Research
Research interests
- Portraiture and Identity
- Artists' Studios and Workshops
- Three-dimensional artforms
- Polarities in cultural theory
- Michelangelo and his legacies
Publications
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Biography
James Hall is Research Professor in Art History and Theory at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. One of the most versatile and original 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. The Artist's Studio: a Cultural History (Thames & Hudson / Einaudi 2022) is a sequel, that includes craftspeople as well as painters and sculptors. Major scholarly essays have been published in the Burlington Magazine, Oxford Art Journal and Simiolus. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. Further information and examples of work can be found at: https://soton.academia.edu/jhall
Prizes
- Travelling Scholarship Prize (2014)
- The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History (2014)