My Perfect Body: James Elkins lecture

In conjunction with the exhibition Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body, James Elkins speaks about the limits of the representation of the body in contemporary and postmodern art, with reference to Andy Warhol’s work. Building on the arguments that he established in his seminal text Pictures of the Body: Pain & Metamorphosis, Elkins makes the case that Warhol’s work is a model for problems of abstraction and body image. A Q&A led by Jessica Beck, The Warhol’s associate curator of art, follows. This program serves as a closing event for the exhibition Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body.

James Elkins is chair of the department of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as chair of the department of art history at University College Cork in Ireland. Eklins’s writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?), others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes). His most recent books are What Photography Is, written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, and Art Critiques: A Guide.