james hall
James Hall is Research Professor in Art History and Theory at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. One of the most versatile of art historians, he has written many essays on art history and contemporary art, and the following books: The World as Sculpture: the changing status of sculpture from the Renaissance to the present day (Chatto 1999); Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body (Chatto 2005 / Farrar Strauss and Giroux 2006); The Sinister Side: How Left-Right Symbolism Shaped Western Art (Oxford University Press 2008). The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History (Thames & Hudson 2014) won the Travelling Scholarship Prize and has been translated into five languages; an abridged version, James Hall on the Self-Portrait, has been published to celebrate T&H's 75th anniversary (2024). The Artist's Studio: a Cultural History has just been published (Thames & Hudson / Einaudi 2022). Major essays on Michelangelo have recently been published in the Burlington Magazine and Simiolus. A long two-part essay on Van Gogh and Ancient Egypt appeared in The Burlington Magazine (March and April 2023), and my new interpretation of Starry Night was picked up by the international media. My agent's website: http://www.unitedagents.co.uk/james-hall
less
InterestsView All (11)
Uploads
Books by james hall
E: kateburvill@gmail.com M: 07947 754717 T: 020 7226 7824
see also
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220914-behind-the-scenes-10-artists-studios-through-the-centuries
'Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series celebrates writers and thinkers who have helped shape the conversation across the arts. Mixing classic and contemporary texts, reissues and abridgements, these are bite-sized, fully illustrated reads in an attractive, affordable and highly collectable package'.
'James Hall on the Self-Portrait' has been given a striking orange cover, and features artists such as Dürer, Gentileschi, Van Gogh and Kahlo.
https://thamesandhudson.com/james-hall-on-the-self-portrait-9780500027271
This lecture marked the publication of The Artist's Studio: a Cultural History (Thames and Hudson)
Drawing at night by artificial light became a crucial component of artistic practice during the Renaissance, massively increasing the mystique of the artist's studio. It brought artists into line with scholars and the elite who had begun to eat supper and go to bed much later (the dialogues in Castiglione's The Courtier take place at night). The flame from candles and oil lamps was Promethean fire, propelling artists to new creative heights and depths. Drawing could be undertaken at night because it is monochrome, making colour distortion by artificial light irrelevant. 'At night all cats be grey', went the proverb. Nocturnal painting came of age in the late nineteenth century, precisely because it facilitated anti-naturalism and abstraction. Kandinsky 'discovered' abstract art when he mis-recognised one of his paintings in the studio at twilight. Picasso almost always painted at night.
Book at https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/e
E: kateburvill@gmail.com M: 07947 754717 T: 020 7226 7824
I am available for events, interviews, lectures, seminars.
PDFs of jacket and list of contents also attached
For millenia, the artist’s studio has distilled the magic and mystery of human creation, of body and mind working in harmony, often collectively. No wonder so many writers, including Homer, Socrates, Diderot and Goethe, have written about them, and so many men, women and children have yearned to visit them.
This thrilling, ground-breaking book explores the myths and realities of the creative space from antiquity to now drawing on an unrivalled range of visual and written sources. The sights, sounds, smells and temperatures of the studio are brought to life, while key individuals, trends and turning points are clearly identified. For the first time, outstanding artisans, amateurs and fictional artists are discussed alongside professional painters and sculptors. Protagonists include Odysseus’s wife Penelope, Simon the Shoemaker, Pygmalion, the Virgin Mary, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, Vermeer, Madame de Pompadour, Emma Hamilton, John Soane, Rosa Bonheur, van Gogh, Monet, Rodin, Picasso, Diego Rivera, Pollock, Warhol, Kiefer, Abramovic, Emin.
Tracing a history that extends far beyond bohemian, romantic and Renaissance cults of the artist, the activities and encounters in the studio are given equal importance to the architecture and contents. Topics range from studio lighting, furniture, study collections, clothing, heating, dandruff and dust, to etiquette for visitors and the (ab)use of live models - by Cellini and the Royal Academy, by Cézanne and Freud with their interminable portrait sittings. Mastery and manipulation of studio time is key - Leonardo and Duchamp’s slowness proves they are gentlemen, not to be rushed. Night work by Vasari, Goya, Kandinsky and Picasso further increases the studio’s mystique. The use of large mirrors by Velàzquez, Reynolds and Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun lets sitters monitor themselves and the work in progress, as in a scientific experiment. Eventually, the luxurious ‘feminine’ studio is rejected for the machismo of the monk-like cell, the garret and factory, and for non-studio work, whether it be van Gogh struggling with portable painting equipment, Daubigny and Monet in their boat studios, Roger Fenton at war in his Photographic Van, Land artists in the wilderness, or performance artists in derelict buildings.
PDFs of jacket and list of contents also attached
Podcast available at: https://www.tttpodcast.com/season-6/michelangelo-and-leonardo-in-florence-james-hall-1504
Examines the ideal of the colossal in relation to David and other works by Michelangelo. Shows that the conception of giant size in this period was extremely mixed, with giants not necessarily considered heroic.
E: kateburvill@gmail.com M: 07947 754717 T: 020 7226 7824
see also
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220914-behind-the-scenes-10-artists-studios-through-the-centuries
'Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series celebrates writers and thinkers who have helped shape the conversation across the arts. Mixing classic and contemporary texts, reissues and abridgements, these are bite-sized, fully illustrated reads in an attractive, affordable and highly collectable package'.
'James Hall on the Self-Portrait' has been given a striking orange cover, and features artists such as Dürer, Gentileschi, Van Gogh and Kahlo.
https://thamesandhudson.com/james-hall-on-the-self-portrait-9780500027271
This lecture marked the publication of The Artist's Studio: a Cultural History (Thames and Hudson)
Drawing at night by artificial light became a crucial component of artistic practice during the Renaissance, massively increasing the mystique of the artist's studio. It brought artists into line with scholars and the elite who had begun to eat supper and go to bed much later (the dialogues in Castiglione's The Courtier take place at night). The flame from candles and oil lamps was Promethean fire, propelling artists to new creative heights and depths. Drawing could be undertaken at night because it is monochrome, making colour distortion by artificial light irrelevant. 'At night all cats be grey', went the proverb. Nocturnal painting came of age in the late nineteenth century, precisely because it facilitated anti-naturalism and abstraction. Kandinsky 'discovered' abstract art when he mis-recognised one of his paintings in the studio at twilight. Picasso almost always painted at night.
Book at https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/e
E: kateburvill@gmail.com M: 07947 754717 T: 020 7226 7824
I am available for events, interviews, lectures, seminars.
PDFs of jacket and list of contents also attached
For millenia, the artist’s studio has distilled the magic and mystery of human creation, of body and mind working in harmony, often collectively. No wonder so many writers, including Homer, Socrates, Diderot and Goethe, have written about them, and so many men, women and children have yearned to visit them.
This thrilling, ground-breaking book explores the myths and realities of the creative space from antiquity to now drawing on an unrivalled range of visual and written sources. The sights, sounds, smells and temperatures of the studio are brought to life, while key individuals, trends and turning points are clearly identified. For the first time, outstanding artisans, amateurs and fictional artists are discussed alongside professional painters and sculptors. Protagonists include Odysseus’s wife Penelope, Simon the Shoemaker, Pygmalion, the Virgin Mary, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, Vermeer, Madame de Pompadour, Emma Hamilton, John Soane, Rosa Bonheur, van Gogh, Monet, Rodin, Picasso, Diego Rivera, Pollock, Warhol, Kiefer, Abramovic, Emin.
Tracing a history that extends far beyond bohemian, romantic and Renaissance cults of the artist, the activities and encounters in the studio are given equal importance to the architecture and contents. Topics range from studio lighting, furniture, study collections, clothing, heating, dandruff and dust, to etiquette for visitors and the (ab)use of live models - by Cellini and the Royal Academy, by Cézanne and Freud with their interminable portrait sittings. Mastery and manipulation of studio time is key - Leonardo and Duchamp’s slowness proves they are gentlemen, not to be rushed. Night work by Vasari, Goya, Kandinsky and Picasso further increases the studio’s mystique. The use of large mirrors by Velàzquez, Reynolds and Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun lets sitters monitor themselves and the work in progress, as in a scientific experiment. Eventually, the luxurious ‘feminine’ studio is rejected for the machismo of the monk-like cell, the garret and factory, and for non-studio work, whether it be van Gogh struggling with portable painting equipment, Daubigny and Monet in their boat studios, Roger Fenton at war in his Photographic Van, Land artists in the wilderness, or performance artists in derelict buildings.
PDFs of jacket and list of contents also attached
Podcast available at: https://www.tttpodcast.com/season-6/michelangelo-and-leonardo-in-florence-james-hall-1504
Examines the ideal of the colossal in relation to David and other works by Michelangelo. Shows that the conception of giant size in this period was extremely mixed, with giants not necessarily considered heroic.
You can more discussion of these issues in my book The Artist's Studio: A Cultural History (T&H 2022), details of which are on my academia.edu site.
James Hall, 'The New Northern Renaissance gallery in New York', Burlington Magazine, 166, July 2024, p.669
In the first instalment of this article, the crucial importance of ancient Egypt to Vincent Van Gogh was discussed, an aspect of his work that has hitherto been overlooked. Whereas Japanese prints, with their bold simplified colours and dynamic asymmetrical compositions, satisfied what might be termed Van Gogh's vibrant picturesque side, ancient Egypt helped him further his ambitions as a timeless sculptor-architect in paint. Egyptian sculpture and architecture, with their colossal scale and size, possessed a primordial simplicity and mystery that helped him achieve what he called, in relation to portraits, the 'je ne sais quoi of the eternal'. To this end, he was a pioneer of the sphinx-style self-portrait, stiffly motionless and with a blank, far away gaze. For Van Gogh, Egypt became a key component of a syncretic art in which aspects of North and South, East and West were compellingly combined.
In the first instalment of this article, the crucial importance of ancient Egypt to Vincent Van Gogh was discussed, an aspect of his work that has hitherto been overlooked. Whereas Japanese prints, with their bold simplified colours and dynamic asymmetrical compositions, satisfied what might be termed Van Gogh's vibrant picturesque side, ancient Egypt helped him further his ambitions as a timeless sculptor-architect in paint. Egyptian sculpture and architecture, with their colossal scale and size, possessed a primordial simplicity and mystery that helped him achieve what he called, in relation to portraits, the 'je ne sais quoi of the eternal'. To this end, he was a pioneer of the sphinx-style self-portrait, stiffly motionless and with a blank, far away gaze. For Van Gogh, Egypt became a key component of a syncretic art in which aspects of North and South, East and West were compellingly combined.
In this second instalment, Van Gogh's fascination with obelisks and the 'obeliscal' will be explored. This culminated in the sequence of paintings devoted to cypresses, which he made to appear colossal and which he compared to obelisks. Starry Night was a 'natural' response to the opening ceremony of the Universal Exhibition in Paris, with its spectacular light show centring on the Eiffel Tower, which was seen to outstrip the Pyramids.
https://www.burlington.org.uk/#latest-issue/2
Dalya Alberge writes: "James Hall argues that the artist began the Cypress series in June 1889, shortly after the Paris monument was unveiled as the star attraction of the International Exposition, whose opening was accompanied by a spectacular late-night show of pyrotechnics, electric light and explosions that he says are repeated in the “pyrotechnical music of the stars, sky and clouds” of Van Gogh’s painting.
Hall said: “For Van Gogh, the cypress tree is a natural alternative to the Eiffel Tower, the centrepiece of the exhibition. Starry Night is a rural and cosmic counterpart to the light show that marked the opening of the exhibition.”
In June 1889, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo: “The cypresses still preoccupy me, I’d like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that no one has yet done them as I see them. It’s beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an Egyptian obelisk.”
“The tower was bombastically marketed as a symbol of French technological prowess, and even more impressive than the pyramids. Van Gogh idealised ancient Egypt, and he thought the cypress tree was as beautiful and well-proportioned as an obelisk.”
https://shop.burlington.org.uk/future-issue?utm_source=The+Burlington+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4717b84185-March+2023+coming+soon+newsletter_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3a0982295a-4717b84185-42752093
https://www.burlington.org.uk/#latest-issue/2
https://www.paulholberton.com/product-page/luigi-pericle-a-rediscovery?utm_campaign=cbdfb3d1-35a2-483e-84cf-175c9dd4e791&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=7e70988d-0f63-4f05-b996-2e279245d31a
Born in Basel during the First World War, Pericle Luigi Giovanetti (1916-2001) went on to lead a double, triple and quadruple cultural life. Initially a commercial artist, he later became, as the cartoonist Giovanetti, the creator of the internationally famous Max the Marmot (first unveiled in the April 1952 edition of Punch). In private, he was painting figuratively; then in around 1959, he destroyed his pictures and reinvented himself as a semi-abstract painter with sublime metaphysical aspirations. Between 1962 and 1965, as Luigi Pericle, he had nine solo and two group shows, the majority in England. But then he suddenly stopped exhibiting, and refused requests to exhibit. Pericle became more reclusive, painting only for his own pleasure. In a 1976 auto-interview, he asked himself 'Are you Giovannetti?', and laconically replied '… also'. I argue that he is part of a visionary gothic tradition descending from Piranesi' s Prisons and the gothic art of his Swiss compatriot Heinrich Fussli / Henry Fuseli
When Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII in 1624, he immediately set about centralising and systematising the procedures for canonisation. The Holy Office prohibited veneration of anyone who had not been canonised or beatified, and the making and display of portraits and prints.
This essay explores the background to the ban. I argue it was motivated not just by an upsurge of new religious cults, as is usually assumed, but by a wider crisis of decorum and semantics in portraiture. Pope Urban, as a significant patron of the arts, would have been well aware of the porous boundary between sacred and secular portraiture. Indeed, the presumptuous hagiographic imagery produced by the new religious orders was itself symptomatic of a massive increase in the production of portraiture, some of it imbued with sacred connotations and pretensions. The portraiture boom coincided with a fashion for physical imitation of saints by worshippers and artists: this too caused further blurring of boundaries.
I identify three types of artefact that involve the simulation and appropriation of sanctity: saintly portraits of non-saints; secular portraits furnished with what I call pseudo-haloes; and ‘disguised portraits’ in which either the artist or patron masquerades as a sacred personage.
The casket scene in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is the supreme audio–visual manifestation of the cultic and erotic power of Elizabethan portraiture. Bassanio chooses the lead casket containing a portrait miniature of Portia. But it is so meticulous and sensuously alive that Bassanio is jealous of the ‘demi-god’ painter, and of his perceived tactile and visual intimacy with Portia during the sittings. Bassanio believes the painter ‘plays the spider’ in her hair. The purpose of this essay is to explore this scene’s rich cultural and political context. Shakespeare exploits prevailing notions of the spider as a symbol of touch that is both creative and destructive. Bassanio’s commentary is far more than a witty conceit; it is imbued with Protestant fears about the visual arts. Yet there were good grounds for his suspicions – in art myth and theory, and sometimes in practice. Shakespeare was most likely thinking of Nicholas Hilliard, the Queen’s miniature painter. Hilliard spun web-like patterns in his royal portraits, intensifying trends in elite fashion – the Queen had a penchant for spider motifs. He also envisaged the painter as necessarily in love with his English sitters, in line with the new vogue for authorial empathy.
"Becoming ‘obeliscal’: van Gogh, ancient Egypt and the global Orient".
https://www.burlington.org.uk
Van Gogh repeatedly praises ancient Egyptian art and society. It was ‘extraordinary’ with its ‘calm, serene kings’, and all he wanted to see at the Exposition Universelle (1889) was a recreation of an Egyptian house. He idealised what he called ‘obeliscal’ societies; cypress trees were ‘beautiful… like an Egyptian obelisk’. He made sketches of a smiling Hathoric head capital, his only drawings of or for architectural decoration. Yet scholars refer to van Gogh’s fascination with Egypt in passing, if at all, preferring instead to focus on Japan.
For the first time, these two articles will show that ancient Egypt was crucial for his art, complementing Japanese (and European) elements. This will contextualised in relation to the Egyptian Revival, French ‘rivalry’ with ancient Egypt, Baudelaire’s concept of the sphinx poet, literary uses of Egypt, colonialism.
The first article focuses on depictions of women, ‘sphinx-like’ self-portraits and the Portrait of Père Tanguy.
The second, to be published in April, explores Van Gogh’s idealisation of obelisks and what he called ‘obeliscal’ societies. Arles had the second most important obelisk in France. I will show how he tried to make ‘obeliscal’ paintings, above all his series of landscapes with cypress tress. I offer of a radical new reading of this series, and especially of Starry Night. Van Gogh will never look the same again…..!
Parallel Portuguese / English text
I put her work in the context of nineteenth century and contemporary art, the Egyptian revival, the history of self-portraiture and female artists
James Hall, Parallel Lives: Shakespeare and the Debate Over Emotional Involvement, Classical Receptions Journal, Volume 13, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 67–85.
Abridged version published in Times Literary Supplement, 9 April 2021
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/killing-statues-essay-james-hall/
https://www.academia.edu/40438866/Beyond_Relief Baudelaire, Flaubert and modern ‘statuemania’
https://www.academia.edu/48789893/Dialogues_with_the_Diabolical_Dead_reading_statuemania_against_the_grain
My most recent thoughts on Baudelaire, statuemania, and his mixed-race lover as a ‘black Venus’
https://www.academia.edu/101861902/_Becoming_obeliscal_Van_Gogh_Ancient_Egypt_and_the_Global_South_I_Figures_ Baudelaire and the Sphinx poet
Times Literary Supplement, 7 June, pp. 14-5.
Topics discussed include layered 'polyphonic' drawing styles (my term for Leonardo's 'brainstorm' sketching), left-right symbolism and the importance of the medieval Meditations on the Life of Christ for the late crucifixions (and also for Christ visiting his mother).
More on 'polyphonic' drawing can be found in https://www.academia.edu/43528996/Under_Siege_the_Aesthetics_and_Politics_of_Michelangelos_Attack_on_Flemish_Painting pp. 70-83
More on Michelangelo, Colonna and left-right symbolism in my book The Sinister Side, chapter entitled 'Not Idle' . see chapter here https://www.academia.edu/120968142/Hall_Sinister_Side_death_of_christ
I should have pointed out that the excellent catalogue entries of BM Michelangelo drawings in their Collections Online are by DANIEL GODFREY.
TLS April 26 2024, p.14
LITERARY REVIEW, MAY 2013
I discuss the anachronistic concepts of love put forward in this breathlessly libertine book
WALL STREET JOURNAL Nov. 9, 2012
I take issue with macho neo-liberal notion, propagated by Rona Goffen, that artistic innovation is defined by rivalry and 'duels'.
Times Literary Supplement, 10 November, pp 14-15
New insights into Hals's treatment of draperies; the christian aspects of 'drunkenness'; Hals's incorporation of 'man of sorrows' motifs; hot and cold colours, which I call - after Petrarch - 'ice and fire' combinations.
Review of National Gallery exhibition The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance, curated by Emma Capron.
I discuss how Quentin Massys transforms Leonardo's original grotesque portrait, giving it an architectonic rigour and power. I put Massys in the context of the 16th century 'democritisation' of portraiture, and of later condemnations of the lack of decorum and exclusivity in portraits. Massys is the first portrait painter to make facial shadow really ambiguous, so we are unsure whether the shadow is the absence of light, or dirt and discoloured skin. I also explore the exhibition's main theme, the representation of old women, and the ambiguity of the selected images by Durer and others.
SEE ALSO https://www.academia.edu/82419054/Simulating_and_Appropriating_the_Sacred_the_Background_to_a_Papal_Ban_on_Saintly_Portraits_of_Non_Saints_1
Times Literary Supplement, April 14 2023, pp 14-15
Examines the pros and cons of global museums and exhibitions, and of global art history, from cabinets of curiosities onwards.
Literary Review, December/January (514), 2022, pp. 8-9.
Exlpores why Picasso did and did not make self-portraits; and why he made so few; surrogate self-portraits etc.
See also my book, The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History (2014), ch. 10.
12 May 2022
the burlington magazine | 164 | may 2022
Times Literary Supplement, 1 April 2022, pp 8-10
I develop these arguments in the chapter entitled 'CHASTE SPACE' in THE ARTIST'S STUDIO: A CULTURAL HISTORY (Thames & Hudson / Einaudi 2022)