Revising Art History's Big Book: Who's In and Who Comes Out?

NY Times ^ | March 7, 2006 | RANDY KENNEDY

[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.

[Dante3]

I have to look up this book.

[weegee]

BUMP, I'll have to look for that book.

[mcvey]

Wow! After a certain amount of exposure to these ideas I guess that I should not be surprised.

What bothers me about the David/Socrates issue is that, at least when I was a grad student, you were expected to do the appropriate research to find out what David had in mind, what influences may have shaped his thought, what his goals were, and so forth.

I am guessing that the bare shoulder means homosexuality? Hmmm--there are lot of bare shoulders out there. They all mean the same thing?

Yet post-modernism means that the meaning is infinitely flexible according to culture. Which of course is not open to cultural interpretation.

McVey