The Artist's Studio: A Times Best Art Book of 2022 - A Cultural History

Description

A Times Best Art Book of 2022 An exciting narrative and visual history of the artist's studio, examining the myth and reality of the creative space from early times to today. The artist's workplace has always been an imaginary as well as an actual location, an idealized utopia as well as the domain of dirty, back-breaking work. Written descriptions, paintings, prints and even photographs of the artist's atelier distort as much as they document. This pioneering cultural history charts the myth and reality of the creative space from Ancient Greece to the present day. Tracing a history that extends far beyond the bohemian, romantic and renaissance cults of the artist, each chapter focuses on key developments of the studio space as seen in a variety of familiar and unfamiliar images. Mythical and divine makers, and some amateurs, are included, and so too are craftspeople - workers in metal and wood, potters, illuminators, weavers, embroiderers and architects to name a few. Each carefully chosen example is placed within a cultural and political context, with the aim of correcting the historical imbalance that has long overlooked the many artisans who collaborated with artists. Leading authority James Hall also extends the discussion to the artist's museum and the artist's house, as well plein air painting and the development of portable studios.

James Hall is an art critic, historian, lecturer and broadcaster. He was formerly Chief Art Critic of The Sunday Correspondent and of the Guardian. He contributes to the Guardian Saturday Review, The Times and Times Literary Supplement, as well as to many magazines and catalogues. He is the author of several books including The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History (Thames & Hudson, 2014), which the Sunday Times hailed as 'fascinating, erudite and beautifully produced'.

'Innovative and wide-ranging ... James Hall's breadth of reference - and choice of images - is impressive, from Greek red figure vases to Francis Bacon's paint-encrusted and cluttered workspace via Renaissance workshops and the Victorian war chronicler Roger Fenton's mobile photographic carriage ... [the studio] has, as Hall persuasively argues, been integral in artists projecting themselves as being more than mere craftsmen' - The Times, Art Books of the Year 'Ambitious and accessible ... extremely readable, wonderfully illustrated, capacious in its reach and altogether a book to send the reader back to their favourite art with a new set of questions about exactly how and where it was made' - The Art Newspaper 'A thorough exploration of artists' workspaces ... combines cerebral and beautifully illustrated argument with encyclopaedic information about artists, their working practices and their funny little ways' - Literary Review 'A comprehensive account of much more than the practice of art, and demonstrates how artists have influenced, as well as been affected by, their working spaces from the earliest time' - artbookreview 'Hall's accounts of the changing nature of artists' studios from Greek antiquity onwards are enthralling ... In 15 chapters, the book takes us from ancient Greece moving forward in time to chart developments in the artist's studio. There is a loose chronology, but chapters are thematic with a different enthralling development at the heart of each one. The fact that Hall goes beyond the standard accounts of the painter's studio (often an individual painter) makes for a fuller and deeper understanding of how and why things developed as they did' - Studio International 'An important study ... a compelling narrative' - Elle Decor Italia 'THE ARTIST'S STUDIO describes how a noisome cockpit of lust, crime and virtuosity produced innovations in how art gets made, and by whom. To you, me and the estate agent, a studio is the most pinched accommodation going, but in Hall's drily entertaining survey, it has many mansions' - Guardian