James Lord  (b. 1922-d. 2009) was an American art critic who wrote well-received books about Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, but he is perhaps best known as the subject for one of Giacometti’s most famous portraits done in 1964, titled appropriately, James Lord.

While sitting for that portrait in Paris for 18 long days, Lord wrote notes every evening about his experience every and also photographed the portrait at the end of each daily session.  Those notes and photographs became the basis for this slim volume in which each of the 18 chapters describes his conversations with Giacometti that day and what happened to the portrait.

Giacometti painted this portrait just two years before he died and it has become one of his most famous works.  Googling James Lord resulted in a dozen references to the work with a 2015 auction of it at Christie’s indicating that after it was given to Lord by the artist it passed through five private collections before being acquired by David Zwirner, the famous NYC gallerist.

I learned of this book through William Maxwell’s review of it in his compilation of his New Yorker reviews entitled ‘The Outermost Dream’.  It provides fascinating insights into the work and thinking of one of the 20th C’s greatest artists as Lord documents Giacometti’s struggles with the impossibility of reproducing in two dimensions what he sees in three.  Lord attributes Giacometti’s talent to his ability to see a familiar thing in a completely new way and to transfer that vision to the canvas.  Giacometti’s commentary on the art world of the ’60’s is also interesting as he dismisses Picasso and praises Cezanne.

It’s ironic that James Lord is today mostly remembered not as a man but as a portrait on canvas.  Like Martin Gayford’s 2014 book, ‘Man With a Blue Scarf: Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Freud’, this book by a painting’s subject provides deep insights into the artistic process, something that remains mysterious to me even today.