Luxury or Squalor? An Artist’s Studio from Leonardo to Bacon

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the evolution ideas of the artist’s studio.

James Hall of the University of Southampton and author of “The Artist’s Studio” led us through changes in studios from the Renaissance thought to contemporary artists. He explained studios started as luxurious spaces which developed from the ideas of studiolo and contained plaster casts, paintings and drawings as well as comfortable furniture. It was a space where clients came to see your work and sit for portraits so it needed to be welcoming and comfortable.

In the 19th century this started to move to the idea of the squalid Bohemian space and an area for creativity, which came out of more painting for the speculative market rather than commissions, x-religious building being available cheaply after the French Revolution and the ideas of Rousseau.

He also talked about how art began to move out of the studio partly with the growth in painting en plein air as technological developments in paint and equipment came online as well as how contemporary artists have done site specific work or looked to alternate spaces like shops.

The talk was illustrated with lovely examples of prints and paintings which I hadn’t seen before such at the attached of Caspar David Friedrich’s studio by Georg Friedrich Kersting from 1811.

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