Giorgio Vasari’s biographies of the Italian Renaissance’s key players introduced the concept of art history as we know it. Purchase: Art Since 1900 from $151.24 (new) on Amazon Your mileage may vary, depending on just how significant you feel these events are in terms of art history, but Art Since 1900 exemplifies the nonhierarchical nature of the discourse that’s prevalent today. Rather, it treats 20th-century art to a textual deconstruction with short essays tied to certain cultural or historical events for each year between 19, kicking off with the publication of Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and ending with the 50th Venice Biennale. Accordingly, the book doesn’t follow the development of what it calls modernism, anti-modernism, and post-modernism through artists or movements. Still, the book retains October’s thorny attitude and poststructuralist bent-which is to say, it is skeptical of the notion that art embodies individual expressions that transcend time. Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, et al., Art Since 1900 (3rd Edition, two volumes)Ĭompiled by contributors associated with October, the art-critical quarterly known for its dense and difficult writing, Art Since 1900 was published in 2005 as a corrective to standard art histories while being aimed at a broader readership. Purchase: Janson’s Basic History of Western Art from $82.56 (used) on AmazonĢ. This most recent edition, published in 2013, expands coverage of Islamic art into its own chapter. Moreover, it replaced Janson’s focus on the male artist as genius with a more comprehensive reading that takes race, class, and gender into account. Works cited as masterpieces (like James McNeill Whistler’s 1871 painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, otherwise known as Whistler’s Mother) were elided, while previously ignored disciplines (photography and decorative art) were added-as were, finally, female artists. However, a 2006 revision basically wrote Janson out of his own book, though his name remained in the title.
Janson didn’t believe there were any worthy of serious consideration, a prejudice consistent with the book’s Mad Men-era origin, and one the author maintained until his death, in 1982. For the most part, it delivered-except for one titanic omission: women artists. Davies, et al., Janson’s History of Art (9th edition)įor more than 60 years, Horst Woldemar Janson’s doorstop of a book served as the go-to text for Art History 101 courses everywhere, promising a sweeping overview of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the dawn of civilization to the present.