Our Beautiful, Dry and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing

"Art historical writing," claims James Elkins, "is strange, and interesting partly because of that strangeness...infused with curious qualities, with stifled confessional eloquence, a sometimes fevered desire to capture art objects in words, and an unrequited love for science and its dryness." Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts examines art historical writing as an expressive medium, capable of emotion and reflection--and therefore deserving of serious consideration for its own sake, as the testament of art history and of individual historians. Elkins asks such questions as: How do various art historical approaches represent works of art? What can they see, and what must they miss? And what insight does such writing offer us about ourselves, "we who spend our lives looking at pictures and producing dry monographs in response"? Drawing on analyses of texts by Derrida, Deleuze, and other leading critics, as well as illustrations of artworks from various cultures, Elkins constructs an eloquent plea forcircumspection in the entire endeavor of trying to force images into words, and in the curious vocation of writing the history of art.