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Pictures and Tears
Does art leave you cold? And is that what it's supposed to do? Or is a painting meant to move you to tears? Hemingway was reduced to tears in the midst of a drinking bout when a painting by James Thurber caught his eye. And what's bad about that? In Pictures and Tears, art historian James Elkins tells the story of paintings that have made people cry. Drawing upon anecdotes related to individual works of art, he provides a chronicle of how people have shown emotion before works of art in the past, and a meditation on the curious tearlessness with which most people approach art in the present. Deeply personal, Pictures and Tears is a history of emotion and vulnerability, and an inquiry into the nature of art. This book is a rare and invaluable treasure for people who love art. Also includes an 8-page color insert.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
James Elkins
94 books165 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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July 22, 2022
کتاب را می‌توان به دو بخش تقسیم کرد
بخش اول درباره‌ی هنر است. درباره‌ی آثار و هنرمندانی که توانسته‌اند اثر ویژه‌ای بر مخاطب‌شان بگذارند و اعمال آنها را از عرف دیدن یک نقاشی خارج کنند
بخش دوم درباره‌ی اشک است. ماهیت و چگونگی گریستن و رابطه‌ی آن با هنر
بخش اول با آثار سارجنت، رگنالت، پیکاسو، روتکو و دیگران به تاریخ و اهمیت آنها می‌پردازد و به بررسی حالات افرادی می‌پردازد که در مقابل نقاشی گریسته‌اند. چگونگی اشک ریختن مخاطب و اینکه آیا شغل سواد و آشنایی با هنر تاثیری در گریستن دارد یا نه
بخش دوم با مروری بر نظرات متفکران بر گریستن آغاز می‌شود. و در ادامه نشان می‌دهد چگونه در جهان معاصر اشک ریختن در مقابل یک اثر هنری امری اشتباه و خلاف شده است. مخاطب خاص هنر اشک ریختن را نوعی ضعف می‌داند و یا به حدی در تاریخ اثر گرفتار است که شور دیدن برایش بی‌معناست. الکینز می‌گوید خودش هم دچار همین قضیه شده است و درک او از تاریخ هنر اجازه نمی‌دهد کاملا در مقابل اثر قرار گیرد. این تفکر به مخاطب عام نیز بسط پیدا کرده و انگار دیگر هنر را باید بدون شور و هیجانات زیاد نگریست. جالب است که بیشتر افراد دانشگاهی‌ای که خاطره‌ای از اشک ریختن داشته‌اند خواسته‌اند نامشان فاش نشود
عجیب است که بگوییم کسی مانند الکینز که درباره‌ی تاریخ هنر می‌اندیشد آدم باحالی است. اما الکینز واقعا آدم باحال و جذابی است که به خوبی می‌داند چگونه تمامی مخاطبانش را به موضوع صحبتش جذب کند. کتاب با وجود داده‌های بسیار و افراد زیاد و اصطلاحات هنری تبدیل به اثر خشک و سردی نمی‌شود و احساس هم‌نشینی با افرادی مانند خودت که عاشق هنرند را می‌دهد
:کتاب با این جمله به پایان می‌رسد
هنوز یقین ندارم. اما می‌دانم زندگی بدون عشق، زندگی آسانی است
بخش اول درباره‌ی هنر است. درباره‌ی آثار و هنرمندانی که توانسته‌اند اثر ویژه‌ای بر مخاطب‌شان بگذارند و اعمال آنها را از عرف دیدن یک نقاشی خارج کنند
بخش دوم درباره‌ی اشک است. ماهیت و چگونگی گریستن و رابطه‌ی آن با هنر
بخش اول با آثار سارجنت، رگنالت، پیکاسو، روتکو و دیگران به تاریخ و اهمیت آنها می‌پردازد و به بررسی حالات افرادی می‌پردازد که در مقابل نقاشی گریسته‌اند. چگونگی اشک ریختن مخاطب و اینکه آیا شغل سواد و آشنایی با هنر تاثیری در گریستن دارد یا نه
بخش دوم با مروری بر نظرات متفکران بر گریستن آغاز می‌شود. و در ادامه نشان می‌دهد چگونه در جهان معاصر اشک ریختن در مقابل یک اثر هنری امری اشتباه و خلاف شده است. مخاطب خاص هنر اشک ریختن را نوعی ضعف می‌داند و یا به حدی در تاریخ اثر گرفتار است که شور دیدن برایش بی‌معناست. الکینز می‌گوید خودش هم دچار همین قضیه شده است و درک او از تاریخ هنر اجازه نمی‌دهد کاملا در مقابل اثر قرار گیرد. این تفکر به مخاطب عام نیز بسط پیدا کرده و انگار دیگر هنر را باید بدون شور و هیجانات زیاد نگریست. جالب است که بیشتر افراد دانشگاهی‌ای که خاطره‌ای از اشک ریختن داشته‌اند خواسته‌اند نامشان فاش نشود
عجیب است که بگوییم کسی مانند الکینز که درباره‌ی تاریخ هنر می‌اندیشد آدم باحالی است. اما الکینز واقعا آدم باحال و جذابی است که به خوبی می‌داند چگونه تمامی مخاطبانش را به موضوع صحبتش جذب کند. کتاب با وجود داده‌های بسیار و افراد زیاد و اصطلاحات هنری تبدیل به اثر خشک و سردی نمی‌شود و احساس هم‌نشینی با افرادی مانند خودت که عاشق هنرند را می‌دهد
:کتاب با این جمله به پایان می‌رسد
هنوز یقین ندارم. اما می‌دانم زندگی بدون عشق، زندگی آسانی است
March 22, 2020
الکینز کتابش را اینگونه معرفی می کند :«این کتاب می تواند ارمغانی برای رمانتیک های پنهان، احساساتی ها و ضدمدرنیستهای سرخست باشد.»
من به تاریخ هنر علاقه مندم، نقاشی ها از همه بیشتر من را به وجو می آورند اما همیشه از مطالعۀ خطی و کلاسیک تاریخ اثار هنری خسته می شوم و اخیرا حتی به این مسیله بدبین بودم. این آثار همگی روح دارند احساس دارند با مطالعۀ اکادمیک و خشک روحشان را می گیریم و آن هارا می کشیم.
اشک ها و تصویرها دوباره این روح را در من دمید و جرعه جرعه سیرابم کرد. کل کتاب برای من مانند خطابه ای بود. انگار که الکینز در کافه ای شلوغ و صمیمی رو به رویم نشسته باشد. در کنار بیان کردن نامه هایی که مخاطبانش برایش فرستاده اند از تجربیات خودش در برابر نقاشی ها بگوید، گاهی نظریات فیلسوفان و مورخان دیگر را نقد کند و گاهی نقطه نظرهای خودش را بیان کند. تمام این مدت حرف هایش را با گوش جان بشنوم و حس کنم دقیقا همان چیزی است که باید می شنیدم. حتی جاهایی در کتاب حس می کردم من در ذهنم سوال می پرسم و او با حوصله و جذابیت تمام برایم شرح می دهد. این کتاب بسیار دلچسب بود، نخ تسبیحی بلند داشت. از فصل اول داستان نقاشی ها در جستارهایی مجزا شروع می شدند، در جستارهای بعدی ارتباطمان با نقاشی ها و تجربه های قبلی از دست نمی رفت، همۀ این نقاشی ها کم کم با هم همافزایی پیدا می کردند و در وجود خواننده ته نشین می شدند. تاریخ هنر اکثرا چیزی غیرقابل فهم یا سخت تصور می شود الکینز این دیوار ذهنی را برایم شکست. در خطابۀ او تاریخ هنر آن چند روایت از نقاشی های پراکنده و به ظاهر بی ربط به هم است که باعث می شود جایی در وجودتان همان چند پاره را برای درک تاریخ بس بدانید.
اشک ها و تصویرها با رویکرد جدیدش سیرابم کرد و همچنین پرسش های جدیدی را برایم به وجود اورد. اقای الکینز دمتان گرم!
من به تاریخ هنر علاقه مندم، نقاشی ها از همه بیشتر من را به وجو می آورند اما همیشه از مطالعۀ خطی و کلاسیک تاریخ اثار هنری خسته می شوم و اخیرا حتی به این مسیله بدبین بودم. این آثار همگی روح دارند احساس دارند با مطالعۀ اکادمیک و خشک روحشان را می گیریم و آن هارا می کشیم.
اشک ها و تصویرها دوباره این روح را در من دمید و جرعه جرعه سیرابم کرد. کل کتاب برای من مانند خطابه ای بود. انگار که الکینز در کافه ای شلوغ و صمیمی رو به رویم نشسته باشد. در کنار بیان کردن نامه هایی که مخاطبانش برایش فرستاده اند از تجربیات خودش در برابر نقاشی ها بگوید، گاهی نظریات فیلسوفان و مورخان دیگر را نقد کند و گاهی نقطه نظرهای خودش را بیان کند. تمام این مدت حرف هایش را با گوش جان بشنوم و حس کنم دقیقا همان چیزی است که باید می شنیدم. حتی جاهایی در کتاب حس می کردم من در ذهنم سوال می پرسم و او با حوصله و جذابیت تمام برایم شرح می دهد. این کتاب بسیار دلچسب بود، نخ تسبیحی بلند داشت. از فصل اول داستان نقاشی ها در جستارهایی مجزا شروع می شدند، در جستارهای بعدی ارتباطمان با نقاشی ها و تجربه های قبلی از دست نمی رفت، همۀ این نقاشی ها کم کم با هم همافزایی پیدا می کردند و در وجود خواننده ته نشین می شدند. تاریخ هنر اکثرا چیزی غیرقابل فهم یا سخت تصور می شود الکینز این دیوار ذهنی را برایم شکست. در خطابۀ او تاریخ هنر آن چند روایت از نقاشی های پراکنده و به ظاهر بی ربط به هم است که باعث می شود جایی در وجودتان همان چند پاره را برای درک تاریخ بس بدانید.
اشک ها و تصویرها با رویکرد جدیدش سیرابم کرد و همچنین پرسش های جدیدی را برایم به وجود اورد. اقای الکینز دمتان گرم!
March 17, 2012
So, a book about people who have cried in front of different paintings throughout history? Sign me up please! I'd never heard of this writer before, but the unconventional treatment of art history was right up my alley. I love writing that explores the area between the academic (art/painting) and the non-academic (crying).
Though the author, Elkins, is a respected professor of art history, he was still able to remain open-minded to other ways of approaching art, never ruling out anything as 'invalid', but considering them all in the spectrum of different human reactions to art. Not so his colleagues. When beginning his project, he sent out a letter to many people, both art historians and regular art admirers, with a survey asking if they had ever cried in front of a painting before.
The vast majority of art historians either did not write back, or wrote back to say they had not--and did not think that crying was very professional. Many of the ones who did admit to crying wished to remain anonymous. The author says that we currently live in one of the most tearless eras of art history ever, and that it was not always this way.
The most interesting letters/surveys that came back were from non-art historians, just regular museum goers who had a special experience to share.
The book starts off with two chapters about the Rothko chapel (above), which I found especially interesting since I visited it just a year ago, knowing only Rothko’s more colorful output. I was oddly unmoved by these vast dark pieces, whereas Rothko’s lozenge-like color fields have been some of the paintings closest to moving me to tears in the past. But it was nice to read what others had felt in front of these paintings that I had not.
People cry in front of paintings for many different reasons. Some I found more useful than others, and sometimes--I have to be honest--I thought the author was a little too open-minded, whereas reading the accounts myself, I felt that the crying had more to do with the person than the painting.
Elkins himself admits that he has not cried in front of a painting before, but I got a sense that he deeply wishes to be able to; all his knowledge prevents him from returning to that state.
Throughout the book, Elkins wrestles with the two approaches: emotional investment vs. intellectual distance. He shows you how throughout history, there have been periods of lots of crying and periods of sober intellectual distance. We are in one of the most sober periods in art. Elkins reminds us that modernism and postmodernism came about as a reaction against the high emotion, the carried-away-ness of romanticism. We live under the illusion that art does not need to move us, we walk from painting to painting in a museum as if consuming chicken nuggets.
But I don't know if it's so clear cut as that. We can be moved by highly modern and even post-modern works, like the woman who wrote letter #6 in the appendix (he collects some of his responses in the back) where she describes being moved to tears by the colors, the paint, and even the nails that hold the canvas to the stretcher. In fact, I think the most successful paintings for me are the ones that manage to create that illusion of Modernism's self-aware distance, yet still communicate strong human emotions--paintings that embody both intellect AND emotion.
Response to p.124-129
I understand Elkins is trying to play devil’s advocate here, but his analysis is too simple. After giving us all the great reasons why we don’t cry over a late 18th century Greuze painting (below), namely: cultural/generational differences that affect how we look at painting, and at ideas like nobility, patriotism, love, etc. and how we don’t see things as black & white but as more complicated shades of gray, as well as how we look at things that are overly sentimental as manipulative, he goes on to say that nevertheless we cry at sentimental Disney movies and Dick and Jane books, etc. Then he says:
“There must be some other reason why Greuze is so powerless to move us. The answer, I think, lies in our fear of crying.”
Well I find that completely absurd, given what he’s just told us. If we fear crying, why don't we fear crying at Disney movies and Dick and Jane books, as he JUST told us? No, we don’t cry at Greuze paintings anymore for the same reason (most of us) don’t find 20’s comedies funny anymore--because attitudes about what’s sad/funny/etc. change within the span of decades, and even faster now. I agree with Elkin’s point that we should free up our tear glands more often when it comes to art appreciation... and I agree that fear of crying is probably one of the many factors for why we don’t cry at more paintings... but fear of crying is NOT the reason we don’t cry at THIS Greuze painting, in particular.
In other words, just because we should cry doesn’t mean we should still be crying over the same things we cried over in 1785! That’s absurd... if we’re to cry today, it will have to be something that makes OUR generation cry--something that speaks to us, like Rothko did in Chapter 1. How can such a simple point elude Elkin, when he pretty much outlines it right there earlier in the chapter? I feel like he willfully misses this obvious point towards the end of the chapter. But why?
About Museums
I think what he says about museums being a busy, brightly lit area seems to be one of the strongest reasons for not crying. And in fact I wonder why he doesn’t harp on this point more. Maybe because he thinks the museum experience may just be a symptom of our attitudes towards art rather than the cause. The chicken or the egg? Hmm...
He talks about how much more conducive to emotional reactions it would be if museums would dedicate each room to just one painting, where the light is dimmed and a soft light is cast on the painting.
Although I think this is a good idea, I can see why we don't do it this way, i.e. the presentation of the art can easily become manipulative, tainting the 'pure' experience of the artwork with the museum's interpretation. But isn’t that inevitable anyway? Crowding many art pieces into a brightly lit room is also influencing our way of viewing it, but this way doesn’t serve the painting at all. Perhaps every painting should be thought of as installation art, and museums should think more about individualizing the presentation of each to fit the art.
A Review of the Actual Writing Itself
Despite some gaps in the logic and some rather repetitive portions towards the middle, it was generally engaging; personal, yet backed up by evidence, and not shying away from the occasional inexplicable mystery. But there were times when I thought he did not delve far enough with some of his conclusions.
A Survey of My Own
I would like to know what paintings you have cried in front of, if any, and (if you can put it into words:) why did you cry?
And if none, then what paintings have moved you closest to tears? And if still none, then what sculptures, photographs, or otherwise non-filmic visual medium has moved you to tears? Please respond in the comments section.
Though the author, Elkins, is a respected professor of art history, he was still able to remain open-minded to other ways of approaching art, never ruling out anything as 'invalid', but considering them all in the spectrum of different human reactions to art. Not so his colleagues. When beginning his project, he sent out a letter to many people, both art historians and regular art admirers, with a survey asking if they had ever cried in front of a painting before.
The vast majority of art historians either did not write back, or wrote back to say they had not--and did not think that crying was very professional. Many of the ones who did admit to crying wished to remain anonymous. The author says that we currently live in one of the most tearless eras of art history ever, and that it was not always this way.
The most interesting letters/surveys that came back were from non-art historians, just regular museum goers who had a special experience to share.
The book starts off with two chapters about the Rothko chapel (above), which I found especially interesting since I visited it just a year ago, knowing only Rothko’s more colorful output. I was oddly unmoved by these vast dark pieces, whereas Rothko’s lozenge-like color fields have been some of the paintings closest to moving me to tears in the past. But it was nice to read what others had felt in front of these paintings that I had not.
"Some tears were mysteries even to the person who cried them. ("Tears, a liquid embrace") They came from nowhere, and in a minute they evaporate, like a dream that can hardly be remembered. What can be said about tears like that? I want to spend awhile now considering tears of all sorts, just to see how few of them make sense."
People cry in front of paintings for many different reasons. Some I found more useful than others, and sometimes--I have to be honest--I thought the author was a little too open-minded, whereas reading the accounts myself, I felt that the crying had more to do with the person than the painting.
Elkins himself admits that he has not cried in front of a painting before, but I got a sense that he deeply wishes to be able to; all his knowledge prevents him from returning to that state.
Throughout the book, Elkins wrestles with the two approaches: emotional investment vs. intellectual distance. He shows you how throughout history, there have been periods of lots of crying and periods of sober intellectual distance. We are in one of the most sober periods in art. Elkins reminds us that modernism and postmodernism came about as a reaction against the high emotion, the carried-away-ness of romanticism. We live under the illusion that art does not need to move us, we walk from painting to painting in a museum as if consuming chicken nuggets.
But I don't know if it's so clear cut as that. We can be moved by highly modern and even post-modern works, like the woman who wrote letter #6 in the appendix (he collects some of his responses in the back) where she describes being moved to tears by the colors, the paint, and even the nails that hold the canvas to the stretcher. In fact, I think the most successful paintings for me are the ones that manage to create that illusion of Modernism's self-aware distance, yet still communicate strong human emotions--paintings that embody both intellect AND emotion.
"In a subject like this, no matter how dusty a theory is, it might help, and a very dusty theory might fit best. I say that because I hope it's true: at least I know there is no hope for a well-behaved, legitimate-sounding theory where things are so wild."
Response to p.124-129
I understand Elkins is trying to play devil’s advocate here, but his analysis is too simple. After giving us all the great reasons why we don’t cry over a late 18th century Greuze painting (below), namely: cultural/generational differences that affect how we look at painting, and at ideas like nobility, patriotism, love, etc. and how we don’t see things as black & white but as more complicated shades of gray, as well as how we look at things that are overly sentimental as manipulative, he goes on to say that nevertheless we cry at sentimental Disney movies and Dick and Jane books, etc. Then he says:
“There must be some other reason why Greuze is so powerless to move us. The answer, I think, lies in our fear of crying.”
Well I find that completely absurd, given what he’s just told us. If we fear crying, why don't we fear crying at Disney movies and Dick and Jane books, as he JUST told us? No, we don’t cry at Greuze paintings anymore for the same reason (most of us) don’t find 20’s comedies funny anymore--because attitudes about what’s sad/funny/etc. change within the span of decades, and even faster now. I agree with Elkin’s point that we should free up our tear glands more often when it comes to art appreciation... and I agree that fear of crying is probably one of the many factors for why we don’t cry at more paintings... but fear of crying is NOT the reason we don’t cry at THIS Greuze painting, in particular.
In other words, just because we should cry doesn’t mean we should still be crying over the same things we cried over in 1785! That’s absurd... if we’re to cry today, it will have to be something that makes OUR generation cry--something that speaks to us, like Rothko did in Chapter 1. How can such a simple point elude Elkin, when he pretty much outlines it right there earlier in the chapter? I feel like he willfully misses this obvious point towards the end of the chapter. But why?
About Museums
I think what he says about museums being a busy, brightly lit area seems to be one of the strongest reasons for not crying. And in fact I wonder why he doesn’t harp on this point more. Maybe because he thinks the museum experience may just be a symptom of our attitudes towards art rather than the cause. The chicken or the egg? Hmm...
He talks about how much more conducive to emotional reactions it would be if museums would dedicate each room to just one painting, where the light is dimmed and a soft light is cast on the painting.
Although I think this is a good idea, I can see why we don't do it this way, i.e. the presentation of the art can easily become manipulative, tainting the 'pure' experience of the artwork with the museum's interpretation. But isn’t that inevitable anyway? Crowding many art pieces into a brightly lit room is also influencing our way of viewing it, but this way doesn’t serve the painting at all. Perhaps every painting should be thought of as installation art, and museums should think more about individualizing the presentation of each to fit the art.
A Review of the Actual Writing Itself
Despite some gaps in the logic and some rather repetitive portions towards the middle, it was generally engaging; personal, yet backed up by evidence, and not shying away from the occasional inexplicable mystery. But there were times when I thought he did not delve far enough with some of his conclusions.
A Survey of My Own
I would like to know what paintings you have cried in front of, if any, and (if you can put it into words:) why did you cry?
And if none, then what paintings have moved you closest to tears? And if still none, then what sculptures, photographs, or otherwise non-filmic visual medium has moved you to tears? Please respond in the comments section.
May 7, 2024
کتاب برای من بیش از یک ماه طول کشید
معمولا کتابی با این حجم اینقدر برام طول نمیکشه
ولی کتابی بود که حس کردم لازمه اینقدر طولش بدم
پر از حرف های دوستانه پر از حرف از اشک و تاثر.
و پر از نقاش هایی که دوستشون داشتم و نقاش هایی که نمیشناختم ولی الان دوستشون دارم.
و فصل اول و اخر هم با روتکو شروع میشه و تموم میشه کسی که خیلی دوسش دارم.
قطعا توصیه میکنم بخونیدش نه به عنوان کتابی جدی درباره اشک(البته حس نمیکنم کتابی رو بشه درباره اشک جدی نوشت) یا کتابی جدی درمورد فلسفه هنر یا تاریخش بلکه کتابی متفاو�� که از یه جای دیگه داره به قضیه نگاه میکنه
معمولا کتابی با این حجم اینقدر برام طول نمیکشه
ولی کتابی بود که حس کردم لازمه اینقدر طولش بدم
پر از حرف های دوستانه پر از حرف از اشک و تاثر.
و پر از نقاش هایی که دوستشون داشتم و نقاش هایی که نمیشناختم ولی الان دوستشون دارم.
و فصل اول و اخر هم با روتکو شروع میشه و تموم میشه کسی که خیلی دوسش دارم.
قطعا توصیه میکنم بخونیدش نه به عنوان کتابی جدی درباره اشک(البته حس نمیکنم کتابی رو بشه درباره اشک جدی نوشت) یا کتابی جدی درمورد فلسفه هنر یا تاریخش بلکه کتابی متفاو�� که از یه جای دیگه داره به قضیه نگاه میکنه
November 7, 2022
واقعا یکی از معدود کتاب‌های نسبتا تخصصی هنری‌ای که خونده‌ام بود، که با هنر نه به مثابه‌ی چیزی زیر ذره‌بین در آزمایشگاه، بلکه به عنوان بخشی بزرگ و غیرقابل انکار از زندگی مردم برخورد کرده بود. به عنوان چیزی که واکنش بر‌می‌انگیزد. و اشک ریختن در برابر نقاشی‌ها شاید یکی از جادویی‌ترین واکنش‌ها دربرابرشونه.
جاهایی از کتاب بود که به نظر می‌تونست حذف بشه و یا نویسنده برای رسیدن به نکته‌ی مورد نظرش یکم زیادی طولش میده. ولی انقدر نکاتی که در نهایت بهشون می‌رسید جذاب بود که حتی مسیر طولانی رو جذاب می‌کرد. که البته ترجمه‌ی هموار و روان کتاب هم به لذت خوندن کتاب اضافه کرده بود.
جاهایی از کتاب بود که به نظر می‌تونست حذف بشه و یا نویسنده برای رسیدن به نکته‌ی مورد نظرش یکم زیادی طولش میده. ولی انقدر نکاتی که در نهایت بهشون می‌رسید جذاب بود که حتی مسیر طولانی رو جذاب می‌کرد. که البته ترجمه‌ی هموار و روان کتاب هم به لذت خوندن کتاب اضافه کرده بود.
July 5, 2018
آه، کیست آن شبح_شبحی در تاریکی_که اشک می ریزد؟
آن توده ی بی شکل؛کز کرده،که خم می شود بر روی شن ها...
والت ویتمن
.
.
و باید لیوان آبی را
در سمت شرق
بالا می بردم؛
آن جا که نورهای پراکنده
به گونه ای بی پایان
متمرکز باشند.
فیلیپ لارکین
آن توده ی بی شکل؛کز کرده،که خم می شود بر روی شن ها...
والت ویتمن
.
.
و باید لیوان آبی را
در سمت شرق
بالا می بردم؛
آن جا که نورهای پراکنده
به گونه ای بی پایان
متمرکز باشند.
فیلیپ لارکین
May 1, 2020
احساساتی که این کتاب در من برانگیخت وصف‌ناپذیره.
در وصف تجربه‌ای که داشتم فقط می‌تونم بگم:
سحرآمیز
خیلی سحرآمیز
خیلی خیلی سحرآمیز
در وصف تجربه‌ای که داشتم فقط می‌تونم بگم:
سحرآمیز
خیلی سحرآمیز
خیلی خیلی سحرآمیز
March 22, 2009
This is my favorite of Elkins' books, and I'm a big fan. Every time I think that I have a new idea about art, I realize that Elkins has already written a whole book on the topic! Though I don't recall ever having cried in front of a painting myself, I have often been at the point of being overwhelmed. To this day, I get shivers every time I catch a glimpse of a Motherwell, and I don't particularly like Motherwells. That tells me that there's something beyond taste, or preference going on here, and that's the preface of Elkins engaging book.
Shortly after reading it, I got a postcard of a Rembrandt painting at the Met from a good friend. On the back, she just scribbled that she had cried in front of the painting on a recent visit to NYC. To this day, I keep that postcard tucked into this book as a reminder of the importance and relevance of this book to me.
Glorious read and a provoking investigation into something way-too-often avoided in dialogues about art and art history: physically emotional reactions to art.
Shortly after reading it, I got a postcard of a Rembrandt painting at the Met from a good friend. On the back, she just scribbled that she had cried in front of the painting on a recent visit to NYC. To this day, I keep that postcard tucked into this book as a reminder of the importance and relevance of this book to me.
Glorious read and a provoking investigation into something way-too-often avoided in dialogues about art and art history: physically emotional reactions to art.
November 28, 2023
آرمسترانگ توی کتاب «قدرت پنهان زیبایی» توضیح میده که «زیبایی» میتونه آدم‌ها رو به گریه بندازه اما اینکه دقیقا چه چیزی «زیبا» یا «زیباتر» هست رو تعیین نمیکنه، بلکه میگه ما صرفاً باید «خودمون رو بهتر بشناسیم» و «زیبایی‌شناسیِ خودمون رو پرورش بدیم» تا بتونیم داوری ِ ارزشمندتری درباره «زیبایی» داشته باشیم. منم برای اینکه خودِ مفهومِ «زیبایی» رو بهتر درک کنم رفتم سراغ کتاب «اشک‌ها و لبخندها» که گریه‌ی مردم در مقابل آثار نقاشی رو بررسی کرده تا ببینم آیا این گریه‌ها از شدت «زیبایی» اون آثار بوده یا دلایل دیگه‌ای داشته، درواقع به قول خود جیمز الکینز «در یک طرف اشک را دارم، و در طرف دیگر، واژه «زیبایی» را، آیا واقعاً امیدی هست که با استفاده از یکی، دیگری را بفهمیم؟».
به طور خلاصه، جیمز الکینز نویسنده این کتاب که خودش مورخ هنره، اینطور توضیح میده که بهتره اصلاً از کلمه «زیبایی» استفاده نکنیم چون این کلمه اطلاعات دقیق و مشخصی ارائه نمیکنه. یعنی وقتی میگیم یه چیزی زیباست اصلاً معلوم نیست داریم میگیم این چیز چه ویژگی‌هایی داره. طوری که خودش تا صفحه 59 اصلاً از این واژه استفاده نمیکنه.
الکینز نهایتاً با بررسی نامه‌هایی که مردم در مورد تجربیات خودشون از گریه کردن مقابل نقاشی‌ها براش فرستادن، در طول کتاب اینطور نتیجه میگیره که اگر بخواییم دقیق توضیح بدیم، گریه‌ها به طور خلاصه بواسطه برقرار کردن ارتباط شخصی با نقاشی‌ها بوده به طوری که خارج از تحملشون بوده. یعنی برای مثال کسی بوده که نتونسته هیجان موجود در نقاشی رو تحمل کنه و به گریه افتاده، یا کس دیگه‌ای، واقعا غرق نقاشی شده و با تخیل وارد دنیای نقاشی شده و به گریه افتاده.
الکینز توضیح میده که مردم عادی معمولاً به راحتی از کلمه «زیبا» استفاده میکنن و رد میشن در حالی که میشه بدون استفاده از این کلمه هم به نقاشی‌ها فرصت داد تا با ما ارتباط برقرار کنن.
نهایتاً هم ناراضیه که چرا ما در این دوره دیگه با نقاشی‌ها ارتباط حسی و صمیمانه‌ای برقرار نمیکنیم و طوری رفتار میکنیم که انگار همچین اتفاقی باعث شرمندگی میشه و همچین تجربه‌ای رو مثلاً «لوس» تلقی میکنیم.
بزرگترین تفاوت نظر آرمسترانگ توی کتاب «قدرت پنهان زیبایی» با الکینز توی این کتاب، یعنی «اشک‌ها و لبخندها»، اینه که از نظر آرمسترانگ مطالعه هنر و تاریخ هنر دو تا نتیجه خیلی خوب داره، یکی اینکه باعث میشه تا با قاطعیت آثار هنری رو تجربه کنیم (بدونیم داریم چیکار میکنیم)، یکی هم اینکه تجربه عمیق‌تری داشته باشیم. اما الکینز میگه مطالعه هنر جلوی احساسات رو میگیره و اجازه نمیده تجربه کامل و مستقیمی داشته باشیم، یعنی تبدیل به یه جور مانع میشه. مهم‌ترین شباهت بین نظرات این دو نویسنده هم اینه که از نظر هر دو نفرشون، تجربهٔ با کیفیت و درست از نقاشی (قابل تعمیم به تمام آثار هنری)، اون تجربه‌ای هست که همراه با تخیل، کنجکاوی و صبوری باشه.
تا جایی که من فهمیدم الکینز فکر میکنه ارتباط حسی برقرار کردن یعنی اینکه حتما گریه کنیم! از متن کتاب میشه فهمید خودش آدم مذهبی‌ای هست و این احتمال وجود داره که حتی تصورش از تجربه مستقیم آثار، یه جور تجربه عرفانی باشه. نهایتاً اگر کسی به مطالعه تجربیات مردم، یعنی تجربه مردم عادی تا متخصصان هنر، در مقابل نقاشی‌ها علاقه داره و کنجکاوه که بدونه بقیه چطور نقاشی‌ها رو تجربه میکنن واقعاً این کتاب به دردش میخوره و براش لذت‌بخش خواهد بود.
به طور خلاصه، جیمز الکینز نویسنده این کتاب که خودش مورخ هنره، اینطور توضیح میده که بهتره اصلاً از کلمه «زیبایی» استفاده نکنیم چون این کلمه اطلاعات دقیق و مشخصی ارائه نمیکنه. یعنی وقتی میگیم یه چیزی زیباست اصلاً معلوم نیست داریم میگیم این چیز چه ویژگی‌هایی داره. طوری که خودش تا صفحه 59 اصلاً از این واژه استفاده نمیکنه.
الکینز نهایتاً با بررسی نامه‌هایی که مردم در مورد تجربیات خودشون از گریه کردن مقابل نقاشی‌ها براش فرستادن، در طول کتاب اینطور نتیجه میگیره که اگر بخواییم دقیق توضیح بدیم، گریه‌ها به طور خلاصه بواسطه برقرار کردن ارتباط شخصی با نقاشی‌ها بوده به طوری که خارج از تحملشون بوده. یعنی برای مثال کسی بوده که نتونسته هیجان موجود در نقاشی رو تحمل کنه و به گریه افتاده، یا کس دیگه‌ای، واقعا غرق نقاشی شده و با تخیل وارد دنیای نقاشی شده و به گریه افتاده.
الکینز توضیح میده که مردم عادی معمولاً به راحتی از کلمه «زیبا» استفاده میکنن و رد میشن در حالی که میشه بدون استفاده از این کلمه هم به نقاشی‌ها فرصت داد تا با ما ارتباط برقرار کنن.
نهایتاً هم ناراضیه که چرا ما در این دوره دیگه با نقاشی‌ها ارتباط حسی و صمیمانه‌ای برقرار نمیکنیم و طوری رفتار میکنیم که انگار همچین اتفاقی باعث شرمندگی میشه و همچین تجربه‌ای رو مثلاً «لوس» تلقی میکنیم.
بزرگترین تفاوت نظر آرمسترانگ توی کتاب «قدرت پنهان زیبایی» با الکینز توی این کتاب، یعنی «اشک‌ها و لبخندها»، اینه که از نظر آرمسترانگ مطالعه هنر و تاریخ هنر دو تا نتیجه خیلی خوب داره، یکی اینکه باعث میشه تا با قاطعیت آثار هنری رو تجربه کنیم (بدونیم داریم چیکار میکنیم)، یکی هم اینکه تجربه عمیق‌تری داشته باشیم. اما الکینز میگه مطالعه هنر جلوی احساسات رو میگیره و اجازه نمیده تجربه کامل و مستقیمی داشته باشیم، یعنی تبدیل به یه جور مانع میشه. مهم‌ترین شباهت بین نظرات این دو نویسنده هم اینه که از نظر هر دو نفرشون، تجربهٔ با کیفیت و درست از نقاشی (قابل تعمیم به تمام آثار هنری)، اون تجربه‌ای هست که همراه با تخیل، کنجکاوی و صبوری باشه.
تا جایی که من فهمیدم الکینز فکر میکنه ارتباط حسی برقرار کردن یعنی اینکه حتما گریه کنیم! از متن کتاب میشه فهمید خودش آدم مذهبی‌ای هست و این احتمال وجود داره که حتی تصورش از تجربه مستقیم آثار، یه جور تجربه عرفانی باشه. نهایتاً اگر کسی به مطالعه تجربیات مردم، یعنی تجربه مردم عادی تا متخصصان هنر، در مقابل نقاشی‌ها علاقه داره و کنجکاوه که بدونه بقیه چطور نقاشی‌ها رو تجربه میکنن واقعاً این کتاب به دردش میخوره و براش لذت‌بخش خواهد بود.
November 5, 2021
"There is no reason looking should be easy, because pictures are not just decoration. They are peculiar objects that pull at us, tugging us a little out of the world. A picture will leave me unmoved if I don’t take time with it, but if I stop, and let myself get a little lost, there’s no telling what might happen. [...] What exactly would paintings be, if they didn’t have the power to hit us where we live? The experience of looking can be, should be, hard to manage."
April 21, 2022
found myself prickled at points by some of elkins' assertions, but the chapters on rothko's chapel, bouts' mater dolorosa and bellini's st francis in ecstasy were so Luminously good i will forgive it.
on the mater dolorosa:
"the virgin mary sits in a room, alone. her cloak is lopsided, pulled up carelessly over her head. she is not shaking or wailing, as she is in other paintings: instead she is praying quietly. she faces in jesus’s direction but doesn’t look at him. her hands are pressed together gently and firmly, the fingers of one hand resting in the depressions between the fingers of the other. her little fingers are held apart from the others, and slightly bent. the pads of the fingers push a little against one another. they’re interesting hands: careless and yet tense, spontaneous but fixed in place.
her face has the same informal deliberation. her lips are closed, but her teeth are not clenched. the corner of her mouth has that slight indentation that is an infallible sign of tension—the gentlest echo of the deep groove that forms when the mouth opens in grief. her mouth is set, but not too hard. the slight unmistakable set of the mouth and fingers is a wonderful touch: it stands for her fragile composure, her resolution.
her hands and her mouth are enough to tell the story, but the painting is really about her eyes. they are masterpieces of modulated expression. her left eye (the one farther from us) is extremely sad; it turns away from us, and away from jesus, into the dark folds of her veil. the nearer eye, if you look at it alone, seems to look back at you with an unsettling abstracted glance. together, her two eyes give us a face that is just barely focused on its object. we are meant to know that jesus is dead, and the madonna’s thoughts are turning inward. her eyes have almost lost their grip on what they see. they only stay focused because of her continuing effort. in the moments before the one depicted in the painting, she must have been wild-eyed and crying hard. now the initial burst of passion has ebbed, and her tears have dwindled to a steady succession of drops. her eyelids are puffed from crying, and both eyes are red. the capillaries in her corneas are swollen, coloring her eyes a deep pink.
tears are dripping slowly down her cheeks. the left eye has two drops, and a third down on the cheek. the near eye is overflowing with tears— you can see the brim, lucent on the lower lid. one tear has formed toward the back of the eye, and another is just dropping from the front. two tears have fallen ahead of them: one on her cheek, and another that is about to swerve and run into her mouth.
the sadness of this is the way her grief is measured out. she cried out loud only when jesus was put on the cross, and then brought down and buried. but in bouts’s version she will never stop crying, as long as she lives. for years, she will have the same half-absent look, the same taut expression. her tears now are everyday tears. the crucifixion could have happened years ago, for all we know: this is a painting about a state of mind, a permanent low-level mourning. what she feels is consonant with the doctrine of presentiment as it is depicted in other renaissance paintings: the madonna knew what would happen before jesus was grown, and she still has that knowledge. it is a kind of eternal sadness, which will not be dulled by time. she remains in her room, weeping. her slightly unfocused eye will always see the death of her son.
[...] the only reason i learned to love bouts’s picture is that a student of mine named rasa once copied it. she set up her easel right in front of the painting, and despite the distracting crowds she kept coming back, week after week, slowly perfecting her copy. she helped me to see the picture in minute detail.
we studied the uneven textures of the madonna’s middle-aged skin, the faint shine of her unpolished nails, and we even looked at the dirt lodged beneath them. we discussed the mistake bouts made in the length of her first three fingers (at first they were not long enough, and so he stretched them a little, making a row of double fingertips). rasa visited the museum once or twice a week for fifteen weeks, and at the end of that time we both had a sense that we knew the figure in the painting. toward the beginning, rasa’s copy was a blurred version of the original, with a brilliant gold leaf background. as the weeks went she gave the skin color and depth, and clothed the naked head in its heavy bluish-black cape and starched white veils. toward the end she painted the little wrinkles on the back of the madonna’s hand and around her eyes, and put the tiny folds in her clothing. she glazed the gold leaf with soot-colored pigment to simulate the effects of five centuries of tarnish. and finally, as the last touch—the essential moment, when the picture came to life—she painted in the tears. they are round, full tears, carefully measured out, each one lit by a little reflection from a small window."
on the mater dolorosa:
"the virgin mary sits in a room, alone. her cloak is lopsided, pulled up carelessly over her head. she is not shaking or wailing, as she is in other paintings: instead she is praying quietly. she faces in jesus’s direction but doesn’t look at him. her hands are pressed together gently and firmly, the fingers of one hand resting in the depressions between the fingers of the other. her little fingers are held apart from the others, and slightly bent. the pads of the fingers push a little against one another. they’re interesting hands: careless and yet tense, spontaneous but fixed in place.
her face has the same informal deliberation. her lips are closed, but her teeth are not clenched. the corner of her mouth has that slight indentation that is an infallible sign of tension—the gentlest echo of the deep groove that forms when the mouth opens in grief. her mouth is set, but not too hard. the slight unmistakable set of the mouth and fingers is a wonderful touch: it stands for her fragile composure, her resolution.
her hands and her mouth are enough to tell the story, but the painting is really about her eyes. they are masterpieces of modulated expression. her left eye (the one farther from us) is extremely sad; it turns away from us, and away from jesus, into the dark folds of her veil. the nearer eye, if you look at it alone, seems to look back at you with an unsettling abstracted glance. together, her two eyes give us a face that is just barely focused on its object. we are meant to know that jesus is dead, and the madonna’s thoughts are turning inward. her eyes have almost lost their grip on what they see. they only stay focused because of her continuing effort. in the moments before the one depicted in the painting, she must have been wild-eyed and crying hard. now the initial burst of passion has ebbed, and her tears have dwindled to a steady succession of drops. her eyelids are puffed from crying, and both eyes are red. the capillaries in her corneas are swollen, coloring her eyes a deep pink.
tears are dripping slowly down her cheeks. the left eye has two drops, and a third down on the cheek. the near eye is overflowing with tears— you can see the brim, lucent on the lower lid. one tear has formed toward the back of the eye, and another is just dropping from the front. two tears have fallen ahead of them: one on her cheek, and another that is about to swerve and run into her mouth.
the sadness of this is the way her grief is measured out. she cried out loud only when jesus was put on the cross, and then brought down and buried. but in bouts’s version she will never stop crying, as long as she lives. for years, she will have the same half-absent look, the same taut expression. her tears now are everyday tears. the crucifixion could have happened years ago, for all we know: this is a painting about a state of mind, a permanent low-level mourning. what she feels is consonant with the doctrine of presentiment as it is depicted in other renaissance paintings: the madonna knew what would happen before jesus was grown, and she still has that knowledge. it is a kind of eternal sadness, which will not be dulled by time. she remains in her room, weeping. her slightly unfocused eye will always see the death of her son.
[...] the only reason i learned to love bouts’s picture is that a student of mine named rasa once copied it. she set up her easel right in front of the painting, and despite the distracting crowds she kept coming back, week after week, slowly perfecting her copy. she helped me to see the picture in minute detail.
we studied the uneven textures of the madonna’s middle-aged skin, the faint shine of her unpolished nails, and we even looked at the dirt lodged beneath them. we discussed the mistake bouts made in the length of her first three fingers (at first they were not long enough, and so he stretched them a little, making a row of double fingertips). rasa visited the museum once or twice a week for fifteen weeks, and at the end of that time we both had a sense that we knew the figure in the painting. toward the beginning, rasa’s copy was a blurred version of the original, with a brilliant gold leaf background. as the weeks went she gave the skin color and depth, and clothed the naked head in its heavy bluish-black cape and starched white veils. toward the end she painted the little wrinkles on the back of the madonna’s hand and around her eyes, and put the tiny folds in her clothing. she glazed the gold leaf with soot-colored pigment to simulate the effects of five centuries of tarnish. and finally, as the last touch—the essential moment, when the picture came to life—she painted in the tears. they are round, full tears, carefully measured out, each one lit by a little reflection from a small window."
January 11, 2023
There is an underlying kernel of good in this book that has sadly been lost somewhere along the way.
The gist: Elkins has written a book in defense of people who cry in front of paintings because 20th century art history is mostly dismissive of them. He shows how emotional responses to art have a strong lineage in history, but how the rise of the study of art history, the dawn of modernism, and the invention of aesthetic evaluation made crying at art obsolete. He suggests that art history has lost its way and should re-integrate emotions into our discipline.
I shared an update partway through this book that it truly should have been written by someone who has actually cried in front of a painting. I stand by that. Elkins has taken the stance of a stoic scholar defending us emotional crybabies against other stoic scholars, and his tone is patronizing at best.
I simply do not accept the clear distinction that Elkins draws between scholars that don’t cry and non-scholars that cry a lot. It does not match with my experiences, as an art historian who has cried in front of paintings and who has friends and colleagues who readily admit to having done the same. It is possible that this is generational and by now a book written almost 20 years ago is just out of date, but also knowing art historians a generation above mine, I am not sure that this is sufficient explanation.
Most non-scholars don’t have deep emotional responses to paintings. If you go to a museum and look at other people, most of them are not crying. It is possible that most of them have never cried at a painting, and never will. It seems to me that, if we are forced to create a binary, the distinction is not between scholars that don’t cry and non-scholars that cry, but between people open to emotional experiences with art and people who are not. Regardless of occupation, those that cry will be in the minority. Since our culture is generally suspicious of public displays of crying except in specific circumstances, the dismissal of crying at paintings is not a scholar-specific problem, it’s a broader cultural phenomenon.
Even Elkins seems to be confused about who cries naturally and who does not. At the end of the book Elkins provides some suggestions as “recipes for strong encounters with works.” Mind you, these are separate from the specific dictums he gives to his fellow art historians, so these are suggestions for a lay audience, the very people who Elkins says are more likely to have authentically emotional encounters with paintings anyway. So why they need guidance about how to emotionally connect with a painting from an out-of-touch scholar who admits he has not cried in front of a painting? Unclear. Maybe he just can’t help himself and feels like everyone needs his wisdom.
The first is this backwards bananas statements like “First, go to museums alone. Seeing paintings is not a social event, not an opportunity to spend quality time with relatives and friends.” It is perhaps a sad fact of Elkins’ own life that he can’t imagine having an authentic emotional experience except by himself, but if weddings, funerals, and church services are any indication, humans emote among their friends and family just fine, actually. Romantic solitude is not the only way to have an authentic, weepy emotional connection to a painting.
Most of the rest of the suggestions are things that I would vaguely call “good general advice,” but it also strikes me as odd that Elkins’ can only envision these emotional experiences with art happening in a museum or gallery setting.
Elkins’ distinction between non-crying scholars and crying ordinary folks keeps getting tangled up in an underlying issue about art history not being accessible and relevant to most people. He has an aside about wall labels being irrelevant information for the majority of patrons, for example. He struggles to connect the two issues (accessibility vs. emotional openness) in a coherent way.
For my part, I think that connection could have been made if Elkins broadened his ideas about who the viewer is, what their connection with the art is, and how they encounter it. Elkins’ emotionally connected viewer that he discusses throughout the book has no pre-existing relationship with the art, they simply encounter it and are emotionally overcome. I think the book has a big blind spot for political/social/familial connection to art. I know at least one example of an acquaintance of mine who cried because she saw artwork from her culture that had been looted in the British museum. As she described it to me, she was crying at the loss to her culture, at the injustice of the museum, and also because of the connection to her ancestors through the art. Elkins does not address these three types of crying throughout the book.
When it comes to advice specifically for art historians, we get scolded for not registering our emotions enough. One gets the feeling while reading that Elkins is just frustrated with the discipline as a whole, so you get lovely passages like this one: “The history of art is little more, in this respect, than a frail science dedicated to inspecting the odd seashell or bit of driftwood. Art history does not look up, and rarely notices where it is: and it is traditionally, monumentally, complacent about that fact. Studying history is like smoking: they’re both habits that give us pleasure, but they are very bad for us. One kills the body, the other the imagination.”
Later he says that art historians “don’t really love paintings” but that “they are in love with the idea of being in love.”
Which is just. Lmao. Shut the fuck up.
As I said before, this book is almost two decades old, so maybe the discipline has just changed a lot since then and we solved Elkins’ problem. But I suspect that this is more Elkins using crying arts patrons as an excuse to vent his frustrations with the discipline in a mostly incoherent manner.
There are interesting questions raised by the book. I have been thinking about why it is relatively more common to cry at movies more so than to cry at art, why artworks that used to be emotionally alive seem twee to us now, why works of “lesser quality” tend to illicit more emotional responses, how we can make wall labels that appeal to emotions as much as to intellect. But these are questions I will be exploring on my own, as Elkins cannot help me.
The gist: Elkins has written a book in defense of people who cry in front of paintings because 20th century art history is mostly dismissive of them. He shows how emotional responses to art have a strong lineage in history, but how the rise of the study of art history, the dawn of modernism, and the invention of aesthetic evaluation made crying at art obsolete. He suggests that art history has lost its way and should re-integrate emotions into our discipline.
I shared an update partway through this book that it truly should have been written by someone who has actually cried in front of a painting. I stand by that. Elkins has taken the stance of a stoic scholar defending us emotional crybabies against other stoic scholars, and his tone is patronizing at best.
I simply do not accept the clear distinction that Elkins draws between scholars that don’t cry and non-scholars that cry a lot. It does not match with my experiences, as an art historian who has cried in front of paintings and who has friends and colleagues who readily admit to having done the same. It is possible that this is generational and by now a book written almost 20 years ago is just out of date, but also knowing art historians a generation above mine, I am not sure that this is sufficient explanation.
Most non-scholars don’t have deep emotional responses to paintings. If you go to a museum and look at other people, most of them are not crying. It is possible that most of them have never cried at a painting, and never will. It seems to me that, if we are forced to create a binary, the distinction is not between scholars that don’t cry and non-scholars that cry, but between people open to emotional experiences with art and people who are not. Regardless of occupation, those that cry will be in the minority. Since our culture is generally suspicious of public displays of crying except in specific circumstances, the dismissal of crying at paintings is not a scholar-specific problem, it’s a broader cultural phenomenon.
Even Elkins seems to be confused about who cries naturally and who does not. At the end of the book Elkins provides some suggestions as “recipes for strong encounters with works.” Mind you, these are separate from the specific dictums he gives to his fellow art historians, so these are suggestions for a lay audience, the very people who Elkins says are more likely to have authentically emotional encounters with paintings anyway. So why they need guidance about how to emotionally connect with a painting from an out-of-touch scholar who admits he has not cried in front of a painting? Unclear. Maybe he just can’t help himself and feels like everyone needs his wisdom.
The first is this backwards bananas statements like “First, go to museums alone. Seeing paintings is not a social event, not an opportunity to spend quality time with relatives and friends.” It is perhaps a sad fact of Elkins’ own life that he can’t imagine having an authentic emotional experience except by himself, but if weddings, funerals, and church services are any indication, humans emote among their friends and family just fine, actually. Romantic solitude is not the only way to have an authentic, weepy emotional connection to a painting.
Most of the rest of the suggestions are things that I would vaguely call “good general advice,” but it also strikes me as odd that Elkins’ can only envision these emotional experiences with art happening in a museum or gallery setting.
Elkins’ distinction between non-crying scholars and crying ordinary folks keeps getting tangled up in an underlying issue about art history not being accessible and relevant to most people. He has an aside about wall labels being irrelevant information for the majority of patrons, for example. He struggles to connect the two issues (accessibility vs. emotional openness) in a coherent way.
For my part, I think that connection could have been made if Elkins broadened his ideas about who the viewer is, what their connection with the art is, and how they encounter it. Elkins’ emotionally connected viewer that he discusses throughout the book has no pre-existing relationship with the art, they simply encounter it and are emotionally overcome. I think the book has a big blind spot for political/social/familial connection to art. I know at least one example of an acquaintance of mine who cried because she saw artwork from her culture that had been looted in the British museum. As she described it to me, she was crying at the loss to her culture, at the injustice of the museum, and also because of the connection to her ancestors through the art. Elkins does not address these three types of crying throughout the book.
When it comes to advice specifically for art historians, we get scolded for not registering our emotions enough. One gets the feeling while reading that Elkins is just frustrated with the discipline as a whole, so you get lovely passages like this one: “The history of art is little more, in this respect, than a frail science dedicated to inspecting the odd seashell or bit of driftwood. Art history does not look up, and rarely notices where it is: and it is traditionally, monumentally, complacent about that fact. Studying history is like smoking: they’re both habits that give us pleasure, but they are very bad for us. One kills the body, the other the imagination.”
Later he says that art historians “don’t really love paintings” but that “they are in love with the idea of being in love.”
Which is just. Lmao. Shut the fuck up.
As I said before, this book is almost two decades old, so maybe the discipline has just changed a lot since then and we solved Elkins’ problem. But I suspect that this is more Elkins using crying arts patrons as an excuse to vent his frustrations with the discipline in a mostly incoherent manner.
There are interesting questions raised by the book. I have been thinking about why it is relatively more common to cry at movies more so than to cry at art, why artworks that used to be emotionally alive seem twee to us now, why works of “lesser quality” tend to illicit more emotional responses, how we can make wall labels that appeal to emotions as much as to intellect. But these are questions I will be exploring on my own, as Elkins cannot help me.
December 19, 2020
this book!!!! very informative, yet poetic and Elkins has such a great writing style that just drags you right in.. i think this one will stay with me for a long time!! one day i'll cry in front of an artwork and i'll think about this book
June 8, 2022
Ik wilde eerst 4 sterren geven omdat Elkins zegt dat mensen met kennis van (kunst)geschiedenis onprofessioneel zijn als ze huilen om kunst dat vond ik HEEL lullig en heb ik inderdaad persoonlijk opgevat, maar…. Ik heb gewoon genoten van dit boek daar kan ik helaas niet omheen
July 14, 2023
اغراق نکرده‌ام اگر بگویم یکی از جسورانه‌ترین کتاب‌هایی بود که در چند وقت اخیر خوانده ام. جیمز الکینز، پژوهشگر تاریخ هنر به دنبال فهم مسئله گریستن در مواجهه با اثر هنری و به ویژه نقاشی است. صرف طرح چنین پرسشی به نظرم فوق‌العاده جذاب و کنجکاوانه است. او در هر فصل با تکیه بر آثار یکی از نقاشان معروف تاریخ و با استفاده از تجربه‌های افراد مختلف در ادوار متفاوت، به بررسی پدیده گریستن مخاطبان در برابر آن اثر پرداخته است و تلاش کرده تا به زوایای مختلف تاریخ گریستن بپردازد.
جای خالی پژوهش‌های مشابه در ابواب مختلف هنر ایرانی واقعا خالی است. البته پژوهش در مورد تاریخ گریستن در هنر و به طور کلی در حوزه‌های مختلف هنر ایرانی نیاز به نظریه‌ای برای هنر ایرانی دارد که متاسفانه ما تا اطلاع ثانوی از آن بی‌بهره هستیم.
جای خالی پژوهش‌های مشابه در ابواب مختلف هنر ایرانی واقعا خالی است. البته پژوهش در مورد تاریخ گریستن در هنر و به طور کلی در حوزه‌های مختلف هنر ایرانی نیاز به نظریه‌ای برای هنر ایرانی دارد که متاسفانه ما تا اطلاع ثانوی از آن بی‌بهره هستیم.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
November 24, 2015Okay I am finally kicking this off my "Currently reading" shelf because I returned this book to the library several months ago and I'm not getting it back anytime soon. "Abandoned," sadly.
So here we have an interesting book about people crying in front of paintings. It's been several months since I looked at this book, so I can't give any real specifics. I got the feeling that the author couldn't really find THAT much to say about the subject, but I can't say why now. There are some really cool and engaging personal anecdotes, and there is a whole section in the back devoted to the letters people wrote Elkins describing these experiences. The last chapter I read was about people's changing tastes in art and how one painting that made people cry when it first premiered no longer has the same effect on people today. The first chapter, about Rothko's chapel, left the best impression on me. There was also an interesting chapter about people fainting and falling ill while looking at paintings. That's all I got. Not a bad book, and if I had more time I would have gladly finished it. Maybe one day.
MOST IMPORTANTLY FOR AN ART BOOK YOU HAD LIKE FIVE PICTURES. COME ON.
So here we have an interesting book about people crying in front of paintings. It's been several months since I looked at this book, so I can't give any real specifics. I got the feeling that the author couldn't really find THAT much to say about the subject, but I can't say why now. There are some really cool and engaging personal anecdotes, and there is a whole section in the back devoted to the letters people wrote Elkins describing these experiences. The last chapter I read was about people's changing tastes in art and how one painting that made people cry when it first premiered no longer has the same effect on people today. The first chapter, about Rothko's chapel, left the best impression on me. There was also an interesting chapter about people fainting and falling ill while looking at paintings. That's all I got. Not a bad book, and if I had more time I would have gladly finished it. Maybe one day.
MOST IMPORTANTLY FOR AN ART BOOK YOU HAD LIKE FIVE PICTURES. COME ON.
March 20, 2019
An interesting topic, and some scattered interesting thoughts here as well, but unfortunately the author is (despite his best efforts not to) too focused in persuading towards a theory (or more than one) about paintings and tears. He is unable to make the book pull together. I find that his most interesting sections are the ones on Rothko and the tension between his desire to be a painter who calls for strong emotions and the time he lived in. The descriptions of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings and Dieric Bouts' Weeping Madonna are lovely. By far the thirty-two letters in the appendix are finer. I suspect James Elkins would make a very fine curator, but as a writer, a better editor would have served him well.
October 31, 2019
الکینز تاریخ هنر خونده و در این کتاب توضیح داده که چگونه آموختن تاریخ و نگاه صرفاً علمی و آکادمیک به نقاشی‌ها میتونه مانع از مواجهه احساسی و لذت بردن از نقاشی‌ها و حتی گریستن در برابر آنها بشه. الکینز ما رو به نگریستن به نقاشی‌ها و توجه به جزئیاتشون دعوت میکنه و معتقده باید اطلاعات تاریخی رو کنار بگذاریم و اجازه بدیم نقاشی ما رو به دنیای خودش ببره. البته قرار نیست این اتفاق در مورد همه‌ی نقاشی‌ها بیفته ولی اگر خوب نگاه‌کردن رو بلد باشیم و دچار فلج احساسیِ زندگیِ مدرن نشده باشیم، شاید نقاشی‌ها ما رو جادو کنند.
«به نظر من مقصود واقعی هنر این است که با شکستن بعضی حصارها (آیا گریستن همان ذوب‌شدنِ قلب نیست؟) و به کمک نوعی هماوایی خاص، تو را متوجه خودت کند. تا تو را با خود واقعی‌ات یکی کند».
«به نظر من مقصود واقعی هنر این است که با شکستن بعضی حصارها (آیا گریستن همان ذوب‌شدنِ قلب نیست؟) و به کمک نوعی هماوایی خاص، تو را متوجه خودت کند. تا تو را با خود واقعی‌ات یکی کند».
July 18, 2015
This is a book about people who have had strong emotional reactions to artworks. It tells a history of times and places when strong passions were expected, and contrasts them with the habits of the last hundred years. The book also has letters from people who have cried, and those who haven't or wouldn't.
That's the real power of Art, I think! The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.
That's the real power of Art, I think! The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.
May 1, 2018
great engaging nonfiction is a little hard to come by in the realm of theory, but this book is an absolute joy. fascinating and easy to read—i can't walk around museums quite the same way anymore and i'm grateful for that.
January 24, 2022
This is a most interesting book about people’s emotional reactions (or lack thereof) to visual art. The author has done an informal investigation into which artworks people cry in front of. He considers tears to painting throughout art history (much more common than today), and he analyzes what about modern art and the institutions that present it might make our emotional reactions more subdued.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I also learned quite a bit from it, especially about romanticism and aspects of public reaction to art in the past that I had little idea of. I also found quite a bit to disagree with in the author’s reasoning and conclusion, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the book. The author essentially engages in some armchair psychology to try to understand which artworks make people cry, and why. He focuses on crying as an observable reaction that everyone will more or less agree on, which is a reasonable decision. However, Elkins is an art historian and not a psychologist, and his formation and evaluation of psychological hypotheses is often not convincing. When people tell him things like, “I cry more at movies because of the build-up of emotion over time,” you can’t just treat “time” as the sole cause and then try to disprove it by showing that you can spend an hour in front of painting X without crying. Nothing in psychology is the only factor, and to understand how that factor works, you have to be sophisticated and generous in building up a more complete hypothesis of how it operates, in conjunction with other variables.
OK, that is not Elkins’s strong point, but he does very well in other aspects, such as analyzing paintings and what about them is effective or reporting on people’s reactions to paintings throughout history. Some eras were crying eras and others were not. Ours is not, perhaps because of the nature of modern art, which is much more self-referential, and perhaps because of the nature of most modern societies, which discourage emotional expression in public, especially in a sterile environment such as a museum. His thoughts on these issues are thought-provoking, especially to a museum-going audience.
At the end, I began to think about my own reactions to art. I don’t think I’ve cried in response to a painting, but I have felt some very strong emotions or felt enormous appreciation for a work of art. Those reactions are just as valuable to me as crying would be (I think). This book has stimulated me to try to think more about just what reaction that is and why I find it valuable.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I also learned quite a bit from it, especially about romanticism and aspects of public reaction to art in the past that I had little idea of. I also found quite a bit to disagree with in the author’s reasoning and conclusion, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the book. The author essentially engages in some armchair psychology to try to understand which artworks make people cry, and why. He focuses on crying as an observable reaction that everyone will more or less agree on, which is a reasonable decision. However, Elkins is an art historian and not a psychologist, and his formation and evaluation of psychological hypotheses is often not convincing. When people tell him things like, “I cry more at movies because of the build-up of emotion over time,” you can’t just treat “time” as the sole cause and then try to disprove it by showing that you can spend an hour in front of painting X without crying. Nothing in psychology is the only factor, and to understand how that factor works, you have to be sophisticated and generous in building up a more complete hypothesis of how it operates, in conjunction with other variables.
OK, that is not Elkins’s strong point, but he does very well in other aspects, such as analyzing paintings and what about them is effective or reporting on people’s reactions to paintings throughout history. Some eras were crying eras and others were not. Ours is not, perhaps because of the nature of modern art, which is much more self-referential, and perhaps because of the nature of most modern societies, which discourage emotional expression in public, especially in a sterile environment such as a museum. His thoughts on these issues are thought-provoking, especially to a museum-going audience.
At the end, I began to think about my own reactions to art. I don’t think I’ve cried in response to a painting, but I have felt some very strong emotions or felt enormous appreciation for a work of art. Those reactions are just as valuable to me as crying would be (I think). This book has stimulated me to try to think more about just what reaction that is and why I find it valuable.
January 18, 2021
While I really enjoyed the concept of the book and think it had some strong ideas (I am a fan of art and art history being accessible and emotions not being cut from academia) the books drags in the middle and Elkins repeats himself often while trying to prove he even has a theory without writing much at all about that theory.
More concision and broader scope of art (the focus on western art and Christianity was only highlighted by the meager paragraph spent on the only non-European/American art in the book) would help this book be what should be.
More concision and broader scope of art (the focus on western art and Christianity was only highlighted by the meager paragraph spent on the only non-European/American art in the book) would help this book be what should be.
November 16, 2018
" When I cried in front of those paintings, I also did so in response to the painter’s courage, because I felt the painter…had been out on the edge, held it all together and made it work— and that may be the best explanation of what made me cry. "
Sincerely yours, Helen D.
Sincerely yours, Helen D.
February 20, 2024
Toooo long. The main idea is interesting, but I feel like it was just a lot of repetitive ideas to sustain such a long text. The opening chapter is by far the best. I like the idea of adding more legitimacy to emotionality as a way to interact with/engage with art.
May 28, 2017
This book did some wonderful things to me. It dispelled philosophical dogmas. It validated vague feelings I’ve had about academia, especially about art history. And, most importantly, it connected me with the stories of fellow weepy art-lovers.
“Pictures and Tears” contains, among other gems, the letters and stories of thirty-odd people who have cried (or wanted to cry) in front of paintings. If you’re an art-lover or weepy person – especially if, like me, you’re both – go read it. I’m giving it five stars; I want Goodreads to recommend more books like this. And now I’ll write a largely critical review… because that’s easier.
Elkins turns the question “Why do people cry in front of paintings?” on its head, asking instead: “Why do so many people fail to cry in front of paintings?” He spends a chapter discussing the “Stendhal syndrome” – a putative condition in which the sufferer (usually a visitor to an Italian city) is so overwhelmed with art that she becomes physically ill. Elkins brilliantly argues that we should define the complementary “Mark Twain malaise,” a hypothetical illness befalling those who fail to have any reactions whatsoever to art (named after a recorded failure on Twain’s part to be moved by the Last Supper).
Elkins makes a compelling case that our aesthetic responses fall on a continuum – and that we have no general reason to prefer moderate – or boringly average – responses. He also makes it evident that sometimes expertise can get in the way of raw emotional experience, thus calling into question an assumption common among philosophers: that expertise sets a standard for “best” aesthetic experience.
He also skilfully deflects worries about the “subjectivity” of tears. Several of the stories people sent in involve tears which at first seem to be only about the crier but on closer examination turn out to be a strong reaction to publicly ascertainable features of the painting. In one such story, a woman paints a picture of an empty bed. Her husband doesn’t think twice about it, until she has an affair. Then it takes on a harrowing significance, and he weeps.
At first, you might think that his response has nothing to do with the “aesthetic” features of the painting. It doesn’t even really matter that the thing which triggered his tears was a painting – if he’d chanced upon his wife’s hairclip, he might have dissolved into very similar tears. The painting was just a trigger – or so the thought goes.
Of course, the man’s response is a poor metric of the painting’s worth. He’s in no position to have the sort of “disinterested” response which could be a mark of such worth, and we shouldn’t conclude from his tears that he’s in front of a harrowing masterpiece. In that sense, his response is “subjective.” All the same, the response is hardly defective. In fact, you might argue that he understands the painting in a way in which we’re not privileged to. I doubt his wife created the painting for the purposes of disinterested contemplation; instead, it’s an expression of a concrete human experience. And the painter’s husband has insider information about the significance of this experience; after all, he’s part of the story the painting tells. As Elkins points out, any painting of an empty bed is bound to be emotionally charged (and in this way the painting is more than just a hairclip, a trigger for his response) – and our protagonist is uniquely placed to feel a particularly intense version of this emotional charge.
Elkins, then, exorcises dogmas about “the” privileged appreciative attitude towards paintings, whether that attitude be the “disinterested” one, the emotionally average or stable one, or the most theoretically, art-historically informed one. Unfortunately, in the process he succumbs to two equally misguided dogmas. (Both concern the apparently “non-cognitive” nature of tears.) The first is the dogma of the “ivory tower of tearlessness,” according to which learning too much art history inevitably covers you with “intellectual armor” preventing you from getting too emotional in front of a painting. Art history not only can get in the way of emotional responses; it almost inevitably does. The second, related, dogma is the dogma of the incomprehensibility of tears: while you may be able to understand something about why someone is crying, incomplete comprehensibility is a defining feature of tears. In the remainder of the review, I’ll argue that Elkins was wrong to accept these dogmas; they’re part of the misguided conceptual package which he rightly discards.
Elkins takes the letters he received to be evidence for the existence of the “ivory tower of tearlessness” – they demonstrate, he thinks, that art historians are overwhelmingly unlikely to be moved by paintings. I’ll argue that he bases this conclusion on faulty statistical reasoning.
Take a moment and guess: what percentage of the population has cried over a painting? What percentage has gotten emotional? Elkins estimates that “1 percent of [his] profession have been moved to tears by an artwork, and another 10 percent let themselves get emotional.” Is this less than what you guessed the base rate was – or more?
It’s more than what I think the base rate is – but my estimate hardly matters, since 1% and 10% are numbers pulled out of a ridiculously improbable hat. In the paragraph immediately preceding the one where Elkins makes this estimate, he tells us that he’d heard from “almost thirty” art historians. Seven said they had cried at paintings (but only two were willing to go on the record). Eleven said they “habitually feel very strongly about art, even though they don’t cry.” (p. 99)
We have a sample of fewer than 30 art historians. This means that at least 7/30, or 23%, of the art historians Elkins talked to had cried in front of paintings; 11/30, or 37%, feel very strongly about art, i.e. presumably, let themselves get emotional. If the 7 weepy and 11 emotional art historians are all different people (as “even though they don’t cry” suggests), then more than 18/30, i.e. 60%, of the art historians he surveyed “let themselves get emotional.” (How does this compare to your base rate estimate?) To estimate, as he does, that the emotion-rate in the art historical population is 11%, he would have had to have reason to think his sample was unbelievably biased towards weepy people.
Now we’re later told that “several thousand” saw his survey and didn’t respond. This must have led to some selection bias, since you’re probably more likely to answer a survey about weeping in front of paintings if you have a good story to tell than if your answer is a dull “no.” Even so, the weepiness rate among art historians might well be closer to 25% than to 1%. And I think you’ll agree that the general population rate couldn’t be higher than that.
So why does Elkins believe, against the evidence, that art history makes you less emotional? He may be noticing that the outliers – the people who admitted to extreme weepiness in their letters – are mostly not art historians. But that’s exactly as you’d expect, given that there are extremely few extreme weepers, and vastly fewer art historians than non-historians. An extremely weepy art-lover may be more likely to be an art historian than a random person is – but still much more likely not to be an art historian, given how few art historians there are. To think otherwise is to commit the base rate fallacy.
I know Elkins isn’t trying to carry out a randomized controlled trial – but he is trying to draw some broad conclusions from a data set which completely fails to support them (and may in fact support their negations). What I’d like to know now is: how many art historians have wept in front of a math problem?
I think Elkins’s letters reveal a troubling trend – but it’s a different trend than the one he isolates. There is no ivory tower of tearlessness – but there may be an ivory tower of tear-shaming. As many as 60% of art historians – the silent majority – may feel highly emotional in front of paintings, but most of them seem to believe that art historians aren’t supposed to be feeling this way – or, at least, that they should keep quiet about it when they do. That seven out of thirty art historians cried in front of paintings isn’t troubling; that five of them refused to have their letters published is. The most tragic character I find in Elkins’s book is the art history graduate student who asserts: “You couldn’t love a painting. Paintings are intellectual things. It’s not normal love.” From this perspective, Elkin’s belief that art historians are unemotional is part of the problem, not the solution.
The second dogma – the incomprehensibility of tears – reveals that Elkins’s exchange of the question “Why do some people cry in front of paintings?” for “Why don’t others cry?” is only partial. He’s still fundamentally a non-weepy person puzzling about weepers. This is revealed in what he finds puzzling: he asks “what could it mean, I wonder, to cry because I admired a novel? Could I ever cry because I regretted what a fictional character had chosen to do?” I’m puzzled by his puzzlement (especially at the second variety of tears).
Elkins’s favorite example of tears which don’t make sense comes from one of the letters he received, whose author “cried at the Louvre in front of Victory. She had no arms, but she was so tall.” He makes a big deal of the “but” here, claiming that there couldn’t be a reasonable contrast to be drawn between having no arms and being tall. Now his correspondent ends up agreeing with him that her tears didn’t make sense, so I’m on shaky ground here – but so tall/no arms strikes me as a perfectly reasonable contrast to draw. We have a monumental, empty victory which doesn’t have arms with which to do things of real, human value. Perhaps her human arms have been replaced by wings – empty, dangerously beautiful ideals. I could go on. Only the weeper knows which story best captures her tears – but there are plenty of perfectly comprehensible stories to choose from.
The two dogmas interact: if tears are utterly mysterious, non-rational things, then knowledge – in particular, art-historical knowledge – is at best irrelevant and at worst damaging to emotional experience. But take the story of the man who cried in front of the painting of an empty bed. His tears weren’t the result of an immediate, non-cognitive experience. He cried, in part, because he had knowledge about the painting. Now his knowledge was of a particularly immediate, first-personal kind (he knew not only that the painter had had an affair, but that his wife was the painter who had an affair), but it’s still a piece of knowledge about the history (art history, even) of the painting. If his wife’s painting ended up in an art gallery, my emotions could only benefit from an art historian telling me this story.
A final reason for tears which Elkins finds incomprehensible reveals that he is under the spell of yet another aesthetic dogma: the dogma of the irrelevance of beauty. On the last page, he describes a passionless art-goer (the person you wouldn’t want to become if you take tears seriously), saying “The eye is rebuffed by the dim canvas, and keeps falling back into the lazy chair of clichés – “How beautiful,” people say without thinking how flat that sounds.” Now “it’s beautiful” can certainly be a cliché, a vague term of praise for when you don’t know what to say. But Elkins is forgetting that many of the protagonists of his story have used the word “beautiful” in a very different emotional register. “I cried because it was so beautiful” is a sentiment which recurs in the letters again and again.
Elkins dismisses this as a comprehensible reason for tears, since “in the art world, beauty is nearly a synonym for pallor. Saying that an artwork is beautiful is a bit like calling someone “nice”: it means that stronger, more definite qualities are probably missing.” He’s revealing his true stripes when he says “in the art world.”
The ivory tower of tearlessness is also an ivory tower of beautylessness. And, as with tearlessness, I think the art historians are not a different species from us naïve beauty-lovers – they’re just a little more repressed. Those who do admit to crying because of beauty say it with an awareness that they’re up to something controversial. Robert Rosenblum is a trifle apologetic: “I have truly gasped (jaw dropped, breath caught, etc.) from the sensation of what I guess we might still call Beauty, or some other kind of magic in art.” Tamara Bissell, who bravely countered that poor grad student’s contention that you can’t fall in love with a painting, said that the Friedrich painting which made her cry “was very quiet and very beautiful.” She’s defiant: “she said the word “beautiful” very carefully.” In the art world I wish we had, she wouldn’t have to be defiant.
Beauty, like tears, is nothing to apologize for. There may certainly be more to a tear than beauty – but sometimes “it was so beautiful” really is a complete and satisfactory explanation. Strangely, Elkins accepts “I cried because I felt the presence of God” as a comprehensible explanation – but not “I cried because it was so beautiful.” He says of words like “the uncanny” or “the aura” that “each word is a strategy for not quite naming God;” I’m more inclined to think that “God” – a retreat into organized religion – is a strategy for not quite naming beauty.
In one of the letters, a woman cries in a Hungarian gallery. The guard says, “quietly and sympathetically,” “szép-szép.” “Szép” is the only Hungarian word known by the author of the letter; it means “beautiful.” The guard understood something Elkins pretends not to: few things are as comprehensible as tears because of beauty. Just look at this little boy crying because a chihuahua is so beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6r9c...
“Szép-szép:” the sound of tears falling.
“Pictures and Tears” contains, among other gems, the letters and stories of thirty-odd people who have cried (or wanted to cry) in front of paintings. If you’re an art-lover or weepy person – especially if, like me, you’re both – go read it. I’m giving it five stars; I want Goodreads to recommend more books like this. And now I’ll write a largely critical review… because that’s easier.
Elkins turns the question “Why do people cry in front of paintings?” on its head, asking instead: “Why do so many people fail to cry in front of paintings?” He spends a chapter discussing the “Stendhal syndrome” – a putative condition in which the sufferer (usually a visitor to an Italian city) is so overwhelmed with art that she becomes physically ill. Elkins brilliantly argues that we should define the complementary “Mark Twain malaise,” a hypothetical illness befalling those who fail to have any reactions whatsoever to art (named after a recorded failure on Twain’s part to be moved by the Last Supper).
Elkins makes a compelling case that our aesthetic responses fall on a continuum – and that we have no general reason to prefer moderate – or boringly average – responses. He also makes it evident that sometimes expertise can get in the way of raw emotional experience, thus calling into question an assumption common among philosophers: that expertise sets a standard for “best” aesthetic experience.
He also skilfully deflects worries about the “subjectivity” of tears. Several of the stories people sent in involve tears which at first seem to be only about the crier but on closer examination turn out to be a strong reaction to publicly ascertainable features of the painting. In one such story, a woman paints a picture of an empty bed. Her husband doesn’t think twice about it, until she has an affair. Then it takes on a harrowing significance, and he weeps.
At first, you might think that his response has nothing to do with the “aesthetic” features of the painting. It doesn’t even really matter that the thing which triggered his tears was a painting – if he’d chanced upon his wife’s hairclip, he might have dissolved into very similar tears. The painting was just a trigger – or so the thought goes.
Of course, the man’s response is a poor metric of the painting’s worth. He’s in no position to have the sort of “disinterested” response which could be a mark of such worth, and we shouldn’t conclude from his tears that he’s in front of a harrowing masterpiece. In that sense, his response is “subjective.” All the same, the response is hardly defective. In fact, you might argue that he understands the painting in a way in which we’re not privileged to. I doubt his wife created the painting for the purposes of disinterested contemplation; instead, it’s an expression of a concrete human experience. And the painter’s husband has insider information about the significance of this experience; after all, he’s part of the story the painting tells. As Elkins points out, any painting of an empty bed is bound to be emotionally charged (and in this way the painting is more than just a hairclip, a trigger for his response) – and our protagonist is uniquely placed to feel a particularly intense version of this emotional charge.
Elkins, then, exorcises dogmas about “the” privileged appreciative attitude towards paintings, whether that attitude be the “disinterested” one, the emotionally average or stable one, or the most theoretically, art-historically informed one. Unfortunately, in the process he succumbs to two equally misguided dogmas. (Both concern the apparently “non-cognitive” nature of tears.) The first is the dogma of the “ivory tower of tearlessness,” according to which learning too much art history inevitably covers you with “intellectual armor” preventing you from getting too emotional in front of a painting. Art history not only can get in the way of emotional responses; it almost inevitably does. The second, related, dogma is the dogma of the incomprehensibility of tears: while you may be able to understand something about why someone is crying, incomplete comprehensibility is a defining feature of tears. In the remainder of the review, I’ll argue that Elkins was wrong to accept these dogmas; they’re part of the misguided conceptual package which he rightly discards.
Elkins takes the letters he received to be evidence for the existence of the “ivory tower of tearlessness” – they demonstrate, he thinks, that art historians are overwhelmingly unlikely to be moved by paintings. I’ll argue that he bases this conclusion on faulty statistical reasoning.
Take a moment and guess: what percentage of the population has cried over a painting? What percentage has gotten emotional? Elkins estimates that “1 percent of [his] profession have been moved to tears by an artwork, and another 10 percent let themselves get emotional.” Is this less than what you guessed the base rate was – or more?
It’s more than what I think the base rate is – but my estimate hardly matters, since 1% and 10% are numbers pulled out of a ridiculously improbable hat. In the paragraph immediately preceding the one where Elkins makes this estimate, he tells us that he’d heard from “almost thirty” art historians. Seven said they had cried at paintings (but only two were willing to go on the record). Eleven said they “habitually feel very strongly about art, even though they don’t cry.” (p. 99)
We have a sample of fewer than 30 art historians. This means that at least 7/30, or 23%, of the art historians Elkins talked to had cried in front of paintings; 11/30, or 37%, feel very strongly about art, i.e. presumably, let themselves get emotional. If the 7 weepy and 11 emotional art historians are all different people (as “even though they don’t cry” suggests), then more than 18/30, i.e. 60%, of the art historians he surveyed “let themselves get emotional.” (How does this compare to your base rate estimate?) To estimate, as he does, that the emotion-rate in the art historical population is 11%, he would have had to have reason to think his sample was unbelievably biased towards weepy people.
Now we’re later told that “several thousand” saw his survey and didn’t respond. This must have led to some selection bias, since you’re probably more likely to answer a survey about weeping in front of paintings if you have a good story to tell than if your answer is a dull “no.” Even so, the weepiness rate among art historians might well be closer to 25% than to 1%. And I think you’ll agree that the general population rate couldn’t be higher than that.
So why does Elkins believe, against the evidence, that art history makes you less emotional? He may be noticing that the outliers – the people who admitted to extreme weepiness in their letters – are mostly not art historians. But that’s exactly as you’d expect, given that there are extremely few extreme weepers, and vastly fewer art historians than non-historians. An extremely weepy art-lover may be more likely to be an art historian than a random person is – but still much more likely not to be an art historian, given how few art historians there are. To think otherwise is to commit the base rate fallacy.
I know Elkins isn’t trying to carry out a randomized controlled trial – but he is trying to draw some broad conclusions from a data set which completely fails to support them (and may in fact support their negations). What I’d like to know now is: how many art historians have wept in front of a math problem?
I think Elkins’s letters reveal a troubling trend – but it’s a different trend than the one he isolates. There is no ivory tower of tearlessness – but there may be an ivory tower of tear-shaming. As many as 60% of art historians – the silent majority – may feel highly emotional in front of paintings, but most of them seem to believe that art historians aren’t supposed to be feeling this way – or, at least, that they should keep quiet about it when they do. That seven out of thirty art historians cried in front of paintings isn’t troubling; that five of them refused to have their letters published is. The most tragic character I find in Elkins’s book is the art history graduate student who asserts: “You couldn’t love a painting. Paintings are intellectual things. It’s not normal love.” From this perspective, Elkin’s belief that art historians are unemotional is part of the problem, not the solution.
The second dogma – the incomprehensibility of tears – reveals that Elkins’s exchange of the question “Why do some people cry in front of paintings?” for “Why don’t others cry?” is only partial. He’s still fundamentally a non-weepy person puzzling about weepers. This is revealed in what he finds puzzling: he asks “what could it mean, I wonder, to cry because I admired a novel? Could I ever cry because I regretted what a fictional character had chosen to do?” I’m puzzled by his puzzlement (especially at the second variety of tears).
Elkins’s favorite example of tears which don’t make sense comes from one of the letters he received, whose author “cried at the Louvre in front of Victory. She had no arms, but she was so tall.” He makes a big deal of the “but” here, claiming that there couldn’t be a reasonable contrast to be drawn between having no arms and being tall. Now his correspondent ends up agreeing with him that her tears didn’t make sense, so I’m on shaky ground here – but so tall/no arms strikes me as a perfectly reasonable contrast to draw. We have a monumental, empty victory which doesn’t have arms with which to do things of real, human value. Perhaps her human arms have been replaced by wings – empty, dangerously beautiful ideals. I could go on. Only the weeper knows which story best captures her tears – but there are plenty of perfectly comprehensible stories to choose from.
The two dogmas interact: if tears are utterly mysterious, non-rational things, then knowledge – in particular, art-historical knowledge – is at best irrelevant and at worst damaging to emotional experience. But take the story of the man who cried in front of the painting of an empty bed. His tears weren’t the result of an immediate, non-cognitive experience. He cried, in part, because he had knowledge about the painting. Now his knowledge was of a particularly immediate, first-personal kind (he knew not only that the painter had had an affair, but that his wife was the painter who had an affair), but it’s still a piece of knowledge about the history (art history, even) of the painting. If his wife’s painting ended up in an art gallery, my emotions could only benefit from an art historian telling me this story.
A final reason for tears which Elkins finds incomprehensible reveals that he is under the spell of yet another aesthetic dogma: the dogma of the irrelevance of beauty. On the last page, he describes a passionless art-goer (the person you wouldn’t want to become if you take tears seriously), saying “The eye is rebuffed by the dim canvas, and keeps falling back into the lazy chair of clichés – “How beautiful,” people say without thinking how flat that sounds.” Now “it’s beautiful” can certainly be a cliché, a vague term of praise for when you don’t know what to say. But Elkins is forgetting that many of the protagonists of his story have used the word “beautiful” in a very different emotional register. “I cried because it was so beautiful” is a sentiment which recurs in the letters again and again.
Elkins dismisses this as a comprehensible reason for tears, since “in the art world, beauty is nearly a synonym for pallor. Saying that an artwork is beautiful is a bit like calling someone “nice”: it means that stronger, more definite qualities are probably missing.” He’s revealing his true stripes when he says “in the art world.”
The ivory tower of tearlessness is also an ivory tower of beautylessness. And, as with tearlessness, I think the art historians are not a different species from us naïve beauty-lovers – they’re just a little more repressed. Those who do admit to crying because of beauty say it with an awareness that they’re up to something controversial. Robert Rosenblum is a trifle apologetic: “I have truly gasped (jaw dropped, breath caught, etc.) from the sensation of what I guess we might still call Beauty, or some other kind of magic in art.” Tamara Bissell, who bravely countered that poor grad student’s contention that you can’t fall in love with a painting, said that the Friedrich painting which made her cry “was very quiet and very beautiful.” She’s defiant: “she said the word “beautiful” very carefully.” In the art world I wish we had, she wouldn’t have to be defiant.
Beauty, like tears, is nothing to apologize for. There may certainly be more to a tear than beauty – but sometimes “it was so beautiful” really is a complete and satisfactory explanation. Strangely, Elkins accepts “I cried because I felt the presence of God” as a comprehensible explanation – but not “I cried because it was so beautiful.” He says of words like “the uncanny” or “the aura” that “each word is a strategy for not quite naming God;” I’m more inclined to think that “God” – a retreat into organized religion – is a strategy for not quite naming beauty.
In one of the letters, a woman cries in a Hungarian gallery. The guard says, “quietly and sympathetically,” “szép-szép.” “Szép” is the only Hungarian word known by the author of the letter; it means “beautiful.” The guard understood something Elkins pretends not to: few things are as comprehensible as tears because of beauty. Just look at this little boy crying because a chihuahua is so beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6r9c...
“Szép-szép:” the sound of tears falling.
December 30, 2020
this is REQUIRED READING
April 28, 2024
Bit of a slog, but I like the sentiment
August 11, 2023
My friends and I were college undergrads when Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station came out. At the time it was one of those books that everyone seemed interested in, and everyone was talking about. It even made it's way into the curriculum of a course called "Philosophy and Literature", that I didn't take, but many friends did. One scene that was often discussed was at the start of the book, maybe even it's very beginning--the narrator arrives in front of a painting he stands in front of daily at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, only to find that someone else is planted firm in front of the painting in his stead.:
The blubbering museum patron moves on to cry in front of two other paintings, both of which contained depictions of Jesus, once of them being Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which happens to be my favorite painting, and probably the favorite many others'. (I may have the opportunity to see it in person soon, I inevitably find myself wondering if I'll shed a tear when I make my way in front of it.) The first painting the man stops in front of, the one that our narrator finds himself walking to as part of a daily morning ritual, is The Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden. Almost every single person in this painting is in tears. That "Philosophy and Literature" class did address this part of Leaving the Atocha Station, but I wouldn't know what was said (I wasn't actually in the class!), though knowing the professor--Frank B. Farrell, who is absolutely brilliant--makes me all but sure it had to do with Kierkegaard, incommensurability of experience, the either/or of whether or not to live in faith and accept the consequences that come with it.
I often think about that above passage from the novel, and hypothesize about what it was that that man must have experienced when looking at those paintings. It's one of those pieces of text that very well could have "changed my life". Not in the sense that the narrator suggests such a moment may for him, in the lack of an emotional response (or, not only in that way), but instead it was an introduction to the possibility of what art can do. Unlike the narrator I wasn't skeptical of the man's tears; the intention of the text itself may have been to will the reader to want to understand why he wept, and in turn wonder about ourselves, whether we have, or could have such a response.
It would take me a few more years to cry in front of a painting. There were moments when I came close, at an Amrita Sher-Gil show I caught travelling abroad, at a Lucas Cranach painting at the Met in New York, at a Dana Schutz exhibit (pre-controversy). The painting that drew tears from me for the first time was Emily Carr's Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky. I saw it at a museum in Toronto, I don't remember which. In front of me was this gorgeous, barren, pathetic tree that had no choice but to ascend higher and higher. What it lacked in limbs and volume it made up for with it's sheer resolve to reach higher and higher into the sky, towards the sun. Now, thinking about it in this way is evocative of Georges Bataille, who wrote about how everything grows in a sunbound trajectory, how that which is touched by the sun, ever emitting it's energy, is always bound to have excess--that overabundance is death.
Before I could give the image any kind of pontificatory attention, before I could intellectualize the image in any way, I had a truly overwhelming, excessive response to it. And it's true that I hadn't known about the work of Emily Carr beforehand, nor did I know of Sher-Gil, Cranach, Schutz... Elkins writes about how one of his favorite paintings became less and less mystical to him as he studied it more and more over the course of his career as an art historian. He spends an entire section of Pictures & Tears on this phenomenon, about how the more you learn about an image the less capable of an emotional response you'll have to it. My visceral reaction to this was to shake my head no and say that the more I learn about the world the more I am affected by it. The other painting I've cried to, for example, was David's Death of Socrates, but after further reflection, it's not the image that made me cry, it was the tragedy of Socrates, and how his death allowed for the first great works of philosophy to exist with Plato--and the moment in Plato's Phaedo where Plato reveals he was too ill to attend Socrates' final moments, how he'll forever be absent from that painting now because of it. It wasn't the image that made an impression, it was what was already in my mind.
Knowing James Elkins' fascination with Thomas Bernhard, and his thoughts on the novel Old Masters, made this somewhat of a tragic read. In the Bernhard novel (which now I wonder if Ben Lerner has any admiration for), the main character sits every day in front of a painting at a museum for hours, simply because it is the only work of art that he can tolerate anymore. After a full lifetime of experiences in life and art there isn't much left for him on the walls of a museum. I couldn't help but think about my favorite movies (I feel like film can most easily be reflected on in this way), how after a few emotional viewings you begin to notice some faults in the characters that you never noticed before, some shots that could have been made better, some holes in the plot. Or you read a book about the director, or read a few interviews about the making of the movie, and some of the magic is gone, the secrets behind it's tricks revealed to you. Then you're left with something you understand, and that image that you had once seen, when maybe it was more pure, is gone.
I don't think we ever get any insights into why the man in the museum was crying in Ben Lerner's novel. Two of the most common reasons for people to cry in front of paintings, according to Elkins, are because there is an overwhelming abundance, an overwhelming absence--those are the two I most identify with the common, careful, non-academic museum goer like myself. But what we feel when we read about him is a kind of envy, an envy that I believe Elkins is feeling when he writes this book. James Elkins writes from a place of deeply wanting others to experience art in the most meaningful way that they can. The paradox for the academic is that understanding comes at the cost of mystery, and mystery, the specter behind unknowing, is at the root of these tears.
I was irritated and tried to find another canvas for my morning ritual, but was too accustomed to th painting's dimensions and blues to accept a substitute. I was about to abandon room 58 when the man broke suddenly into tears, convulsively catching his breath. Was he, I wondered, just facing the wall to hide his face as he dealt with whatever grief he'd brought into the museum? Or was he having a profound experience of art? (the author's italics)
I had long worried that I was incapable of having a profound experience of art and I had trouble believing that anyone had, at least anyone I knew. I was intensely suspicious of people who claimed a poem or painting or piece of music "changed their life," especially since I had often known these people before and after their experience and could register no change. Although I claimed to be a poet[...] I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claim made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.
The blubbering museum patron moves on to cry in front of two other paintings, both of which contained depictions of Jesus, once of them being Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which happens to be my favorite painting, and probably the favorite many others'. (I may have the opportunity to see it in person soon, I inevitably find myself wondering if I'll shed a tear when I make my way in front of it.) The first painting the man stops in front of, the one that our narrator finds himself walking to as part of a daily morning ritual, is The Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden. Almost every single person in this painting is in tears. That "Philosophy and Literature" class did address this part of Leaving the Atocha Station, but I wouldn't know what was said (I wasn't actually in the class!), though knowing the professor--Frank B. Farrell, who is absolutely brilliant--makes me all but sure it had to do with Kierkegaard, incommensurability of experience, the either/or of whether or not to live in faith and accept the consequences that come with it.
I often think about that above passage from the novel, and hypothesize about what it was that that man must have experienced when looking at those paintings. It's one of those pieces of text that very well could have "changed my life". Not in the sense that the narrator suggests such a moment may for him, in the lack of an emotional response (or, not only in that way), but instead it was an introduction to the possibility of what art can do. Unlike the narrator I wasn't skeptical of the man's tears; the intention of the text itself may have been to will the reader to want to understand why he wept, and in turn wonder about ourselves, whether we have, or could have such a response.
It would take me a few more years to cry in front of a painting. There were moments when I came close, at an Amrita Sher-Gil show I caught travelling abroad, at a Lucas Cranach painting at the Met in New York, at a Dana Schutz exhibit (pre-controversy). The painting that drew tears from me for the first time was Emily Carr's Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky. I saw it at a museum in Toronto, I don't remember which. In front of me was this gorgeous, barren, pathetic tree that had no choice but to ascend higher and higher. What it lacked in limbs and volume it made up for with it's sheer resolve to reach higher and higher into the sky, towards the sun. Now, thinking about it in this way is evocative of Georges Bataille, who wrote about how everything grows in a sunbound trajectory, how that which is touched by the sun, ever emitting it's energy, is always bound to have excess--that overabundance is death.
Before I could give the image any kind of pontificatory attention, before I could intellectualize the image in any way, I had a truly overwhelming, excessive response to it. And it's true that I hadn't known about the work of Emily Carr beforehand, nor did I know of Sher-Gil, Cranach, Schutz... Elkins writes about how one of his favorite paintings became less and less mystical to him as he studied it more and more over the course of his career as an art historian. He spends an entire section of Pictures & Tears on this phenomenon, about how the more you learn about an image the less capable of an emotional response you'll have to it. My visceral reaction to this was to shake my head no and say that the more I learn about the world the more I am affected by it. The other painting I've cried to, for example, was David's Death of Socrates, but after further reflection, it's not the image that made me cry, it was the tragedy of Socrates, and how his death allowed for the first great works of philosophy to exist with Plato--and the moment in Plato's Phaedo where Plato reveals he was too ill to attend Socrates' final moments, how he'll forever be absent from that painting now because of it. It wasn't the image that made an impression, it was what was already in my mind.
Knowing James Elkins' fascination with Thomas Bernhard, and his thoughts on the novel Old Masters, made this somewhat of a tragic read. In the Bernhard novel (which now I wonder if Ben Lerner has any admiration for), the main character sits every day in front of a painting at a museum for hours, simply because it is the only work of art that he can tolerate anymore. After a full lifetime of experiences in life and art there isn't much left for him on the walls of a museum. I couldn't help but think about my favorite movies (I feel like film can most easily be reflected on in this way), how after a few emotional viewings you begin to notice some faults in the characters that you never noticed before, some shots that could have been made better, some holes in the plot. Or you read a book about the director, or read a few interviews about the making of the movie, and some of the magic is gone, the secrets behind it's tricks revealed to you. Then you're left with something you understand, and that image that you had once seen, when maybe it was more pure, is gone.
I don't think we ever get any insights into why the man in the museum was crying in Ben Lerner's novel. Two of the most common reasons for people to cry in front of paintings, according to Elkins, are because there is an overwhelming abundance, an overwhelming absence--those are the two I most identify with the common, careful, non-academic museum goer like myself. But what we feel when we read about him is a kind of envy, an envy that I believe Elkins is feeling when he writes this book. James Elkins writes from a place of deeply wanting others to experience art in the most meaningful way that they can. The paradox for the academic is that understanding comes at the cost of mystery, and mystery, the specter behind unknowing, is at the root of these tears.
October 1, 2010
Such a fascinating book on such a strange topic -- who on earth cries in front of paintings? Quite a lot of people, apparently, and for almost as many different reasons as there are paintings and viewers. It's very odd to see an art historian tackle the topic of emotion -- not just represented emotion, but the emotions of people responding to art -- so head-on; usually that's Just Not Done. (Elkins, in fact, spends a fair amount of time discussing why it's Just Not Done to bring emotion into academic analysis of art.) In some ways this book is a bit of a meander from topic to topic; I sometimes wished for more of a unifying thread, besides "people bursting into tears while looking at art," and I also wished for a bit more history -- most of the accounts of weeping are from present-day art viewers who responded to Elkins' call for accounts of tearful responses to paintings. But the stories are marvelous, and anyone who's been moved to tears by a work of art (or literature, or music) will find Elkins' treatment of the subject compelling. For the record, I've never cried in front of a painting myself. But -- emotions being the contagious things that they are -- I cried quite a bit while reading the accounts in this book.
April 12, 2010
It is sort of a forbidden topic among art historians and aestheticians. Should one experience a rarefied aesthetic experience merely? Or can a painting or other work kick your ass, and leave you flabbergasted? This book addresses this embarrassing question.
Granted, a particular emotional or transcendental experience may not have a permanent and objective significance that says all about a work of art for all time. True, art is a much more complex topic than just getting weepy. But isn't art also about massing of feeling and experience, and do we not deny an important aspect at our peril?
Granted, a particular emotional or transcendental experience may not have a permanent and objective significance that says all about a work of art for all time. True, art is a much more complex topic than just getting weepy. But isn't art also about massing of feeling and experience, and do we not deny an important aspect at our peril?
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