SONG OF THE DAY
Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams
Dear Chicago,
You'll never guess.
You know the girl you said I'd meet someday?
Well, I've got something to confess.
She picked me up on Friday.
Asked me if she reminded me of you.
I just laughed and lit a cigarette,
Said "that's impossible to do."
My life's gotten simple since.
And it fluctuates so much.
Happy and sad and back again;
I'm not crying out too much.
Think about you all the time.
It's strange and hard to deal.
Think about you lying there,
And those blankets lie so still.
Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I've been thinking some of suicide.
But there's bars out here for miles.
Sorry about the every kiss,
Every kiss you wasted back.
I think the thing you said was true,
I'm going to die alone and sad.
The wind's feeling real these days. Yeah, baby, it hurt's me some.
Never thought I'd feel so blue. New York City, you're almost gone.
I think that I've fallen out of love, I think I've fallen out of love with you.
RIP
Goodbye, Kirby
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
On the day Kirby Puckett retired from baseball, he tried reassuring everyone that the sadness of losing sight in his right eye wouldn't diminish the spirit fans had seen him show for 12 seasons in a Twins uniform. "Kirby Puckett's going to be all right," he said in 1996. "Don't worry about me. I'll show up, and I'll have a smile on my face. The only thing I won't have is this uniform on. But you guys can have the memories of what I did when I did have it on."
On Monday, the sports world held those memories close as Puckett died in a Phoenix hospital, one day after suffering a massive stroke. He was 45.
"It's gut-wrenching," Twins President Dave St. Peter said. "We lost a dear friend. Really, somebody who in many ways was the foundation of this franchise for a long time." Puckett rose from a Chicago housing project and became a Minnesota sports icon, bursting onto the scene in 1984 with an energetic style and an effervescent smile, each all his own. He led the Twins to the World Series in 1987 and 1991, leaping into walls as their center fielder and swinging with a might that belied his stocky, 5-8 frame.
"This is a sad day for the Minnesota Twins, Major League Baseball and baseball fans everywhere," Twins owner Carl Pohlad said in a statement. "Eloise and I loved Kirby deeply. Kirby's impact on the Twins organization, the state of Minnesota and Upper Midwest is significant and goes well beyond his role in helping the Twins win two world championships."
Puckett was given last rites and died Monday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Kimberly Lodge told the Associated Press. He wanted his organs to be donated. In a statement, family and friends thanked fans for their prayers. Puckett often said he played every game as if it were his last, and sure enough, on March 28, 1996, he awoke with blurred vision in his right eye. He never played again. He was found to have glaucoma and retired on July 12, 1996. For the next five years, Puckett remained a smiling fixture on the Minnesota scene, working as an executive vice president for the Twins in an ambassadorial role.
In 2001, he became a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame with 2,304 career hits, 10 All-Star selections and six Gold Glove Awards. Not all was as well in Puckett's personal life. His seemingly impeccable image began to tarnish in 2002, as details emerged from divorce proceedings with his wife, Tonya Puckett, who alleged that he had abused her and threatened to kill her. Puckett said it wasn't true, but allegations from other women soon followed. He relinquished most ties to the Twins, moved his permanent residence to Arizona and disappeared from the public view.
Meteoric rise
Puckett grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on Chicago's South Side. He received no scholarship offers, so he went to work after high school on an assembly line for Ford Motor Co. "I never forgot where I came from," Puckett said when he was elected to the Hall of Fame.
The Twins drafted him in 1982, and he reached the big leagues on May 8, 1984. He celebrated his arrival by getting four hits against the California Angels. Puckett lore piled up quickly in 1987, when he led the Twins in hits as they came back from a three-games-to-two deficit against St. Louis in the best-of-seven World Series and won their first championship. He now had unqualified success to go with his uninhibited style.
"A 7- or 8-year-old kid watching the game would pick him out, and he just looked different," sportscaster Bob Costas said. "He had an affection for the game, and there was a kind of energy about it that was fun. I'm sure he took it seriously. You have to take it seriously in order to be a great player, but there was nothing grim about the way he went about it."
In 1991, the Twins again found themselves trailing in the World Series three games to two, this time to Atlanta.
But Puckett went around telling teammates to hop on his back for Game 6, that he would carry them to victory. Then he delivered two signature moments. First, he made a leaping catch against the Metrodome's outfield Plexiglas in the third inning and robbed Ron Gant of an extra-base hit, saving a run from scoring. Then, in the 11th inning, Puckett became the ninth player in major league history to win a World Series game with a home run, hitting a changeup from Charlie Leibrandt over the outfield wall and pumping his arms in celebration as he rounded the bases.
"You couldn't hear yourself think in the ballpark," former Twins hitting coach Terry Crowley said Monday. "Kirby was on deck. The manager went to the mound, and Kirby said to me, 'If they leave this guy in the game, the game is over.'
"... Puckett hit a home run, rounded the bases, and as I went to shake hands with him, he gave me a bear hug and said, 'Crow, I told you!' That will stay in my mind forever."
Sudden end
Puckett turned 36 during spring training in 1996 and continued to torment Grapefruit League pitching. On March 27, he went 2-for-3, raising his spring average to .344. The next day, Puckett woke up and couldn't see Tonya, though she was sitting right next to him. Three laser surgeries later, Puckett knew he would never be able to see well enough to play again. His right retina had irreversible damage, caused by a blockage of blood vessels. He arrived at his retirement news conference wearing his white No. 34 jersey. He also wore sunglasses covering the gauze patch over his right eye.
"It's the last time you're going to see Kirby Puckett in a Twins uniform," he said. "I want to tell you all that I love you all so much."
The room was packed with reporters and Twins players. Puckett gave another pep talk: "I want my young teammates to know right now -- when you put the uniform on, you put it on and you play with pride and integrity. The way that Kent Hrbek plays with it -- played with it. And Paul Molitor and Knobby [Chuck Knoblauch] and all you guys play with it. Just don't take it for granted because you never know. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us."
Fall from grace
When Puckett was elected to the Hall of Fame, on Jan. 17, 2001, he called it one of the proudest days of his life. But the next year, as he and Tonya were involved in divorce proceedings, his life began to spiral downward. In March 2002, a woman filed an order for protection against Tonya Puckett, alleging that Tonya had threatened to kill her over an alleged affair with Kirby. That month, a St. Louis Park woman asked for protection from Kirby Puckett, saying in court documents that she had an 18-year relationship with him and that he had shoved her in his Bloomington condominium.
Then, in September 2002, Puckett was involved in a very public incident at Redstone American Grill in Eden Prairie. That time, a woman accused Puckett of dragging her into a restroom and grabbing her breast.
After a nine-day trial, a jury ruled Puckett not guilty of false imprisonment, fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct and fifth-degree assault. He relinquished his role as Twins executive vice president. The team, which retired Puckett's jersey in 1997, tried maintaining ties to him, but he continued to withdraw. When friends saw him, they grew increasingly concerned about the weight he was putting on his short frame, with estimates that he was well beyond 300 pounds.
But for those who saw him in Arizona at Harmon Killebrew's charity golf tournament in November, there was renewed hope. Puckett had spoken of taking better care of himself. Recently, there was news that he planned to remarry in June.
And there was always appreciation of him as a ballplayer and teammate. "He made me a better coach," Crowley said. "He made Tom Kelly probably a better manager. He made the mediocre hitters on that team probably a little better. He was a pleasure. He really was." Puckett would have turned 46 on March 14. He is survived by two children, Catherine and Kirby Jr., from his marriage to Tonya.
Goodbye Ali Farka Toure
Ali Farka Touré, the Grammy Award-winning musician known as "Africa's bluesman," has died after a long undisclosed illness. Touré, who is believed to have been 67, died Tuesday at his home in Bamako, Mali, the country's culture ministry announced.
Radio stations across the poor west African nation publicly mourned the loss of one of the continent's most popular musicians by flooding the airwaves with his music. Touré, who was often compared to U.S. blues guitarist John Lee Hooker, was born in northern Mali, and taught himself how to play various guitars in his youth. However, he is best known for playing the gurke, a traditional Malian stringed instrument.
While holding other "day" jobs his whole life, Touré worked continuously at his music and released his debut album Farka in 1976. Subsequent albums included a self-titled acoustic release in 1987, 1989's The River, which featured members of Irish group the Chieftans, 1992's The Source and the more traditional 1999 album Niafunké, named after the village on the border of the Sahara where he lived.
Touré, who had been a farmer for decades, became mayor of Niafunké in 2004. A regular on the world music scene, Touré was a two-time Grammy Award-winner, first winning for his acclaimed 1995 album Talking Timbuktu – which was a collaboration with U.S. guitarist Ry Cooder. He won his second Grammy earlier this year for his traditional world music album In the Heart of the Moon, which he recorded with fellow Mali musician Toumani Diabaté.
ART HISTORY
Revising Art History's Big Book: Who's In and Who Comes Out?
By RANDY KENNEDY
In some ways, art history is like an episode of "The Sopranos." A relatively small number of artists are welcomed into the family of the famous, their works immortalized in museums and on postcard racks — in other words, they are made. But hit men, otherwise known as critics and scholars, are lurking around every corner, waiting to whack even the most sterling reputation.
Almost no one is safe. Not even, as it turns out, Whistler's mother.
This month, the publisher Pearson Prentice Hall is introducing the first thoroughly revised version of "Janson's History of Art," a doorstopper first published in 1962 that has been a classroom hit ever since Horst Woldemar Janson wrote it while working at New York University. For a generation of baby boomers, it defined what was what and who was who in art, from Angelico (Fra) to Zurbarán (Francisco de).
But in recent years it has lost its perch as the best-selling art survey and has been criticized for becoming a scholarly chestnut. So its publisher recruited six scholars from around the country and told them to rewrite as much as they wanted, to cast a critical eye on every reproduction, chapter heading and sacred cow.
The result, at more than 1,100 pages and 1,450 illustrations, will undoubtedly surprise many Janson loyalists, especially instructors who have taught from the book so long they can almost do so without cracking it open. The new edition drops not only Whistler's portrait of his mother but also evicts several other longtime residents, like Domenichino, the Baroque master, and Louis Le Nain, whose work is in the Louvre.
The sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, for example, has been erased with a vengeance; even a portrait by another artist of Roubiliac posing with his work has been dropped. And some full-page reproductions that had become permanent fixtures — like the Metropolitan Museum of Art's van Eyck diptych, "The Crucifixion, the Last Judgment" — have been replaced with others seen to be more representative of an artist's work.
Although the publisher has now incorporated the name "Janson" into the title, the new edition, the seventh, is the first to have no Janson associated with it. H. W. Janson died in 1982, and his son, Anthony F. Janson, who took over and revised it several times, retired as the book's guiding light in 2002.
Sarah Touborg, the current editor, said about a quarter of the contents had been changed. "To have done less than that would have been tough, given our vision of renovating Janson," she said. "And doing more than that would have risked losing our very loyal base of customers."
"There's a strong affection for this book among teachers," she added. "It's their book."
But in many colleges, the book, while as familiar as furniture, had become something to teach against, its clear narrative of art's development, focused mostly on Europe, muddied considerably since the early 1960's by changes in scholarship that began to place art more solidly in a social and political context.
The first editions included no women artists; even through versions published into the mid-1970's, Mary Cassatt, for example, went unmentioned. Oddly, Jackson Pollock was in the first edition, only six years after his death, but photography was not included until relatively recently.
The new book adds many more women, and for the first time, decorative arts are included. And it uses art much more as a way to discuss race, class and gender. In the introduction, on pages that once used Dürer and Mantegna to examine the concept of originality, Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" — a painting that rested on clumps of elephant dung and created a furor when it was shown in Brooklyn in 1999 — is used to talk about differences between Western and African ways of seeing. "Art is never an empty container," the introduction states. "Rather, it is a vessel loaded with meaning."
The book's new authors warn that because their approach diverges from the model H. W. Janson pioneered — the showcasing of individual geniuses and masterpieces — the exclusion of works should not necessarily be looked at as beloved artists being unceremoniously escorted out of the canon. But because Janson, as it is called, was so influential in undergraduate courses for so long, some teachers say they cannot help but view the revision that way.
"I can see the reasons, artistically, for dropping Whistler's mother," said Mickey McConnell, an instructor who until recently taught a survey course at the University of New Mexico and has used Janson for years. "But it's become so well known, such a part of the culture. What if there's a cartoon in The New Yorker that uses it as a reference? Younger students aren't going to know what it's talking about."
Joseph Jacobs, a curator and scholar who wrote the modern chapters of the new edition, said he often struggled with the question of what he could dare to take out. But when he decided to replace Whistler's portrait of his mother with his "Symphony in White No. 2," Mr. Jacobs said, he didn't think twice about it, "which is terrible, I guess, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a famous piece and everyone teaches it," he said, "but the 'Symphony in White' — you can just do so much more with it, talking about the Japanese influences on Whistler's work and a lot of things that allow you to see how fantastic a painter he really was."
He also added some works that have long been cultural superstars, like Grant Wood's "American Gothic," which surprisingly had never appeared in Janson. (This might have been because Wood and H. W. Janson once taught together in Iowa and were said to have disliked each other.)
As with all renderings of history, deciding who made the cut and who did not often came down to the mundane realities of publishing: page counts and deadlines. "There had to be tradeoffs," said Frima Fox Hofrichter, chairwoman of the history of art and design department at Pratt Institute, who wrote the chapters on the Baroque and Rococo. She enlarged sections on Judith Leyster, a Dutch Baroque painter, and added women like Clara Peeters, a 17th-century Flemish still-life painter, who had never been included.
Mr. Jacobs said he would have liked to include Audubon and was disappointed that he had to leave out the photographer August Sander and the performance artist Ana Mendieta, among many others. But he was able to beef up both Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, moves he said were long overdue. Stephen F. Eisenman, a professor of art history at Northwestern University who described himself as a longtime critic of Janson, welcomed many of the changes. "It's clearly a liberal version of a cold-war classic that will pass muster in most of the U.S.," he said.
But he added that it would probably never regain the dominance it once had, simply because the whole idea of a book like it, or other supposedly all-inclusive surveys like "Gardner's Art Through the Ages," first published in 1926, had become outdated.
"The main problem, I think, is that there's no longer a general belief that there exists a single canon for art that should be taught to all students," he said. Dr. Hofrichter, who has taught from Janson for many years, counters that teachers and students need a book to use as a starting point and basic guide to what should be considered important. But she said she had also often "taught against" Janson during her career, which leaves her in a strange predicament.
"Now," she said, "I'll have only myself to teach against."
Dear Chicago - Ryan Adams
Dear Chicago,
You'll never guess.
You know the girl you said I'd meet someday?
Well, I've got something to confess.
She picked me up on Friday.
Asked me if she reminded me of you.
I just laughed and lit a cigarette,
Said "that's impossible to do."
My life's gotten simple since.
And it fluctuates so much.
Happy and sad and back again;
I'm not crying out too much.
Think about you all the time.
It's strange and hard to deal.
Think about you lying there,
And those blankets lie so still.
Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I've been thinking some of suicide.
But there's bars out here for miles.
Sorry about the every kiss,
Every kiss you wasted back.
I think the thing you said was true,
I'm going to die alone and sad.
The wind's feeling real these days. Yeah, baby, it hurt's me some.
Never thought I'd feel so blue. New York City, you're almost gone.
I think that I've fallen out of love, I think I've fallen out of love with you.
RIP
Goodbye, Kirby
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
On the day Kirby Puckett retired from baseball, he tried reassuring everyone that the sadness of losing sight in his right eye wouldn't diminish the spirit fans had seen him show for 12 seasons in a Twins uniform. "Kirby Puckett's going to be all right," he said in 1996. "Don't worry about me. I'll show up, and I'll have a smile on my face. The only thing I won't have is this uniform on. But you guys can have the memories of what I did when I did have it on."
On Monday, the sports world held those memories close as Puckett died in a Phoenix hospital, one day after suffering a massive stroke. He was 45.
"It's gut-wrenching," Twins President Dave St. Peter said. "We lost a dear friend. Really, somebody who in many ways was the foundation of this franchise for a long time." Puckett rose from a Chicago housing project and became a Minnesota sports icon, bursting onto the scene in 1984 with an energetic style and an effervescent smile, each all his own. He led the Twins to the World Series in 1987 and 1991, leaping into walls as their center fielder and swinging with a might that belied his stocky, 5-8 frame.
"This is a sad day for the Minnesota Twins, Major League Baseball and baseball fans everywhere," Twins owner Carl Pohlad said in a statement. "Eloise and I loved Kirby deeply. Kirby's impact on the Twins organization, the state of Minnesota and Upper Midwest is significant and goes well beyond his role in helping the Twins win two world championships."
Puckett was given last rites and died Monday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Kimberly Lodge told the Associated Press. He wanted his organs to be donated. In a statement, family and friends thanked fans for their prayers. Puckett often said he played every game as if it were his last, and sure enough, on March 28, 1996, he awoke with blurred vision in his right eye. He never played again. He was found to have glaucoma and retired on July 12, 1996. For the next five years, Puckett remained a smiling fixture on the Minnesota scene, working as an executive vice president for the Twins in an ambassadorial role.
In 2001, he became a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame with 2,304 career hits, 10 All-Star selections and six Gold Glove Awards. Not all was as well in Puckett's personal life. His seemingly impeccable image began to tarnish in 2002, as details emerged from divorce proceedings with his wife, Tonya Puckett, who alleged that he had abused her and threatened to kill her. Puckett said it wasn't true, but allegations from other women soon followed. He relinquished most ties to the Twins, moved his permanent residence to Arizona and disappeared from the public view.
Meteoric rise
Puckett grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on Chicago's South Side. He received no scholarship offers, so he went to work after high school on an assembly line for Ford Motor Co. "I never forgot where I came from," Puckett said when he was elected to the Hall of Fame.
The Twins drafted him in 1982, and he reached the big leagues on May 8, 1984. He celebrated his arrival by getting four hits against the California Angels. Puckett lore piled up quickly in 1987, when he led the Twins in hits as they came back from a three-games-to-two deficit against St. Louis in the best-of-seven World Series and won their first championship. He now had unqualified success to go with his uninhibited style.
"A 7- or 8-year-old kid watching the game would pick him out, and he just looked different," sportscaster Bob Costas said. "He had an affection for the game, and there was a kind of energy about it that was fun. I'm sure he took it seriously. You have to take it seriously in order to be a great player, but there was nothing grim about the way he went about it."
In 1991, the Twins again found themselves trailing in the World Series three games to two, this time to Atlanta.
But Puckett went around telling teammates to hop on his back for Game 6, that he would carry them to victory. Then he delivered two signature moments. First, he made a leaping catch against the Metrodome's outfield Plexiglas in the third inning and robbed Ron Gant of an extra-base hit, saving a run from scoring. Then, in the 11th inning, Puckett became the ninth player in major league history to win a World Series game with a home run, hitting a changeup from Charlie Leibrandt over the outfield wall and pumping his arms in celebration as he rounded the bases.
"You couldn't hear yourself think in the ballpark," former Twins hitting coach Terry Crowley said Monday. "Kirby was on deck. The manager went to the mound, and Kirby said to me, 'If they leave this guy in the game, the game is over.'
"... Puckett hit a home run, rounded the bases, and as I went to shake hands with him, he gave me a bear hug and said, 'Crow, I told you!' That will stay in my mind forever."
Sudden end
Puckett turned 36 during spring training in 1996 and continued to torment Grapefruit League pitching. On March 27, he went 2-for-3, raising his spring average to .344. The next day, Puckett woke up and couldn't see Tonya, though she was sitting right next to him. Three laser surgeries later, Puckett knew he would never be able to see well enough to play again. His right retina had irreversible damage, caused by a blockage of blood vessels. He arrived at his retirement news conference wearing his white No. 34 jersey. He also wore sunglasses covering the gauze patch over his right eye.
"It's the last time you're going to see Kirby Puckett in a Twins uniform," he said. "I want to tell you all that I love you all so much."
The room was packed with reporters and Twins players. Puckett gave another pep talk: "I want my young teammates to know right now -- when you put the uniform on, you put it on and you play with pride and integrity. The way that Kent Hrbek plays with it -- played with it. And Paul Molitor and Knobby [Chuck Knoblauch] and all you guys play with it. Just don't take it for granted because you never know. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us."
Fall from grace
When Puckett was elected to the Hall of Fame, on Jan. 17, 2001, he called it one of the proudest days of his life. But the next year, as he and Tonya were involved in divorce proceedings, his life began to spiral downward. In March 2002, a woman filed an order for protection against Tonya Puckett, alleging that Tonya had threatened to kill her over an alleged affair with Kirby. That month, a St. Louis Park woman asked for protection from Kirby Puckett, saying in court documents that she had an 18-year relationship with him and that he had shoved her in his Bloomington condominium.
Then, in September 2002, Puckett was involved in a very public incident at Redstone American Grill in Eden Prairie. That time, a woman accused Puckett of dragging her into a restroom and grabbing her breast.
After a nine-day trial, a jury ruled Puckett not guilty of false imprisonment, fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct and fifth-degree assault. He relinquished his role as Twins executive vice president. The team, which retired Puckett's jersey in 1997, tried maintaining ties to him, but he continued to withdraw. When friends saw him, they grew increasingly concerned about the weight he was putting on his short frame, with estimates that he was well beyond 300 pounds.
But for those who saw him in Arizona at Harmon Killebrew's charity golf tournament in November, there was renewed hope. Puckett had spoken of taking better care of himself. Recently, there was news that he planned to remarry in June.
And there was always appreciation of him as a ballplayer and teammate. "He made me a better coach," Crowley said. "He made Tom Kelly probably a better manager. He made the mediocre hitters on that team probably a little better. He was a pleasure. He really was." Puckett would have turned 46 on March 14. He is survived by two children, Catherine and Kirby Jr., from his marriage to Tonya.
Goodbye Ali Farka Toure
Ali Farka Touré, the Grammy Award-winning musician known as "Africa's bluesman," has died after a long undisclosed illness. Touré, who is believed to have been 67, died Tuesday at his home in Bamako, Mali, the country's culture ministry announced.
Radio stations across the poor west African nation publicly mourned the loss of one of the continent's most popular musicians by flooding the airwaves with his music. Touré, who was often compared to U.S. blues guitarist John Lee Hooker, was born in northern Mali, and taught himself how to play various guitars in his youth. However, he is best known for playing the gurke, a traditional Malian stringed instrument.
While holding other "day" jobs his whole life, Touré worked continuously at his music and released his debut album Farka in 1976. Subsequent albums included a self-titled acoustic release in 1987, 1989's The River, which featured members of Irish group the Chieftans, 1992's The Source and the more traditional 1999 album Niafunké, named after the village on the border of the Sahara where he lived.
Touré, who had been a farmer for decades, became mayor of Niafunké in 2004. A regular on the world music scene, Touré was a two-time Grammy Award-winner, first winning for his acclaimed 1995 album Talking Timbuktu – which was a collaboration with U.S. guitarist Ry Cooder. He won his second Grammy earlier this year for his traditional world music album In the Heart of the Moon, which he recorded with fellow Mali musician Toumani Diabaté.
ART HISTORY
Revising Art History's Big Book: Who's In and Who Comes Out?
By RANDY KENNEDY
In some ways, art history is like an episode of "The Sopranos." A relatively small number of artists are welcomed into the family of the famous, their works immortalized in museums and on postcard racks — in other words, they are made. But hit men, otherwise known as critics and scholars, are lurking around every corner, waiting to whack even the most sterling reputation.
Almost no one is safe. Not even, as it turns out, Whistler's mother.
This month, the publisher Pearson Prentice Hall is introducing the first thoroughly revised version of "Janson's History of Art," a doorstopper first published in 1962 that has been a classroom hit ever since Horst Woldemar Janson wrote it while working at New York University. For a generation of baby boomers, it defined what was what and who was who in art, from Angelico (Fra) to Zurbarán (Francisco de).
But in recent years it has lost its perch as the best-selling art survey and has been criticized for becoming a scholarly chestnut. So its publisher recruited six scholars from around the country and told them to rewrite as much as they wanted, to cast a critical eye on every reproduction, chapter heading and sacred cow.
The result, at more than 1,100 pages and 1,450 illustrations, will undoubtedly surprise many Janson loyalists, especially instructors who have taught from the book so long they can almost do so without cracking it open. The new edition drops not only Whistler's portrait of his mother but also evicts several other longtime residents, like Domenichino, the Baroque master, and Louis Le Nain, whose work is in the Louvre.
The sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, for example, has been erased with a vengeance; even a portrait by another artist of Roubiliac posing with his work has been dropped. And some full-page reproductions that had become permanent fixtures — like the Metropolitan Museum of Art's van Eyck diptych, "The Crucifixion, the Last Judgment" — have been replaced with others seen to be more representative of an artist's work.
Although the publisher has now incorporated the name "Janson" into the title, the new edition, the seventh, is the first to have no Janson associated with it. H. W. Janson died in 1982, and his son, Anthony F. Janson, who took over and revised it several times, retired as the book's guiding light in 2002.
Sarah Touborg, the current editor, said about a quarter of the contents had been changed. "To have done less than that would have been tough, given our vision of renovating Janson," she said. "And doing more than that would have risked losing our very loyal base of customers."
"There's a strong affection for this book among teachers," she added. "It's their book."
But in many colleges, the book, while as familiar as furniture, had become something to teach against, its clear narrative of art's development, focused mostly on Europe, muddied considerably since the early 1960's by changes in scholarship that began to place art more solidly in a social and political context.
The first editions included no women artists; even through versions published into the mid-1970's, Mary Cassatt, for example, went unmentioned. Oddly, Jackson Pollock was in the first edition, only six years after his death, but photography was not included until relatively recently.
The new book adds many more women, and for the first time, decorative arts are included. And it uses art much more as a way to discuss race, class and gender. In the introduction, on pages that once used Dürer and Mantegna to examine the concept of originality, Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" — a painting that rested on clumps of elephant dung and created a furor when it was shown in Brooklyn in 1999 — is used to talk about differences between Western and African ways of seeing. "Art is never an empty container," the introduction states. "Rather, it is a vessel loaded with meaning."
The book's new authors warn that because their approach diverges from the model H. W. Janson pioneered — the showcasing of individual geniuses and masterpieces — the exclusion of works should not necessarily be looked at as beloved artists being unceremoniously escorted out of the canon. But because Janson, as it is called, was so influential in undergraduate courses for so long, some teachers say they cannot help but view the revision that way.
"I can see the reasons, artistically, for dropping Whistler's mother," said Mickey McConnell, an instructor who until recently taught a survey course at the University of New Mexico and has used Janson for years. "But it's become so well known, such a part of the culture. What if there's a cartoon in The New Yorker that uses it as a reference? Younger students aren't going to know what it's talking about."
Joseph Jacobs, a curator and scholar who wrote the modern chapters of the new edition, said he often struggled with the question of what he could dare to take out. But when he decided to replace Whistler's portrait of his mother with his "Symphony in White No. 2," Mr. Jacobs said, he didn't think twice about it, "which is terrible, I guess, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a famous piece and everyone teaches it," he said, "but the 'Symphony in White' — you can just do so much more with it, talking about the Japanese influences on Whistler's work and a lot of things that allow you to see how fantastic a painter he really was."
He also added some works that have long been cultural superstars, like Grant Wood's "American Gothic," which surprisingly had never appeared in Janson. (This might have been because Wood and H. W. Janson once taught together in Iowa and were said to have disliked each other.)
As with all renderings of history, deciding who made the cut and who did not often came down to the mundane realities of publishing: page counts and deadlines. "There had to be tradeoffs," said Frima Fox Hofrichter, chairwoman of the history of art and design department at Pratt Institute, who wrote the chapters on the Baroque and Rococo. She enlarged sections on Judith Leyster, a Dutch Baroque painter, and added women like Clara Peeters, a 17th-century Flemish still-life painter, who had never been included.
Mr. Jacobs said he would have liked to include Audubon and was disappointed that he had to leave out the photographer August Sander and the performance artist Ana Mendieta, among many others. But he was able to beef up both Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, moves he said were long overdue. Stephen F. Eisenman, a professor of art history at Northwestern University who described himself as a longtime critic of Janson, welcomed many of the changes. "It's clearly a liberal version of a cold-war classic that will pass muster in most of the U.S.," he said.
But he added that it would probably never regain the dominance it once had, simply because the whole idea of a book like it, or other supposedly all-inclusive surveys like "Gardner's Art Through the Ages," first published in 1926, had become outdated.
"The main problem, I think, is that there's no longer a general belief that there exists a single canon for art that should be taught to all students," he said. Dr. Hofrichter, who has taught from Janson for many years, counters that teachers and students need a book to use as a starting point and basic guide to what should be considered important. But she said she had also often "taught against" Janson during her career, which leaves her in a strange predicament.
"Now," she said, "I'll have only myself to teach against."
posted by D @ 9:56 AM
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