploration which painters, art historians, and art lovers alike will find to be enjoyable and thought-provoking. I would also recommend this book to the spouses and lovers of artists, as it may help them to understand a bit of what it's like to live with an artist's obsessions and maybe to better understand the odd beings they've fallen in love with.
Elkins includes many references to contemporary and original alchemical documents in his chapter notes.
This is my third time reading this book and each time, I've found more to contemplate. I'm about to set up a new painting studio here in France, and I am extra inspired to get to work and let the substances "occupy my mind".
This is a heady, but not overly intellectual exploration which painters, art historians, and art lovers alike will find to be enjoyable and thought-provoking. I would also recommend this book to the spouses and lovers of artists, as it may help them to understand a bit of what it's like to live with an artist's obsessions and maybe to better understand the odd beings they've fallen in love with.
Elkins includes many references to contemporary and original alchemical documents in his chapter notes.
This is my third time reading this book and each time, I've found more to contemplate. I'm about to set up a new painting studio here in France, and I am extra inspired to get to work and let the substances "occupy my mind".
January 28, 2019
Was jazzed on the title and expecting a good read from a perusal of comments, but even though the author writes about a number of painters I like, I couldn’t get into this, and I’m a painter who entertained an interest in the metaphorical associations painting has with alchemy.
This book is a quasi scholarly (that is, authoritative-sounding) articulation of the authors subjective experience. I don’t connect and don’t wish to taint my understanding of painting with what he’s throwing down.
“In a museum it is often possible to tell an experienced painter from an historian because the painter will step up to a picture and make gestures, or trace outlines... an historian or a critic will freeze in front of a painting or adopt a solid teacherly pose.”
Right? I always break into shaman dance in front of a Pollock, I just can’t help myself! And would you just look at the frozen critics! Wtf?
This book is a quasi scholarly (that is, authoritative-sounding) articulation of the authors subjective experience. I don’t connect and don’t wish to taint my understanding of painting with what he’s throwing down.
“In a museum it is often possible to tell an experienced painter from an historian because the painter will step up to a picture and make gestures, or trace outlines... an historian or a critic will freeze in front of a painting or adopt a solid teacherly pose.”
Right? I always break into shaman dance in front of a Pollock, I just can’t help myself! And would you just look at the frozen critics! Wtf?
November 12, 2013
Not for me. It's really about Alchemy with a bit of painting thrown in. I got to about page 100 and wondered what I was actually getting out of this. I decided I've walked away with a thought that painting is a bit like alchemy - and that's it really.
May 15, 2024
There is a novel idea within this short book, that painting cannot be described with any extant descriptive language but can perhaps be expressed through the nomenclature of alchemy. It is certainly interesting and the result can be cute, but Elkins might have better put it to a short polemical essay rather than this book-length project.
The first thing to get straight is that Elkins is not discussing paintings here. Rather, he is writing about the actual act of painting itself, what it is like to live among oils and paints and brushes and the mess of an artist's studio. Elkins, who trained as a painter before shifting into academia, argues that art critics and historians cannot grasp what painting actually is because all they care about is the painting itself, not the work that goes into it. This is, by his own occasional admission, not even strictly true, but it doesn't let it get in the way of his sweeping claims.
The main point for him is that because the critics and historians have so neglected the act of painting itself, there is no way to describe what painting actually is. However, he claims, if we turn to the language of alchemy we can discover a cognate language that describes the act almost perfectly. So far so good, but the detachment of painting as verb and noun makes this a curiously anti-aesthetic argument that never really comes to much of a point.
There are too many romantic depictions of painters laboring in their studios, about how they are different from other people, and how they are the equivalent of alchemists experimenting in labs with noxious materials and trying to create the perfect combination. It's all a little confused, because while the aesthetic is ignored in the argument on the formal level, it is actually deployed constantly to describe painters and what they do, as well as a huge reliance on the search for the sublime that both painters and alchemists seek. The sublime is, of course, very much an aesthetic category, so the argument more or less falls apart here.
While the book is very nicely written at the sentence level and Elkins has a decidedly poetic touch at points, the argument is very thin and never really develops into anything substantial. It's a shame because there is no doubt something in this, but it would have worked better if the claims Elkins makes were more modest and the analogy of painting to alchemy was given a more lighthearted touch.
The first thing to get straight is that Elkins is not discussing paintings here. Rather, he is writing about the actual act of painting itself, what it is like to live among oils and paints and brushes and the mess of an artist's studio. Elkins, who trained as a painter before shifting into academia, argues that art critics and historians cannot grasp what painting actually is because all they care about is the painting itself, not the work that goes into it. This is, by his own occasional admission, not even strictly true, but it doesn't let it get in the way of his sweeping claims.
The main point for him is that because the critics and historians have so neglected the act of painting itself, there is no way to describe what painting actually is. However, he claims, if we turn to the language of alchemy we can discover a cognate language that describes the act almost perfectly. So far so good, but the detachment of painting as verb and noun makes this a curiously anti-aesthetic argument that never really comes to much of a point.
There are too many romantic depictions of painters laboring in their studios, about how they are different from other people, and how they are the equivalent of alchemists experimenting in labs with noxious materials and trying to create the perfect combination. It's all a little confused, because while the aesthetic is ignored in the argument on the formal level, it is actually deployed constantly to describe painters and what they do, as well as a huge reliance on the search for the sublime that both painters and alchemists seek. The sublime is, of course, very much an aesthetic category, so the argument more or less falls apart here.
While the book is very nicely written at the sentence level and Elkins has a decidedly poetic touch at points, the argument is very thin and never really develops into anything substantial. It's a shame because there is no doubt something in this, but it would have worked better if the claims Elkins makes were more modest and the analogy of painting to alchemy was given a more lighthearted touch.
Read
June 22, 2010"This is a conceptual swamp where qualities are tangled with substances, and properties with states. The alchemists debated the nature of qualities; sometimes they thought of them as clothes that could be taken off, leaving the pure "body' of the object, and other times they thought qualities were the body itself...... the moral I draw from these debates.... is that where alchemy and painting are concerned, there is no reason to distinguish substances, qualities, principles, and even elements. What matters in any specific instance is what is occupying the mind: a certain oil varnish may be engaging because it is unusually viscous, in which case a quality counts as a substance....substances occupy the mind as concepts and and concepts occupy the mind as substances." pgs 112-113
August 9, 2010
Been a while since I read it but as a professional painter, this is the only book I know that succeeds in many new ways to describe the appeal and mystery that working with the magic sticky substance of oil paint really has. It attempts no less than to find out and explain the driving force behind of what all oil painting really is about. The struggle, the love-hate relationship with the medium are described beautifully. There is also a rich history of the substances. All painters will love this book. This is what great painting is really about, and you thought it was the subject matter ? Its about the process and the result. This book turns me on.
I think Ill have to read it again.
I think Ill have to read it again.
August 10, 2008
Makes me want to run to the studio. Has made me more observant about looking at painting- things I've taken for granted in my own practice and being more conscious in looking at other's work. Some parts are a little dry, but worth it.
July 24, 2008
My favorite book of all time. There is no other book, person, lecture, class, artist, etc. who has been able to put the true experiences of a painter into perfect words. The chapter on the studio is especially worthy of praise.
December 26, 2013
One of the most fascinating books from inside the painter's world, if not one of the most impressive books I've ever read.
October 11, 2024
the experience of reading this book is 10% "wow james elkins has just put so beautifully & singularly into words a fundamental raw experiential element of painting & my whole perspective on my practice has shifted slightly to accommodate this" and 90% "what the fuck is he cooking."
the former is this obsession with the materiality of painting (paint cannot just be a means to convey image! it must be more because it's an inefficient & troublesome af medium to convey images with AHHHHH i'm going insane) & the utter grimy messy putrid shittiness of the raw material (recall amy sillman! https://www.frieze.com/article/shit-h...!! i love this article) & how the substance itself conveys meaning & the perfect painting striving at that wire-thin boundary line of paint blurring into image (it's what people mean when they say a work is painterly,, imo) & the insanity of the painter in their quest to get all of this at once & how the whole insane mess seeps into everything and never comes out.
the latter is honestly nearly all the alchemy bits? sorry. i know that's the point, elkins: art historians should think about painting like alchemy instead of modern science. i just think that a 2-page list of names that historical alchemists used to refer to the materia prima is not fascinating content. and the incest (sincerely. so sincerely) comparison of alchemy & painting's insane goals was just undefensibly wild. girl. what. like i get that both of them make you insane & willing to transgress social norms in pursuit of something higher and purer & there is a very reflexive relationship between the painter and the painting. but i'm not crossing the bridge to where elkins is standing & calling it incest. masturbatory, symbiotic, toxic — sure, i could buy all of these with the right amount of argument. but elkins's argument is not earning incest.
that aside. i think what painting is would've been really radical for me had i come to art from an art history background rather than the art-making background that i have. because when one has the experience, that experiential understanding is generally rawer & worth more & harder to convey than the theoretically dictated one through book. i think elkins is still doing something valuable for the art history academic sphere with this one — just not so much for me as someone who's moving in the opposite direction. also, i like understand my guy is just shooting from the hip (this is his "casual" mind-wandering musing "taking off the academic tuxedo" book, as he says in the intro) but pls. editing. if it's published in the forum of books it should be edited.
i remember reading a snippet of this in (i believe) my first afvs class at harvard sophomore year, which in retrospect was definitely one of the better (in that 10% brilliance). but i'm glad that i only read this after my last afvs class at harvard (abstraction! changed my life. made me cry, also, but i don't think there was a single semester in college that i didn't cry for some reason or another. maybe not even a single semester in my life overall. wow i am a crybaby). abstraction is a lot about zooming in & seeing the moments & where materiality can take over & be the big picture over image. so a lot of elkins's focus on paint itself, on substance, really resonated within that framework. some good stuff for thinking of future paintings within a materialist abstract lens.
the former is this obsession with the materiality of painting (paint cannot just be a means to convey image! it must be more because it's an inefficient & troublesome af medium to convey images with AHHHHH i'm going insane) & the utter grimy messy putrid shittiness of the raw material (recall amy sillman! https://www.frieze.com/article/shit-h...!! i love this article) & how the substance itself conveys meaning & the perfect painting striving at that wire-thin boundary line of paint blurring into image (it's what people mean when they say a work is painterly,, imo) & the insanity of the painter in their quest to get all of this at once & how the whole insane mess seeps into everything and never comes out.
the latter is honestly nearly all the alchemy bits? sorry. i know that's the point, elkins: art historians should think about painting like alchemy instead of modern science. i just think that a 2-page list of names that historical alchemists used to refer to the materia prima is not fascinating content. and the incest (sincerely. so sincerely) comparison of alchemy & painting's insane goals was just undefensibly wild. girl. what. like i get that both of them make you insane & willing to transgress social norms in pursuit of something higher and purer & there is a very reflexive relationship between the painter and the painting. but i'm not crossing the bridge to where elkins is standing & calling it incest. masturbatory, symbiotic, toxic — sure, i could buy all of these with the right amount of argument. but elkins's argument is not earning incest.
that aside. i think what painting is would've been really radical for me had i come to art from an art history background rather than the art-making background that i have. because when one has the experience, that experiential understanding is generally rawer & worth more & harder to convey than the theoretically dictated one through book. i think elkins is still doing something valuable for the art history academic sphere with this one — just not so much for me as someone who's moving in the opposite direction. also, i like understand my guy is just shooting from the hip (this is his "casual" mind-wandering musing "taking off the academic tuxedo" book, as he says in the intro) but pls. editing. if it's published in the forum of books it should be edited.
i remember reading a snippet of this in (i believe) my first afvs class at harvard sophomore year, which in retrospect was definitely one of the better (in that 10% brilliance). but i'm glad that i only read this after my last afvs class at harvard (abstraction! changed my life. made me cry, also, but i don't think there was a single semester in college that i didn't cry for some reason or another. maybe not even a single semester in my life overall. wow i am a crybaby). abstraction is a lot about zooming in & seeing the moments & where materiality can take over & be the big picture over image. so a lot of elkins's focus on paint itself, on substance, really resonated within that framework. some good stuff for thinking of future paintings within a materialist abstract lens.
April 3, 2018
WHAT PAINTING IS? I’ve been asking myself that question for ages. Well, weeks, since I started to use watercolors. I’ve been drawing a portrait from the obituary pages of my newspaper every morning for almost a year now (they can’t complain that the picture doesn’t look like them), and those drawings have evolved from pen and ink to brush to ink wash and for the last couple of weeks, color.
What’s unique about James Elkins’ book is that though he’s a professor of art history, his work doesn’t trade in the typical biography, symbolic or historical context and philosophy that most writings about art circle their wagons around. Instead, he’s more interested in the dirt and water, the muddy pigment and solvents that deliver the material over the canvas. How does the artist mix and move that slush to create art?
He gets into the physical act of painting and his observations ring true to my ear. The book isn’t a practical primer though. It’s not about technique as much as experience and learning through the materials of the trade, much like alchemists. Yes, alchemists, those pseudoscientists who tried to turn lead into gold.
He compares the work of artists, mostly in oils, to that of the alchemist and things get weird. There’s a mystical, almost magical quality to both endeavors, but Elkins isn’t siding with the Christian alchemists who sought religious transformation in a nearly heretical way. Nor does he side with Carl Jung and his psychological interpretation of alchemy.
Elkins is both practical and open to the fact that the act of painting, like alchemy, is something that cannot be corralled by science or articulated in words. It must be experienced, for it's a way to understand and know the world by working through substances. As someone who paints, the book was revelational and supported what I had already intuitively knew, but it should hold the attention of anyone who’s curious and not afraid to get lost in the madness of unbridled discovery.
What’s unique about James Elkins’ book is that though he’s a professor of art history, his work doesn’t trade in the typical biography, symbolic or historical context and philosophy that most writings about art circle their wagons around. Instead, he’s more interested in the dirt and water, the muddy pigment and solvents that deliver the material over the canvas. How does the artist mix and move that slush to create art?
He gets into the physical act of painting and his observations ring true to my ear. The book isn’t a practical primer though. It’s not about technique as much as experience and learning through the materials of the trade, much like alchemists. Yes, alchemists, those pseudoscientists who tried to turn lead into gold.
He compares the work of artists, mostly in oils, to that of the alchemist and things get weird. There’s a mystical, almost magical quality to both endeavors, but Elkins isn’t siding with the Christian alchemists who sought religious transformation in a nearly heretical way. Nor does he side with Carl Jung and his psychological interpretation of alchemy.
Elkins is both practical and open to the fact that the act of painting, like alchemy, is something that cannot be corralled by science or articulated in words. It must be experienced, for it's a way to understand and know the world by working through substances. As someone who paints, the book was revelational and supported what I had already intuitively knew, but it should hold the attention of anyone who’s curious and not afraid to get lost in the madness of unbridled discovery.
May 12, 2019
This was not at all what I was expecting. I thought this was art history when in actuality it’s a book that’s literally about paint and what it’s made of. I found it very dull, as I’m not interested in the composition of paint.
May 23, 2022
I enjoyed the beginning when he was talking about the process of painting, and describing the pigments. I disliked how he related everything back to alchemy. It's just paint, bro. You can transform your spirit if you want but I'm on a different ride.
January 9, 2025
Very promising in the beginning. Never looked at painting as pure alchemy before, and it was really exciting to do so, but the repetition throughout the book made it more and more laborious to get through as it went on. It's a shame for a book with such good foundations.
April 26, 2018
Too-many-alchemy-metaphors can be maddening...I wish there is a condensed version of this book that only includes the parts referring to painting. Then this book would have been pure (real) gold.
August 10, 2019
This is a very interesting book regarding painting. I've never thought about the similarity of painting and alchemy. Recommended for any art student, artist or anyone interested in painting.
April 23, 2020
Ridiculously interesting and insightful read for anyone interested in what it really means to be a painter
April 17, 2023
the index of this book is a beautiful and strange poem. james elkins remains a writer of astonishing loveliness !!!!!
September 12, 2023
Great painters reference to remind what painting is.
May 22, 2015
A very good art book on Painting written by an Art Historian and not full of art bollix.
The difference is that Elkins was a painter. He KNOWS about the urge to paint, the joy and the pain of paint.. Now add to that his great leap and alignment of Painting with Alchemy and you have the basis for a brilliant book. But it takes someone as good as Elkins to pull this off.
It could have degenerated into art bollix or alchemical bollix (anfd at times the alchemy stuff is pretty strong) but he manages to use an insight into one to provide insights into the other.
Probably the best book I've read on what painting is about from the view of the painter - trying to get that across to a non-painter.
The difference is that Elkins was a painter. He KNOWS about the urge to paint, the joy and the pain of paint.. Now add to that his great leap and alignment of Painting with Alchemy and you have the basis for a brilliant book. But it takes someone as good as Elkins to pull this off.
It could have degenerated into art bollix or alchemical bollix (anfd at times the alchemy stuff is pretty strong) but he manages to use an insight into one to provide insights into the other.
Probably the best book I've read on what painting is about from the view of the painter - trying to get that across to a non-painter.
October 6, 2011
James Elkins = great writer on art theory/history. Writes with personality and depth. What Painting Is, really is about Oil painting specifically and he uses the practice and history of Alchemy as a metaphor the whole way through. It doesn't really answer any questions. It is a book designed to really open up what it is like to be a painter. Any art historian/art history student who is interested in European oil painting should read this.
August 8, 2016
Fascinating study of oil painting using the historical pseudo-science of alchemy. I'm not a painter, but from the perspective of a writer using literary alchemy, this gave me insights on how alchemists thought about transformation that applies to both painting and writing. It was also really fun to learn about a totally different way of seeing the substances that make up our world.
April 4, 2008
This is getting into the nitty-gritty of the material appeal and fetish interest in oil paint and the painter as alchemist. Very unique perspective for a book on paint and very well written.
August 28, 2007
Just started this
May 30, 2008
the bestest book on painting i have ever read. really magical, in the true sense of the word.
September 5, 2008
painting is alchemy. it's true.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews