Quotes by James Elkins

James Elkins

A few moments before the sun sets, the dark Earth shadow begins to rise in the east… It is nothing less than the shadow of the entire Earth, cast upward onto the atmosphere itself… I saw it over the great plains, and I felt as if I could sense the Earth pivoting silently under my feet.

Atmosphere

Dark

Feet

A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by the look of coloured slurries on the palette.

Looks

Mixtures

Oil

All seeing, I think, is painful. Every photograph is a little sting, a hurt inflicted in its subject, but even more: every glance hurts in some way, freezing and condensing what’s seen into something that it is not.

Hurt

Littles

Thinking

As the decades go by, a painter’s life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.

Doe

Oil

Stories

At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colours of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, I was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright I could not remember having seen it on any object.

Fire

Music

Rainbow

Every meaning is a projection of the viewer’s inarticulate moods.

Inarticulate

Mood

Projection

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.

Achievement

Ambitious

Artist

If paintings are so important – worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often – then isn’t it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.

Artist

Emotional

Important

In the context of a question regarding what an artist might be, I would want to raise the question of what a theorist might be, to signal how inextricably linked these existences and practices might be.

Artist

Practice

Want

It is as if only irrelevance can be promoted as art.

Art

Irrelevance

Modernism

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Achievement

Ambitious

Art

Artist

Atmosphere

Beautiful

Blood

Breathing

Brilliant

Color

Criticism

Dark

Discovery

Doe

Emotional

Eye

Feet

Finishing

Fire

Firsts

Gestures

Giving

Glances

Glimpse

Hands

Hurt

Important

Inarticulate

Irrelevance

Leaving

Littles

Long

Looks

Matter

Mechanism

Memories

Metamorphosis

Mirrors

Mixtures

Modernism

Mood

Moon

Morning

Movement

Moving

Music

Numbers

Oil

Opposites

Painting

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by James Elkins

James Elkins

A few moments before the sun sets, the dark Earth shadow begins to rise in the east… It is nothing less than the shadow of the entire Earth, cast upward onto the atmosphere itself… I saw it over the great plains, and I felt as if I could sense the Earth pivoting silently under my feet.

A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by the look of coloured slurries on the palette.

All seeing, I think, is painful. Every photograph is a little sting, a hurt inflicted in its subject, but even more: every glance hurts in some way, freezing and condensing what’s seen into something that it is not.

As the decades go by, a painter’s life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.

At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colours of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, I was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright I could not remember having seen it on any object.

Every meaning is a projection of the viewer’s inarticulate moods.

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.

If paintings are so important – worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often – then isn’t it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.

In the context of a question regarding what an artist might be, I would want to raise the question of what a theorist might be, to signal how inextricably linked these existences and practices might be.

It is as if only irrelevance can be promoted as art.

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Topics by James Elkins

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