ABSTRACT
In surveying the vast number of publications written by James Elkins, one cannot avoid feeling awed or even bewildered by the staggering variety of subjects that he has addressed with such passion. From seemingly banal or ordinary objects (e.g., maps of the London Underground, educational picture boards) to arcane or difficult bodies of knowledge (e.g., spider web formations, crystallography), to traditional art historical subjects (e.g., Michelangelo, Jan Van Eyck), nothing appears to have escaped his hungry eye or astute analysis. It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to envision Elkins perfectly at ease in a seventeenth-century Wunderkammer complete with a stuffed alligator suspended from the ceiling, lush oil paintings on the wall, and cabinets stocked with treasure troves of ancient coins, maps, rare gems and fossils, skeletons and anatomical specimens of all varieties, early optical instruments, alchemical treatises, and the like. I am not suggesting that Elkins delights in eclectic wonders for their own sake, but I argue that his scholarly work, like the work by some of the individuals who assembled early modern Wunderkammern, has been consistently devoted to exploring the spaces that lie between diverse and even far-flung fields of study. From this interstitial perspective, he examines the relationships and productive encounters (or clashes) between disciplines in a truly imaginative manner. What unifies his diverse range of inquiry is the desire to understand how these disciplines intersect (or diverge from) art historical conventions and practices — including the traditions of making and interpreting images. Above all, his inquiries are made timely and relevant because they are inflected by a sustained familiarity with major philosophical and cultural discourses from the early modern era through the present age. Within this context, he poses challenging and fundamentally pragmatic questions about the nature of art history: What are the unique traditions of the discipline and where do they come from? What are its blind spots and its most valuable contributions to the hermeneutic enterprise? And finally, how do the respective strengths and shortcomings of art history inform the way we practice and teach it today?
