Leonardo Digital Reviews

What Painting Is: How to Think About Oil Painting, Using the Language of Alchemy

by James Elkins
New York and London, Routledge

Reviewed by David Topper

The writings of art historian and theorist James Elkins have been highly original, usually provacative, and often controversial. This book should prove to be no exception, for he weaves together the story of painting with that of alchemy. By "painting" Elkins is to be taken literally: he writes eloquently, engagingly, and lovingly about the act of applying oil paints to the naked canvas. The color plates in this book are extraordinary: extreme detailed close-ups revealing the strokes, daubs, and gobs of dried oil paint. The book is about technique but it is not a how-to manual. It is more about the mess and smell of the studio and the bodily movements of the artist; less about representation and illusion; and says nothing about symbolism and iconography. It is, in essence, about the transmutation that takes place as the artist strokes the canvas with colored globs of a viscous mixture of pigments, oil, water and other substances.

The connection with alchemy is more metaphorical than historical. Elkins believes that alchemy may provide a "voice" for painting since painting is also pre-scientific (artists, like alchemist, learn their craft mainly by practice, and both are immersed in the manipulation of substances). Frankly, I found some of the parallels forced. For example, I am not convinced that the alchemists' search for the Philosopher's Stone is an analogue of the perfect painting; as well, I think painting technique is much more a trial and error "method" than the alchemy, which is heavily laden with "theory."

One paragraph in this book jumped out at me for it articulated something that I often felt and talked about, but never had corroborated. Having painted off and on since my childhood, I think I know and feel something about this act of painting. Accordingly, I find that when I stand in front of a painting (especially if I am enthralled) I move my body with the picture as if I were painting it. Elkins writes about this very thing (p. 97) and I quote extracts from this wonderful paragraph:

Painters feel "things as they look at pictures, and they may re-enact the motions that went into the paintings."

In a museum, it is often possible to tell an experienced painter from an historian because the painter will step up to a picture and make gestures, or trace outlines. Those movements are not always done in a deliberate way--they are second nature, a kind of automatic responseÉ.The painter moves with the painting, the historian against it.

In one sense this book goes against the grain of Leonardo, since the Science and Technology component of this journal is usually confined to modernity. But not if one takes a broader perspective, where the history of science and technology entail the history of alchemy too. Elkins's book is appropriate. Or the reader may, of course, skip the alchemical discussions and read only the "essay" on painting, where one will find much wisdom and fresh ideas about the act of painting.

Date: March 1999
This review is copyrighted Leonardo Digital Reviews, 1999.