Revel for Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition, Reissued Edition -- Access Card

Front Cover

Completely rewritten and reorganized, this groundbreaking edition weaves together the most recent scholarship, the most current thinking in art history, and the most innovative digital art library. Experience the new Janson and re-experience the history of art.

The Portable Edition of Janson's History of Art, Seventh Edition features four lightweight, paperback books packaged together along with optional access to a powerful student website, www.myartkit.com, making the text more student friendly than ever. Janson's History of Art is still available in the original hardcover edition and in Volume I and Volume II splits. The Portable Edition is comprised of four books each representing a major period of art history:

Book 1: Ancient Art includes chapters 1-7

Book 2: Medieval Art includes chapters 8-13

Book 3: The Renaissance Art Through the Rococo includes chapters 13-22

Book 4: The Modern World includes chapters 23-30.

Long established as the classic and seminal introduction to art of the Western world, the Seventh Edition of Janson's History of Art is groundbreaking. When Harry Abrams first published the History of Art in 1962, John F. Kennedy occupied the White House, and Andy Warhol was an emerging artist. Janson offered his readers a strong focus on Western art, an important consideration of technique and style, and a clear point of view. The History of Art, said Janson, was not just a stringing together of historically significant objects, but the writing of a story about their interconnections, a history of styles and of stylistic change. Janson's text focused on the visual and technical characteristics of the objects he discussed, often in extraordinarily eloquent language. Janson's History of Art helped to establish the canon of art history for many generations of scholars.

The new Seventh Edition introduces the authorship of six distinguished specialists narrating the history of art for today's students. The contribution of multiple authors allows an expert's understanding to permeate each and every part of the text with a currency in art historical thinking and an enhanced discussion of context. The result is a complete rewriting and a weaving together of expert knowledge into a meaningful and powerful presentation of Western art.

About the author (2008)

Joseph Jacobs was born in Sydney, Australia on August 29, 1854. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1876, he pursued a full and varied career, writing many essays for various periodicals including a famous series in 1882 on the Russian persecutions of the Jews. He also made his influence felt as a Jew by editing the first issues of The Jewish Yearbook (1896--99), serving as president of the Jewish Historical Society, and editing The Jewish Encyclopedia. He later served as professor of English at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. His interest in folklore grew out of his studies in anthropology. From 1890 to 1893, he edited Folk Lore, a British journal on the subject. He also edited the Arabian Nights and Aesop's Fables and produced a series of fairy tale books. These fairy tale collections were the result of regular research in folklore, literature, anthropology, and other fields, and they are, perhaps, the works for which he is best remembered today. While other collectors of English folk tales rewrote or left out the crude language of the originals, he brought the vigor of colloquial English into his folk tale collections, and such memorable phrases as Fee-fi-fo-fum and chinny chin chin remain the strength of his contributions. He died on January 30, 1916. David Simon, M.D., is Medical Director of The Chopra Center for Well Being in La Jolla, California.

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