Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

Rating:
Summary: A compassionate validation of the individual spirit
Review: Jame Elkins has written a book that should be in the librairies of schools, art historians, incipient and experienced art lovers. In a winning conversational style of writing Elkins makes the case for subjective response to paintings, both past and present. And in doing so he gives a brief course in at history (he is an art historian, actively teaching) that is less a chronological evaluation of politics and sociology and techniques of painting than it is a survey of how people have responded to paintings through time. His precis: we are in this century prevented from "experiencing" paintings, so immersed are we in swallowing the opinions of scholars and critics and our own spiritual aridity. He examines why certain people are able to cry in their encounter with paintings, others are moved to physiologic reactions, while others speedily walk past image after image in their need to huury past another obligatory check point in claiming cultural awareness. In many ways this is a sad treatise on the fact that we have arrived at a time when we don't embrace our vulnerability, don't admit that something so apparently inanimate as an old master painting - if given the quantity and quality of time to absorb it - can touch inner secret caves and cause us to light up our souls and our existence by responding with unfettered eyes and heart.

Elkins investigates the various responses (including his own) to the Rothko Chapel, to Giotto, to Renaissance paintings, to the Romantics, to Friedrich, and to Picasso's "Guernica". These are in the form of summation of letters written to him in response to his question "Have you ever cried at paintings?" sent to previous students, art historians, and friends. His findings show that art historians in general have encouraged us to examine paintings as examples of technique, of historical settings, of schools of thought in the past: such academic dissection has replaced the individual response to the visual image. And fortunately for us the author concludes that the visceral response to paintings is more important than the cell of academic cold shelter.

For those of us who have committed our lives to bridging the gap between the painter and the public, encouraging everyone to go to the museums, galleries, schools, and churches to experience the indefinable majesty of emotional response to art, this little book is a godsend. Buy it, read it slowly, break down your own barriers, open your mind, and you will find validation of your inner artist. This is a "beautiful presence" of an artistic expression and we are indebted to Elkins for his courage in writing it.