ABSTRACT
With bracing clarity, James Elkins explores why images are taken to be more intricate and hard to describe in the twentieth century than they had been in any previous century. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? uses three models to understand the kinds of complex meaning that pictures are thought to possess: the affinity between the meanings of paintings and jigsaw-puzzles; the contemporary interest in ambiguity and 'levels of meaning'; and the penchant many have to interpret pictures by finding images hidden within them. Elkins explores a wide variety of examples, from the figures hidden in Renaissance paintings to Salvador Dali's paranoiac meditations on Millet's Angelus, from Persian miniature paintings to jigsaw-puzzles. He also examines some of the most vexed works in history, including Watteau's "meaningless" paintings, Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, and Leonardo's Last Supper.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |14 pages
Introduction: Mutilated Fire Unite
part 1|29 pages
Considering Things
chapter 1|14 pages
The Evidence of Excess
chapter 2|14 pages
What Counts as Complexity?
part 2|96 pages
Staying Calm
chapter 3|24 pages
How to Solve Picture Puzzles
chapter 4|29 pages
An Ambilogy of Painted Meanings
chapter 5|25 pages
On Monstrously Ambiguous Paintings
chapter 6|17 pages
Calming the Delirium of Interpretation
part 3|72 pages
Losing Control