Product Description

This survey of Western art is now in its sixth edition. New features in this edition include: over 150 new illustrations; updated maps; Website directory; new content on Ancient art, Neoclassical/Romanticism and Architecture; and a discography of recommended recordings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1434637 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1032 pages

From Amazon.com
Back in the early 1970s, "Janson"--as History of Art is universally known--was a hefty but manageable 616 pages, illustrated mostly with black-and-white photographs. It also famously contained not a single work by a female artist and devoted a scant eight pages to non-Western art. Five editions and three decades later, the art history student's Stone Age-to-20th-century Bible has swelled into a massive, slipcased, 1,000-page tome studded with 865 color reproductions and subheadings that corral individual artists whose achievements used to flow together like some mighty art historical river.

Women artists (from 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi to contemporary photographer Cindy Sherman) now make the cut, and the focus is purely Western, extended to include 20th-century photography and postmodernism (with a scant two pages on postmodern theory). The timeline charting landmarks in art alongside key events in history, science, and the arts has been handsomely redesigned. Each historical period now has its own world map and selection of excerpts from primary sources (including unusual ones, like a fellow monk's account of painter Hugo van der Goes's mental troubles).

With each edition, portions of the text have been altered to reflect shifting scholarly interpretations. (As the late H.W. Janson wryly noted in the original, 1962 preface, "There are no 'plain facts' in the history of art.") H.W.'s son Anthony writes in his preface to the sixth edition that changes have been made to sections on ancient art; French romantic, realist, and impressionist painting; and the history of Western architecture. Happily unchanged--no dumbing-down here--is the clarity and intelligence of the writing. All in all, History of Art remains an invaluable reference for anyone who studies or writes about the subject. But even if no further bloat is contemplated, the time has come to rename the worthy Janson History of Western Art, and to divide it into two volumes, if only to protect the health and backpacks of art historians-to-be. --Cathy Curtis

From Library Journal
Horst W. Janson died in 1982, not long after the second edition of his best-selling History of Art was published. His son Anthony (art history, Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington) inherited the franchise and has contributed to four subsequent updates, this one appearing four years after the last revision. Familiar to art history students throughout the world, this massive survey of 30,000 years of Western art is generally regarded as the fundamental text for teaching the subject to undergraduates. It is a deserving reputation, for in addition to the ecumenical enthusiasm and economy of description infusing the Jansons' writing, the work features time lines densely packed with data, four sections of over 100 primary sources, well-chosen illustrations, and an updated bibliography including web references. Its graphic design is rich with imagery and progresses without any affectations. New to this edition are rewritten sections covering architecture, ancient art, and French painting, as well as a discography of related recordings. A benchmark text brought up-to-date, this is an essential purchase for libraries not already owning a good copy of the fifth edition. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The Jansons' comprehensive history of Western art is practically an institution. First published in 1962, it has grown and changed over the decades in response to the creation of new artworks as well as to new archaeological finds, long overlooked details such as Michelangelo's tortured self-portrait in The Last Judgment, and fresh interpretations and ongoing controversies, the lifeblood of art history, which is always a work in progress. Janson senior died in 1982, but his son has carried on, now presenting an energetically renovated and expanded edition. Distinguished by the clarity and liveliness of its prose and the sharpness and rich color of its reproductions, this volume offers fluent analysis of both the formal aspects of the art it highlights and the historical context within which it was created. And the Jansons don't skimp on coverage of twentieth-century art and architecture, as other survey writers do. Instead they document its frenetic diversity and risk-taking with a profound sense of what connects the work of Susan Rothenberg, for instance, with the magical cave paintings of Lascaux. Donna Seaman
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