Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?

James Elkins is Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including What PaintingIs (Routledge, 1998) and The Object Stares Back: On theNature of Seeing (1996).

• INTRODUCTION: MUTILATED FIRE UNITE PART 1 CONSIDERING THINGS 1 THE EVIDENCE OF EXCESS 2 WHAT COUNTS AS COMPLEXITY? PART 2 STAYING CALM 3 HOW TO SOLVE PICTURE PUZZLES 4 AN AMBILOGY OF PAINTED MEANINGS 5 ON MONSTROUSLY AMBIGUOUS PAINTINGS 6 CALMING THE DELIRIUM OF INTERPRETATION PART 3 LOSING CONTROL 7 HIDDEN IMAGES: CRYPTOMORPHS, ANAMORPHS, AND ALEAMORPHS 8 THE BEST WORK OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART HISTORY 9 ENVOI: ON MEANINGLESSNESS

"Elkin's book...is a gentle jab at his profession's habit of generating 'intricate and voluminous' interpretations of paintings." -- Inside Publishing"...Elkins argues that all our responses to pictures vacillate between conflicting desires to interpret, or read, and merely to see. He tracks these impulses from one extreme-- in ancient writing systems and mathematical notation-- to another, in modern abstract painting that tries to contrive a purely optical experience. The survey is arduous, but it is also fascinating." -- TheSan Francisco Chronicle"Cogent, conversational and lucid, this book provides a useful, nuanced understanding of what ordinary viewers today share with 'the discipline [that] thrives on the pleasure of problems well solved'." -- Publisher's Weekly"A daring challenge to all those who would continue to defend art history's status as a positivistic discipline... a dazzling intellectual achievement." -- Keith Moxey, Barnard College"Written with crystalline elegance and analytical rigor, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? will be of interest not only to students of visual culture, but also to anyone concerned with interpretation in the humanities as a whole." -- Martin Jay, University of California at Berkeley