Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Appearing fewer than five years after its previous edition, this is a parallel but simplified version of the elder Janson's benchmark college text, History of Art (LJ 5/15/70). The publisher intends this variant for high school students, as the title implies, as well as for general adult readers. Making comprehensible all the complexity of art history is a tall order, even when addressing the most learned adults; this version of Janson shows some of the difficulties of explaining art to a younger audience. Although chapters have been streamlined, the prose has not. It is marred by a needlessly sophisticated syntax that comes across as snooty and affected. With the arrival of inherently less understandable art forms in the 20th century, the challenge to maintain a tone of straightforward description becomes acute; only some of the time does this text meet that task. Readers able to keep up will appreciate the Jansons' adeptness at bringing to light the telling detail and making apt comparisons. But with more accessible surveys available like Marilyn Stokstad's recent Art History (LJ 4/15/96) and Laurie S. Adams's History of Western Art (LJ 9/15/93), this is recommended only for comprehensive collections.‘Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The name Janson is synonymous with the introduction of college undergraduates to the canon of western art; this latest volume for the younger set recapitulates the Jansons' particular narrative of art history at a slightly more elementary level. With its brief histories and capsule essays written for an upper school audience by father and son (Anthony took over the History of Art projects after his father's death in 1982), and including nearly 600 illustrations of antique, Gothic and Renaissance masterpieces, this tome is an encyclopedic look at art from the 30,000 year-old cave paintings of Lascaux to fairly recent developments in performance art and photography. From Egypt to Greece to Rome to France, and eventually even to America, the story of art unfolds in an empirical succession of buddings, blossomings and decays, rarely digressing into non-European or particularly idiosyncratic works. While there are certain inconsistencies in pitch-the authors provide a definition for fable, but make the sophisticated observation that, in Borromini's 17th century Roman church, "it is the syntax, not the vocabulary, that is new and disquieting"-overall, this is a rich resource indeed. For the precocious youngster or the older art neophyte, this book offers a skeleton key to civilization's most beautiful visual accomplishments, and does not condescend while instructing. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Gr. 7^-12. The fifth edition of a standard single-volume introduction to Western art for young people is revised, greatly expanded, and handsomely redesigned to be more spacious and easier than ever to use. Coverage ranges from prehistory through the 1990s, and the rich text is enhanced by more than 600 illustrations, 252 in full color, and labeled drawings. The focus this time is on art before 1520, though art in the modern world is certainly not neglected. New to this edition are boxed essays (added "to suggest the larger cultural context in which the visual arts have been created") that comment on music, theater, and poetry through the ages, as well as cultural and religious influences. There are four double-spread maps and four chronological tables spanning history from B.C. 4000 to A.D. 1990, as well as sidebar tables that list major civilizations, periods, dates, etc. Also the glossary has been expanded and the bibliography updated. An exemplary art history, well worth the price. --Sally Estes

Kirkus Book Review

History Of Art For Young People (632 pp.; $49.50; Feb. 1997; 0- 8109-4150-3): A quarter-century after it was first published as the high-school student's edition of H.W. Janson's History of Art (1962), this one-stop compendium for those researching any aspect of Western art history has evolved to an even higher level of elegance and accessibility. It provides ready definitions of and contexts for terms, concise histories of the cultures into which art movements were born, relevant diagrams of technical processes, succinct entries on important artists, and descriptions and full-color--often full-page--reproductions of the works that defined them. Anthony Janson, the son of H.W. (d. 1982), covers and updates the territory of previous editions, and brings the coverage up to the present. For research, for browsing, or as a desk reference, this excellent volume-- overhauled but still (as Kirkus predicted in 1972) the standard in its field--surpasses even its rivals on CD-ROM. (b&w photographs and drawings, diagrams, maps, chronologies, glossary, further reading, index) (Reference. 10+)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Horst Waldemar Janson was born on October 4, 1913 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He studied at the University of Munich and the University of Hamburg. He came to the U.S. and finished his Ph. D at Harvard University in 1942. He is a scholar of art history known for his book History of Art which was published in 1962. He taught at Worcester Art Museum and the University of Iowa. He authored two award winning books Apes and the Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and The Renaissance and Sculpture of Donatello. He died on September 30, 1982.

(Bowker Author Biography)