James Hall

James Hall is an Art Critic, Historian, Lecturer and Broadcaster, renowned for his versatility and originality.   Formerly Chief Art Critic of the Sunday Correspondent and of the Guardian, he is currently Research Professor at Southampton University.  He contributes to the Art Newspaper and Times Literary Supplement, as well as to many magazines and catalogues.   He has appeared on ‘Today' and 'Start the Week’. Examples of his work can be found at https://soton.academia.edu/jhall?from_navbar=true. 

Latest publications:

THE ARTIST'S STUDIO: A Cultural History, Thames & Hudson, October 2022

This 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 thoughtfully explored. For the first time, outstanding artisans, amateurs and some fictional artists are discussed alongside professional painters and sculptors. Protagonists include Ovid’s Pygmalion, Simon the Shoemaker, Michelangelo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Johannes Vermeer, Madame de Pompadour, Emma Hamilton, John Soane, Rosa Bonheur, Auguste Rodin, Diego Rivera, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, Anselm Kiefer, Marina Abramović, Tracey Emin.

Leading authority James Hall places the studio within a rich cultural, political, scientific, and social context, tracing a history that extends far beyond bohemian, romantic and Renaissance cults of the artist. Each illustrated chapter focuses on key developments of the studio space; activities and encounters in the studio are given equal importance to the architecture, lighting, and contents. Mastery of studio time is key – Leonardo da Vinci and Marcel Duchamp’s slowness proves they are gentlemen, not to be rushed. Night work by Francisco Goya, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso further increases the studio’s mystique. The use of large mirrors by Diego Velázquez, Joshua Reynolds and Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun lets sitters monitor themselves and the work in progress. Hall extends the discussion to models, the artist’s museum and the artist’s house, and highlights the move towards ‘the chaste space’, as well as plein air painting and the development of portable studios – such as Claude Monet’s boat studio and Roger Fenton at war in his ‘photographic van’.

For millennia, 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 these extraordinary hubs of creativity

THE SELF PORTRAIT: A Cultural History, Thames & Hudson, 2014

In this broad cultural survey, James Hall brilliantly maps the history of self-portraiture, from the earliest myths of Narcissus to the prolific self-image-making of contemporary artists.

His intelligent and vivid account shows how artists’ depictions of themselves have been part of a continuing tradition that reaches back for centuries. Along the way he reveals the importance of the medieval ‘mirror craze’; the explosion of the genre during the Renaissance; the confessional self-portraits of Titian and Michelangelo; the role of biography for serial self-portraitists such as Courbet and van Gogh; themes of sex and genius in works by Munch, Bonnard and Modersohn-Becker; and the latest developments of the genre in the era of globalization.

The full range of self-portraits is covered here, from comic and caricature self-portraits to ‘invented’ or imaginary ones, as well as key collections of self-portraiture such as that of the Medici in Florence. Throughout, Hall asks why – and when – artists have chosen to make self-portraits, and looks deeply into the worlds and mindsets of the artists who have created them.

Comprehensive and beautifully illustrated, the book features the work of a wide range of artists including Alberti, Caravaggio, Courbet, Dürer, Emin, Gauguin, Giotto, Goya, Kahlo, Koons, Magritte, Mantegna, Picasso, Raphael, Rembrandt and Warhol. Offering a rich and lively history, The Self-Portrait is an essential read for all those interested in this most enduringly popular and humane of art forms.

Reviews

[An] enthralling book … Scattering insights on all sides, Hall’s narrative advances through the centuries with masterly vigour.'
– Peter Conrad, The Observer

‘A graceful, sure-footed exposition, both authoritative and entertaining, of a long thread in cultural history … I was hooked’
– Carcassone

‘Hall’s boundless curiosity explodes in all directions from the relatively few pages he has been allocated. Mostly we want more: more detail, more explanation and many more pictures. Given that this is a chunky and well-illustrated volume, that is meant as high praise’
– Andrew Marr, The New Statesman

'This is a wide-ranging, richly researched and evocatively illustrated book. By setting the story of the self-portrait in its wider social and religious context, it doubles up as a history of our culture viewed through a sharply focused lens. And though sometimes the main strand of an argument can get lost as his digressions tend to take over…the author constantly returns to lively descriptions of the images, rooting his theories in astute observations. The Self-Portrait has a wonderfully fresh feel. It is as varied, revelatory and idiosyncratic as the genre which it takes as its subject.'
– Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times

'Fascinating, erudite and beautifully produced… The point that Hall reinforces throughout this elegant study is that, for all its mutability, the self-portrait has rarely been simply a depiction of the artist who painted it. In holding up a mirror to themselves artists have held one up, too, to the human condition and reflected all its aspects — from doubt to certainty, a sense of belonging to alienation. The self-portrait is invariably a double portrayal — of the painter and of Everyman.'
– Michael Prodger, The Sunday Times

'Topical it might be, but modish this book is not. Ranging from Akhenaten’s chief sculptor to Tracey Emin and drawing on art-historical, historical, philosophical and literary sources covering the three-and-a-half millennia of the intervening period, this is a stimulating and demanding book that requires an equally serious engagement from any reader.'
– Honor Clerk, The Spectator

‘Hall’s boundless curiosity explodes in all directions … chunky and well-illustrated.’ – New Statesman

‘Hall’s writing is not only accessible for a general audience, but filled with notable insights, including spicy, prurient ones’ – The Daily Beast