Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts

Know about the book -

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts is written by James Elkins and published by Penn State Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0271043903 (ISBN 10) and 9780271043906 (ISBN 13).

Elkins argues that writing is what art historians produce, and, whether such writing is a transparent vehicle for the transmission of facts or an embattled forum for the rehearsal of institutional relations and constructions of history, it is an expressive medium, with the capacity for emotion and reflection. Therefore, it needs to be taken seriously for its own sake: it is the testament of art history and of individual historians, and it is only weakened and slighted by versions of history that imagine it either as uncontrolled dissemination or as objective discovery and reporting.