A Maverick Art Historian Examines His Field's Idiosyncrasies and Blind SpotsAn Art for Writing: Books by James Elkins

Calling on researchers to widen their view, James Elkins looks at images outside museum walls

James Elkins has a test for the field of art history.

Take an auction catalogue from the 1950s, he suggests, and pick out a typical painting, a countryside landscape. Now try to drum up a lecture on the painting that would take it as seriously as a work by Manet or

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