Tags

Description

For thousands of art lovers both amateur and professional, aesthetic life began with Janson, as H.W. Janson's History of Art is often called. In the first edition, published in 1962, Janson spoke to that perennial reader he gently called "the troubled layman." His opening paragraph revealed his sympathy: "Why is this supposed to be art?" he quoted rhetorically. "How often have we heard this question asked--or asked it ourselves, perhaps--in front of one of the strange, disquieting works that we are likely to find nowadays in the museum or art exhibition." Keeping that curious, questioning perspective in mind, he wrote a history of art from cave painting to Picasso that was singularly welcoming, illuminating, and exciting. After H.W. Janson died, in 1982, his son, Anthony F. Janson, took...