James Elkins, What Painting Is (2000) is a strangely compelling discussion of the practice(s) of #painters using the extended metaphor of alchemy. Elkins manages to convince you that this is an interesting way of understanding what painters do when #painting by illustration of painterly practices & alchemic ones. Focussing on the surface of paintings, Elkins offers a idiosyncratic approach to understanding painting as process #arthistory @bookstodon