March 9, 2006--Whither Whistler's Mother??
Can’t they leave well-enough alone? According to the NY Times (see link below) they’re now even messing with Janson’s History of Art. Isn’t anything sacred?
It was the basic art history text that literally millions of baby boomers read, or had inflicted on them. Love it, hate it—it was the TRUTH. If an artist was in there he (and I mean he—see more on this below) was a part of art history. If he (or she) wasn’t included, that artist or period of art or school of art just didn’t exist.
In my college (Columbia) back then, we were so committed to what was called the canon (in literature as well as in art) that the basic Art History course consisted of Janson, lectures derived from Janson, and a box of 500 black and white reproductions (also from Janson) that we had to memorize. The final exam consisted of us having to identify the full work, from among these reproductions, from just a series of one square-inch segments--say the lower left hand corner of Vermeer’s Woman With a Pearl Necklace.
This was considered an essential part of a higher education for a manchild. Good training, we thought, for cocktail party chatter: “Yes, I know that work. Lustrous pearls don’t you think?” It was thought that this would help us make our way in the world.
So what have they done? Old man Janson died some years ago and his son took over, single-handedly, in his limited way, bringing editions up to date. He retired from this recently and the publisher invited a group of six scholars to serve as editors to turn Janson into something that could again become a campus bestseller in our postmodern age where the concept of canon itself is contested: if everything is socially constructed how can we force-feed youth a steady diet of Dead White Men?
So the latest edition includes more than one women—Mary Cassatt finally got included in the mid-1970s and was the only female artist to make it into in Janson until now. Photography makes its first appearance as does Decorative and Performance Art. But the old focus on showcasing individual geniuses and masterpieces has been discarded. Works that foster discourse are included. For example, Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Family, which caused such a ruckus when it was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum because it is painted with elephant dung, is in the new edition not because it is considered to be a masterpiece but because it can be used to foster discourse about the differences between Western and African ways of seeing. In the words of one of the editors, “It is a vessel loaded with meaning.” Can’t wait for that cocktail party!
That old chestnut, Whistler’s Mother is out (technically, back in my college days we knew it as Arrangement in Grey and Black—such at the time was the sophistication of an Ivy League education), but another chestnut, Grant Wood’s American Gothic has been added. I wonder how a square-inch of that looks? The pitchfork is a dead giveaway.
In recent decades, those who continued to use the Janson as a text (and fewer did) would “teach against it,” using its perceived limitations and exclusions as the real text. But, as Professor Hofrichter who has taught against it for years said, “Now, I’ll have only myself to teach against.”
Can’t wait to sign up for that course.
It was the basic art history text that literally millions of baby boomers read, or had inflicted on them. Love it, hate it—it was the TRUTH. If an artist was in there he (and I mean he—see more on this below) was a part of art history. If he (or she) wasn’t included, that artist or period of art or school of art just didn’t exist.
In my college (Columbia) back then, we were so committed to what was called the canon (in literature as well as in art) that the basic Art History course consisted of Janson, lectures derived from Janson, and a box of 500 black and white reproductions (also from Janson) that we had to memorize. The final exam consisted of us having to identify the full work, from among these reproductions, from just a series of one square-inch segments--say the lower left hand corner of Vermeer’s Woman With a Pearl Necklace.
This was considered an essential part of a higher education for a manchild. Good training, we thought, for cocktail party chatter: “Yes, I know that work. Lustrous pearls don’t you think?” It was thought that this would help us make our way in the world.
So what have they done? Old man Janson died some years ago and his son took over, single-handedly, in his limited way, bringing editions up to date. He retired from this recently and the publisher invited a group of six scholars to serve as editors to turn Janson into something that could again become a campus bestseller in our postmodern age where the concept of canon itself is contested: if everything is socially constructed how can we force-feed youth a steady diet of Dead White Men?
So the latest edition includes more than one women—Mary Cassatt finally got included in the mid-1970s and was the only female artist to make it into in Janson until now. Photography makes its first appearance as does Decorative and Performance Art. But the old focus on showcasing individual geniuses and masterpieces has been discarded. Works that foster discourse are included. For example, Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Family, which caused such a ruckus when it was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum because it is painted with elephant dung, is in the new edition not because it is considered to be a masterpiece but because it can be used to foster discourse about the differences between Western and African ways of seeing. In the words of one of the editors, “It is a vessel loaded with meaning.” Can’t wait for that cocktail party!
That old chestnut, Whistler’s Mother is out (technically, back in my college days we knew it as Arrangement in Grey and Black—such at the time was the sophistication of an Ivy League education), but another chestnut, Grant Wood’s American Gothic has been added. I wonder how a square-inch of that looks? The pitchfork is a dead giveaway.
In recent decades, those who continued to use the Janson as a text (and fewer did) would “teach against it,” using its perceived limitations and exclusions as the real text. But, as Professor Hofrichter who has taught against it for years said, “Now, I’ll have only myself to teach against.”
Can’t wait to sign up for that course.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:42 AM
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