ABSTRACT
To comment on the significance of a conversation that you did not experience first-hand is always a tough job. When the subject of the conversation is the relation between aesthetics and art history, commentary becomes so deliciously self-reflexive that it is easy to believe that James Elkins had a trap for philosophers in mind when he designed the assignment. I do not mean to say that the task has not been pleasurable. The transcript offers so many spontaneously expressed provocative ideas that it would be churlish to be ungrateful for the opportunity to have listened in.
