History of Art, Vol 2

by H.W. Janson, Anthony F. Janson

The definitive survey of Western art is now available in a deluxe, one-volume slipcased edition, bound in rich cloth and stamped in gold foil. 1,243 illustrations, 736 in color. 111 line drawings. 12 maps.

Genres: Art, History, Nonfiction

791 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Horst Waldemar Janson, who published as H. W. Janson, was a Russian-American scholar of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has sold more than two million copies in fifteen languages.

Reviews

[Paige McLoughlin]

I enjoy art. My first real taste of art was when my dad took me to the Metropolitan Museum in 1983 to see the Van Gogh in Arles exhibition on loan from a host of other museums. I saw a picture of the Night Café that now hangs in the Yale Gallery, and my sixteen-year-old mind went under aesthetic arrest. I was transfixed by that painting; I have since dipped my toes in Art and museums. So when I was in a thrift store the other day, I picked up the sixth edition, volume two of Janson. I remember the Aesthetic arrest of high art, but Janson, with his historically informed approach, is a bit disillusioning. Art needs patrons and has been subsidized by usually rich and powerful men. Money and power can buy a megaphone for a while, and an artist's job is to resist and humanize art, but money and power like to turn it into an adornment to itself. I don't mind a healthy ego, but art happens away from power as well. I wish there could be more of that kind of art.