Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?: On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity

Plato shrewdly noticed that a painting loses its liveliness the moment the viewer confronts its ""most majestic silence."" In this book, Elkins shows how ""dire anxiety in the face of pictures"" has induced a crisis in recent art criticism. Specialists, compelled to interpret and reinterpret paintings in search of puzzles, ambiguities and hidden meanings, have generated reams of excessive and esoteric scholarship: ""Their theories are the inflammation that results from irritating the wound instead of letting it alone so it can heal."" Some of his claims--that art historians, who ""are attracted by oddities, mistakes [and] idiosyncrasies"" seek out, and themselves enact, ""thematized self-awareness""--have intuitive appeal, holding a mirror up to a culture unaware of its own fascinations. Less convincing is the insistence that critical energy itself--expended on ""hypericons"" such as the Mona Lisa, School of Athens and the Sistine Ceiling--is a symptom of illness, hopelessly engulfed in a bottomless well of bibliographies and indexes. When Elkins turns to praise fellow workers in his field from Leo Steinberg and Michael Fried to Jacques Derrida and Salvador Dal , however, he lends optimism (""An engaged imagination is finally what compels conviction"") to an account otherwise bordering on the cynical. Cogent, conversational and lucid, this book provides a useful, nuanced understanding of what ordinary viewers today share with ""the discipline [that] thrives on the pleasure of problems well solved."" 76 plates. (Apr.)