James Hall

James Hall’s The World as Sculpture is published in paperback by Pimlico.

Letter

Unfair to Reynolds

7 January 2021

In her essay on black models in Amsterdam and London, Esther Chadwick writes (LRB, 7 January) thatwhen Joshua Reynolds recorded studio sittings for his portrait of Elizabeth Keppel (c.1762), he listed eight appointments with Keppel and two morning sessions with the woman of African heritage who in the picture supplies a garland for the shrine of Hymen. In place of this woman’s name, Reynolds wrote,...

Look me in the eye: self-portraiture

James Hall, 25 January 2001

According to the catalogue for the National Gallery exhibition of Rembrandt self-portraits, the artist’s portrayal of himself is ‘unique in art history, not only in its scale and the length of time it spans, but also in its regularity’. But Rembrandt’s production of self-portraits – at least forty paintings, 31 etchings and a few drawings – is unique only...

Letter
SIR: Philip Roth’s palimpsest of his relationships with Bernard Malamud (LRB, 8 May) will be more useful when reprinted if matters institutional and geographical can be clarified.Understandably, after about thirty years, Mr Roth places Malamud at the University of Oregon (U of O) in Eugene, whereas Malamud’s Oregon years were at Oregon State College, now University, OSU, in Corvllis. Then as now...

The story of artists’ studios intersects with the history of real estate, just as it shadows the expansion of other ‘curated’ spaces in late capitalism. Today hairdressers, potters, nail technicians,...

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