Revised Janson Part 6

Lee Sorensen's Dictionary of Art Historians adds: In 1962, Janson and his wife, Dora, published their History of Art. It grew over the years to be the best-selling textbook of any subject in the United States and, known simply as "Janson," was for years the standard text. Because Janson's appointment at NYU was primarily at the undergraduate level, he had fewer Ph.D. students than others of his profile. His students (at Washington University) included Irving Lavin and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin.

Janson's work, especially his Ape lore book, show the influence of the Hamburg school/Warburg influence. The book focuses on the history of art or styles as much as it does mythological phenomenon and its manifestation in material culture. Janson's 1962 History of Art was an instant best seller, contrasting it from the other predominant art-history text, Art Through the Ages by Helen Gardner, which by its numerous posthumous revisions treated art as a history of styles. Janson's book came under criticism in later years for its lack of inclusion of women artists. Subsequent editions written by his son, Anthony Janson (b. 1943), changed this.

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 2

According to Wikipedia, Horst Waldemar Janson (October 4, 1913 – September 30, 1982), who published as H. W. Janson, was an 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.

Janson was born in St. Petersburg in 1913 to Friedrich Janson (1875–1927) and Helene Porsch (Janson) (1879–1974).[2] After the October Revolution, the family moved to Finland and then Hamburg, where Janson attended the Wilhelms Gymnasium (graduated 1932). He studied at the University of Munich and then at the art history program at the University of Hamburg, where he was a student of Erwin Panofsky...

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 9

Continued from An exile returns: Traveling exhibition re-introduces Germany to émigré art historian H.W. Janson August 10, 2004 by Liam Otten for the "WUSL Newsroom"
Born in 1913 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Janson was raised in Hamburg, where his family settled after fleeing the October Revolution of 1917. He began his university education in Munich in 1932 but transferred the following year to Hamburg University, studying with Erwin Panofsky until the influential professor's firing by National Socialists. Though himself gentile, Janson left Germany shortly thereafter and completed his training at Harvard. In the 1930s and 40s, he emerged as a staunch defender of modern artists, writing pieces on Beckmann, Guston, Klee, Picasso and George Grosz while taking a critical scalpel to American Regionalists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.

Janson arrived at Washington University in 1941 as an assistant professor of art history. At the time, public awareness of the University collection was almost non-existent. Though established in 1881, the collection lacked on-campus facilities and was held in storage at the City Art Museum (now the Saint Louis Art Museum). Janson only discovered the collection, then mostly19th-century American and European painting and applied arts, through a close reading of CAM's wall labels.

Janson was named curator of the university collection in 1944 and immediately organized a makeshift gallery in the School of Architecture. His boldest stroke came the following year, when he raised about $40,000 by de-accessioning 120 paintings and more than 500 additional objects — then almost one-sixth of university holdings. Ironically, more than half the funds, about $23,000, came from the controversial sale of Frederic Remington's Dash for Timber, a scene of the American West...


[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 7

From An exile returns: Traveling exhibition re-introduces Germany to émigré art historian H.W. Janson August 10, 2004 by Liam Otten for the "WUSL Newsroom"
Janson, who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the mid-1930s to protest Nazi cultural policies, remains little known in his former country. That's about to change, thanks to Exile and Modernism: H.W. Janson and the Collection of Washington University in St. Louis, a touring exhibition organized by the university's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Over the next two years, Exile and Modernism — which builds on a similar show the university presented in 2002 at the Salander O'Reilly Galleries in New York — will travel to four German museums and one in the United States. The exhibition documents how Janson, as curator at Washington University in the mid-1940s, employed prescient vision, a modest acquisitions budget and contacts amongst the exile art community to build what he proudly called "the finest collection of contemporary art assembled on any American campus"...

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 10

Continued from An exile returns: Traveling exhibition re-introduces Germany to émigré art historian H.W. Janson August 10, 2004 by Liam Otten for the "WUSL Newsroom"
Over the next year, Janson used those monies to acquire some 40 major works of European and American modernism, putting special emphasis on cubism, constructivism and surrealism. He worked primarily with exile dealers, including Paul Rosenberg, Karl Nierendorf and especially Curt Valentin, as well as the former expatriate American Peggy Guggenheim. Ernst's The Eye of Silence (1943-44) was bought from Julien Levy, the artist's longtime dealer, while Tanguy's La Tour Marine (1944) came from Pierre Matisse (son of Henri).

Janson left campus in 1948, but subsequent curators such as Frederick Hartt and William N. Eisendrath Jr. — working with prominent local collectors — continued to build on his curatorial architecture. Major acquisitions of the period include Matisse's Still Life With Oranges (II) (1899); Miró's Painting (1925); Gorky's Golden Brown (1943-44); Klee's Fragt Sich (1934) and Picasso's Women of Algiers, Variation 'N' (1955)."

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 8

Continued from An exile returns: Traveling exhibition re-introduces Germany to émigré art historian H.W. Janson August 10, 2004 by Liam Otten for the "WUSL Newsroom"
"Janson's story is not known in Germany; he is a rediscovery," said Sabine Eckmann, Ph.D., curator of the Kemper Art Museum and a German native. However, "there is a lot of German interest in exile, in all of these artists and all of these artworks that were lost. It's part of Germany's art history.

"Exile and Modernism demonstrates what one exile art historian was able to do in the United States at a time when modern art was banned as degenerate in Germany," continued Eckmann, a specialist in exile art. "It also offers a chance to rethink the meanings of concepts like 'exile' and 'modernism' and their connection to one another. We typically see exile as an experience of loss or isolation, but Janson shows that exile can produce creative energies. There's an interesting dialog between his experience of Nazi culture, which caused him to react to certain strains of modern art, and his new orientation in America"...

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 3

[H.W. Janson Wikipedia entry continued]
In 1935, at the suggestion of Panofsky, who had emigrated to the United States, Alfred Barr sponsored Janson as an immigrant, and he completed a PhD at Harvard University in 1942 (his dissertation was on Michelozzo). He taught at the Worcester Art Museum (1936–38) and the University of Iowa (1938–41) while pursuing his degree. In 1941 he married Dora Jane Heineberg (1916–2002), an art history student at Radcliffe College, and he became a citizen in 1943...

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 5

[H.W. Janson Wikipedia entry continued]
He wrote about Renaissance art and nineteenth-century sculpture, and authored two prize-winning books, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1952) and Sculpture of Donatello (1957). In his later years he was concerned with East–West dialogue in the arts. Over his career, Janson consulted on the Time–Life Library of Art; was president of the College Art Association, editor of the Art Bulletin, and founding member and President of the Renaissance Society of America. He also wrote books on art for young people, some in collaboration with his wife.

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 4

[H.W. Janson Wikipedia entry continued]
He taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1941 to 1949, in which year he joined the faculty of New York University, where he built the undergraduate arts department and taught at the graduate Institute of Fine Arts. He was recognized with an honorary degree in 1981 and died on a train between Zurich and Milan in 1982 at the age of 68...

[H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service.]

Revised Janson Part 1

H.W. Janson's History of Art is one of the most-used art history texts in the Anglo world, and was assigned for the first intro art history survey course I took in the mid-80s. Art History survey courses being what they are, I had to keep my mind alive somehow, and I took it upon myself to make necessary alterations, some of which are featured in the forthcoming group show No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College. I will try to post the rest of them here as a public service. Happy Valentine's Day!

Revised Janson Part 11

Like the Great Pyramids, do you find yourself at a loss as pertaining to the question of doing something tonight, and if so what? Fret no more, as the answer involves instead of a boring art discussion, a mock game show, and instead of awkward silence a performance by the celebrated purveyors of hillbilly composition, Triple Chicken Foot. I am referring of course to the opening of No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a Modest Sampling) at LA Valley College, including works by myself, Michael Arata, Pierre Picot, Walter Askin, Erika Rothenberg, Merwin Belin, Ilene Segalove, Stephen Berkman, Mahara Sinclaire, Jim Eller, Dave Smith, Walter Gabrielson, Masami Teraoka, Jeffrey Vallance, Richard Pettibone, & William Wegman.
Los Angeles Valley College Art Gallery
5800 Fulton Avenue
Art Building
Valley Glen, CA 91401

Band is on at 7, game show at 8, winding down at 10 - see you there!

Lost Mowgly Booger Treasure!

I found one of the great missing pieces from my Revised Janson series while rooting through flood-damaged paper ephemera archives for collage material. Behold! The David Code Unravelled!!!