National Gallery, London
Whistler's portrait of his mother is not included in the new "Janson's History of Art."
Posted on 03/07/2006 7:18:20 AM PST by Pharmboy
National Gallery, London
Whistler's portrait of his mother is not included in the new "Janson's History of Art."
Top, Tate, London; bequeathed by
Arthur Studd, 1919; above, Dawoud
Bey/"Janson’s History of Art," Seventh
Edition
THEY MADE IT
Now appearing in "Janson's
History of Art": Whistler's
"Symphony in White No. 2," top,
which replaces the portrait of his
mother and shows the Japanese
influence on his art; and David
Hammon's "Higher Goals," above.
In some ways, art history is like an episode of "The Sopranos." A relatively small number of artists are welcomed into the family of the famous, their works immortalized in museums and on postcard racks — in other words, they are made. But hit men, otherwise known as critics and scholars, are lurking around every corner, waiting to whack even the most sterling reputation.
Almost no one is safe. Not even, as it turns out, Whistler's mother.
This month, the publisher Pearson Prentice Hall is introducing the first thoroughly revised version of "Janson's History of Art," a doorstopper first published in 1962 that has been a classroom hit ever since Horst Woldemar Janson wrote it while working at New York University. For a generation of baby boomers, it defined what was what and who was who in art, from Angelico (Fra) to Zurbarán (Francisco de).
But in recent years it has lost its perch as the best-selling art survey and has been criticized for becoming a scholarly chestnut. So its publisher recruited six scholars from around the country and told them to rewrite as much as they wanted, to cast a critical eye on every reproduction, chapter heading and sacred cow.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Major art history ping...
"Whistler's Mother" out? Then so's the book. :')
Art ping!
Let Republicanprofessor; me or woofie know if you want on or off the art history ping list.
I have a copy of Jansen, whatever, Whistler is surely one of the all time greats.
I never knew much about Whistler, but saw a couple of his paintings at the Frick. They knocked me out.
That's Carlyle the old curmudgeon? I did not know he did a self portrait in his book about clothing style, but there it is.
Oh, are you familiar with the Gridiron Secret Society? < g >
I totally agree that Carlisle is better (to me) than Whistler's mother. It's just that the latter became such an icon, right away.
I actually find Whistler's white works somewhat boring. Not a lot of drama in white....
Is the dog "Whistler" a Wegman? He sure does some clever things, even down to the Whister-like print on the wall.
Interesting post....wish I could get to the rest of it easily. I hate that registering hoop to jump through.
But since I choose art texts, I am always interested in what comes out. I have not used Janson for years.
Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in THOSE sittings. Story is, as Carlyle was coming out, he met a little girl going in to be painted. "Puir lassie! Puir lassie!" he murmured.
At first, I did not mind the dropping of some of what I see to be minor artists.
But this paragraph had me stunned:
And it uses art much more as a way to discuss race, class and gender. In the introduction, on pages that once used Dürer and Mantegna to examine the concept of originality, Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" — a painting that rested on clumps of elephant dung and created a furor when it was shown in Brooklyn in 1999 — is used to talk about differences between Western and African ways of seeing. "Art is never an empty container," the introduction states. "Rather, it is a vessel loaded with meaning."
What a boatload of postmodern revisionist *#&$. Janson himself must be rolling over in his grave.
Stephen F. Eisenman, a professor of art history at Northwestern University who described himself as a longtime critic of Janson, welcomed many of the changes. "It's clearly a liberal version of a cold-war classic that will pass muster in most of the U.S.," he said.
But he added that it would probably never regain the dominance it once had, simply because the whole idea of a book like it... had become outdated.
"The main problem, I think, is that there's no longer a general belief that there exists a single canon for art that should be taught to all students," he said.
The liberal ideology doesn't get any clearer than that. Keep me away from this revised book and all who had to do with it.
I have used Eisenman's 19th century art book in the past and some of its claims are amazing. In one of the essays (which I don't know is by him or just edited by Eisenman) claims that the man in red giving Socrates the poisoned hemlock in David's famous painting is really Socrates' lover. He reads a great deal of homosexuality into this painting. Hello?! I'd never heard of those interpretations in previous art history texts. Where do they get these ideas from?
I hadn't jumped through the registration hoop either - but I'm horrified at what you found there. I'm glad my copy of Janson is an older one.
For all the pretensions of the art world (and especially the Leftist inhabitants of it) of breaking away from rigidity, and tossing down barriers, etc, the truth is that their intention is to impose rigidity and to erect barriers the likes of which we have never seen in the (free) West.
RP, what was the name of that text which exposes the PC nonsense being taught in Art History classes today? And which has apparently infected even Janson?
Perhaps some overinterpretation of the color of his toga..."man in red ~ lady in red"
Thank you. You obviously know more about this than do I.
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