He also completed a three-year sub-major in Art History under Prof. Joseph Burke, under whom he surveyed the Melbourne terrace house and its cast-iron tracery, now held in the Dixon Library, Sydney.
[4] His first article on this research was published by Dennis Sharp in the Architecture Association Quarterly in 1972, which led to Robert Branner's assessment on what this approach could offer to scholarship.
The major discoveries that caused controversy were:- In his study of Chartres he used his building experience and drafting ability to produce over 300 measured drawings to demonstrate not only the history of the cathedral, but to construct an investigative technique for medieval architecture.
His work is akin to that of the French archéologues who focus on archaeological analysis, a group including Arnold Wolff, Richard Hamman-MacLean and Jan van der Meulen.
Some termed his views "eccentric", or "unusual", principally Steven Murray and Lon Shelby, was mainly based on theoretical grounds, without any re-examination of the evidence in the structure itself.
Yet, as all his later work shows, he remains firmly convinced that builders, like carvers, were peripatetic, and that at least before the mid-thirteenth century design control was not held by a single permanent master.
[7] From 1977 James presented his findings at lectures at over 70 universities and colleges in the US, France, England and Australia, including Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley.
He hoped to repeat this approach on the cathedral of Durham,[8] Southwell Minster, and a group of key buildings in France associated with Chartres, in particular Saint-Denis-en-France[9] and Notre-Dame-du-Fort in Etampes.
This led him to undertake a three-year Survey of Early Gothic churches in northern France, and discovered that before the 1220s they were restricted to the Lutetian limestone region around Paris.
With only a few buildings having firmly documented dates, and then for only parts, medieval studies have lacked the basis for detailed historic analysis, unlike the contemporary Italian Renaissance.
[11] It explains the investigative possibilities of Toichology and affirmed his conclusion from the Chartres study that churches, even the major ones, were built in many small campaigns, each directed by different masters.
James realized that changing style, or fashion, in carving could be the key to dating, and hence to the possibility of a more detailed history of early Gothic architecture and sculpture.
The first flying buttresses were thought to date from the 1180s, but using these techniques James argued that this invention should be moved back thirty years.and similarly with the pointed arch and the earliest rib vaults.
in spite of papers offered at conferences in the US, UK and France, the lack of students has tended to isolate his work from the mainstream trends of Art History.
The other four volumes were intended to focus on chronology, inventions, rib vaults, the portals and a reconsideration of the history of the Gothic style, but were abandoned due to the dramatic decline in academic library acquisitions.
From the capitals study, and especially that on the 263 carvings in the Laon cathedral gallery (ca.1163) James' analysis has redefined the carvers roles and professional relationships, some travel patterns and what appears to be Rites of Passage from Journeyman to Master.