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James Elkins

James Elkins Books

Art critic

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“My favourite letter, of all the ones I have received. "Hello. I cried in a museum in front of a Gaugin painting - because somehow he had managed to paint a transparent pink dress. I could almost see the dress wafting in the hot breeze. I cried at the Louvre in front of Victory. She had no arms, but she was so tall. I cried (so hard I had to leave) at a little concern where a young man played solo cello Bach suites. It was in a weird little Methodist church and there were only about fifteen of us in the audience, the cellist alone on the stage. It was midday. I cried because (I guess) I was overcome with love. It was impossible for me to shake the sensation (mental, physical) that J.S. Bach was in the room with me, and I loved him. These three instances (and the others I am now recollecting) I think have something to do with loneliness… a kind of craving for the company of beauty. Others, I suppose, might say God. But this feels too simple a response. Robin Parks”

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Book:Pictures and Tears
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“In my living room there are two large bookcases, each one eight feet tall, and they have about five hundred books between them. If I step up to a shelf and look at the books one by one, I can remember something about each. As a historian once said, some stare at me reproachfully, grumbling that I have never read them. One may remind me vaguely of a time when I was interested in romantic novels. An old college text will elicit a pang of unhappiness about studying. Each book has its character, and even books I know very well also have this kind of wordless flavor. Now if I step back from the shelf and look quickly across both bookcases I speed up that same process a hundredfold. Impressions wash across my awareness. But each book still looks back in its own way, answering the rude brevity of my gaze, calling faintly to me out of the corner of my eye. At that speed many books remain wrapped in the shadows of my awareness--I know I have looked past them and I know they are there, but I refuse to call them to mind.”

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Book:The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing – How Sight Alters the Seen and Transforms the Seer
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“I'd like to understand why it seems normal to look at astonishing achievements made by unapproachably ambitious, luminously pious, strangely obsessed artists, and toss them off with a few wry comments.”

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