Martin Hammer is Emeritus Professor in Art History at the University of Kent, having previously taught in Edinburgh. His monographs include Francis Bacon and Nazi Propaganda, 2012; Bacon and Sutherland, 2005; Constructing Modernity: the Art and Career of Naum Gabo, 2000 (co-author Christina Lodder). Two books accompanied exhibitions that he curated: The Naked Portrait, 2007; Graham Sutherland: Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950, 2005. Several 2017 articles coincided with Hockney’s retrospective at Tate: ‘The photographic source and artistic affinities of David Hockney’s ‘A bigger splash’’, Burlington Magazine; ‘David Hockney’s Early Etchings: Going Transatlantic and Being British’. Tate Papers; ‘Between a Rock and a Blue Chair: David Hockney’s ‘Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians’ (1965)’, British Art Studies. A longstanding interest in Sickert’s legacy (in Bacon, Freud, Auerbach) underpins an essay in the catalogue for the 2022 Sickert show at Tate Britain.
Martin is completing a book about the phenomenology of spectatorship, seeking to align how we view and write about works of art with the multiple impulses and improvisation over time that artists invest in the making process. For the first time since he was a student, he is based back in London, and open to invitations to lecture, curate, publish, etc.
