James Elkins (art historian)
# James Elkins (art historian)

James Elkins (born 1955) is an American 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.

## Education

* BA, cum laude, 1977, Cornell University
* MFA and MA, 1984, University of Chicago
* PhD with honors, 1989, University of Chicago

## Publications

* Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings
* Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History
* Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis
* The Domain of Images
* How to Use Your Eyes
* What Painting Is
* The Poetics of Perspective
* The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing
* Why are our Pictures Puzzles?
* What Happened to Art Criticism?
* Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction
* Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook For Art Students
* Six Stories From the End of Representation
* Stories of Art
* On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art
* On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them
* Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing
* Master Narratives and Their Discontents
