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Johnson, Philip

Image Credit: Arts News

Full Name: Johnson, Philip

Other Names:

  • Philip Johnson

Gender: male

Date Born: 08 July 1906

Date Died: 25 January 2005

Place Born: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH, USA

Place Died: New Canaan, Fairfield, CT, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): curators


Overview

Architect and first curator of the department of architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932. Johnson was the son of a wealthy Cleveland attorney Homer M. Johnson, and an equally wealthy and cultured mother, Louise Pope (Johnson). He entered Harvard in 1923 without taking the qualifying exam. The following year his father divided a large amount of his fortune between his children, his daughters receiving cash, and Philip given stock in Alcoa Aluminum. This was the source of a lifelong financial independence. Troubled by his emerging homosexuality, Johnson suffered several psychological breakdowns while at Harvard, intermittently traveling to Europe. Toward the end of his Harvard years (he finally graduated in 1930 with a degree in classics), two events changed his life. At about the same time, Johnson met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a graduate student at Harvard who had just accepted the directorship of the Museum of Modern Art, and Johnson read an article by another Harvard student, Henry-Russell Hitchcock on the subject of modern architecture. Johnson may have been amorously attached to these men as well. Barr saw in Johnson’s wealth and enthusiasm the perfect person to lead a department of architecture in his new museum. Johnson and Hitchcock traveled to Germany in 1930 to study modern architecture for the Museum of Modern art. He returned with enthusiasm for modern architecture and, somewhat ironically, a glowing view of Adolf Hitler. In 1932, Johnson mounted the exhibition “The International Style,” with a catalog written by Hitchcock, who had coined the term, for the Museum. The exhibition was responsible for bringing modern architecture as a style to the minds of the United States’ public. Johnson left MoMA in 1934 to return to Ohio as a political activist. He and a friend, Alan Blackburn, worked for populist and fascist candidates in America such as Huey P. Long, the senator from Louisiana, and, after Long’s assassination, the Detroit radio broadcaster Father Charles E. Coughlin (famous for characterizing Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in anti-Semitic terms as the “Jew Deal”). Johnson returned to Germany to study the Nazi successes. He attended a Hitler rally in Potsdam in 1938, the co-called Sommerkurs für Ausländer in Berlin. His roommate was the journalist William Shirer (1904-1993), later author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Johnson followed the German army into Poland after the German attack in 1939, writing “We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed…It was a stirring spectacle.” In the United States, he helped organize a fascist party. In 1942, with the country deeply engaged in the war fighting fascism, Johnson decided to train as an architect, enrolling at Harvard’s graduate school of design. The school was led by the modernists architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. However, Johnson was closer to Mies van der Rohe. Johnson graduated in 1943, served in the U.S. Army, and after the war attempted to practice architecture on his own. Barr took Johnson back a his head of MoMA’s architecture department. He was joined in the department of decorative arts by Mildred Constantine. In 1947 Johnson mounted a show on Mies van der Rohe. In 1952, Johnson designed the sculpture garden for the museum (though later altered, refurbished in 2004 to its original design). In 1954 Johnson left the museum again in 1954 to return to practicing architecture. Between 1967 and 1991 he partnered with John Burgee to design many of the large buildings for which he is famous. These include a number of New York office buildings and the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks in Washgington, D. C. In 1988, in his mid nineties, Johnson returned to curation at MoMA with an exhibition on “Deconstructivist Architecture,” highlighting the work of Frank Gehry and others. Johnson died in his most famous residential architectural work, his Glass House at New Canaan, Connecticut, designed in the mid 1960s. Flamboyantly gay, his relationships were never a secret. His partner of the final forty years of his life was David Whitney. Johnson’s architecture has been criticized for being overly style conscious and indeed his building designs seemed to change with every new architectural fashion. His commissions comprised some of the most important ones in the United States. Peter Eisenman, in an introduction to Johnson’s Writings (1979) wrote that Johnson’s architecture was the “ideal model of a more perfect society.” Neither his designs or his architectural writing indicate a concern for the social or practical aspects of modern architecture.


Selected Bibliography

and Hitchcock, Henry Russell. The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. New York: W. W. Norton/Museum of Modern Art, 1932; Mies van der Rohe. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1947; Lewis, Hilary, and O’Connor, John, eds. Philip Johnson: the Architect in his Own Words. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994; and Sombart, Werner. Weltanschauung, Science, and Economy. New York: Veritas Press, 1939; Eisenman, Peter, and Stern, Robert A. M, eds. [Philip Johnson] Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; and Wigley, Mark. Deconstructivist architecture: the Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York: Little, Brown/New York Graphic Society Books, 1988.


Sources

Philip Johnson and the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art /Harry N. Abrams, 1998; Schulze, Franz. Philip Johnson: a Biography. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1994; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 84; [obituaries:] Saint, Andrew. “Philip Johnson: Flamboyant Postmodern Architect whose Career was Marred by a Flirtation with Nazism.” The Guardian (London) January 29, 2005, p. 25; The Washington Post February 2, 2005, p. A23; Applebaum, Anne. “Remembering Philip Johnson.” The Guardian (London) January 29, 2005, p. 25.




Citation

"Johnson, Philip." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/johnsonp/.


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Architect and first curator of the department of architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932. Johnson was the son of a wealthy Cleveland attorney Homer M. Johnson, and an equally wealthy and cultured mother, Louise Pope (Johnson). He

Johnson, Lee

Full Name: Johnson, Lee

Other Names:

  • Lee Johnson

Gender: male

Date Born: 07 September 1924

Date Died: 06 July 2006

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and painting (visual works)


Overview

Delacroix scholar. Johnson’s father was an Italian immigrant, Tommaso Bruno Bertuccioli, a businessman of originally from Pesaro; his mother, Carol Johnson, was an American from Uncasville, Connecticut who had come to London to study acting. Johnson grew up at Farn-borough, Kent, where he was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury and then at the Edinburgh Academy. With the entrance of Britain into World War II, he emigrated with his mother and sister to America in 1940. Johnson joined the US Army serving as a medic in the Pacific theater. After his parents’ divorce, Johnson adopted his mother’s maiden name. He returned the London and following study in Paris and Perugia, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1952, studying under Anthony Blunt for an undergraduate degree. It was Blunt who steered Johnson toward the topic of Delacroix. A scholarship year to study in France resulted in his 1954 article in Burlington Magazine on Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” which established him as a major scholar in the field. Johnson entered King’s College, Cambridge, in 1955, lecturing at the Courtauld beginning the following year. At Cambridge he became close and lifelong friends with Francis Haskell. Johnson completed his dissertation, Colour in Delacroix: Theory and Practice, in 1959 also under Blunt. He lectured at the University of Toronto in 1958, moving to Swarthmore College to for one year, returning to Toronto as a lecturer in 1960. He rose to assistant professor in 1963 the same year as the revised version of his dissertation appeared as a book entitled simply Delacroix. Johnson maintained a double appointment, traveling between Toronto and the Department of the History of Art at Cambridge University. The centenary of Delacroix’s death in 1863 brought a series of international shows on the artist, most of which drawing upon Johnson’s innovative scholarship. He curated a Delacroix exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto, 1962-1963. In 1964 he organized a similar show on Delacroix at the Edinburgh Festival taking over from Douglas Cooper who had agreed to organize it to coincide with Berlioz celebrations but had withdrawn when major paintings were not forthcoming. Johnson’s show triumphed by selecting lesser-known works based upon his personal knowledge of the artist’s oeuvre. When the catalog of the Paris Delacroix exhibition failed to appear before the show had ended, John’s review in the Burlington Magazine became the de facto catalog. Johnson was appointed full professor at Toronto in 1974. In 1981 he began issuing his catalogue raisonné on Delacroix, which resulted in three two-volume sets with a final supplement of revisions and updates, eventually published as a separate volume in 2002. The catalogue was universally acclaimed; volumes 3 and 4, 1988, receiving the Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. He retired Professor Emeritus in 1984. Johnson published two volumes of Delacroix letters, the first in 1991, two-thirds of which were firs-time publications, and a second volume co-edited with Michele Hannoosh. A catalogue raisonne of the pastels appeared in 1995. French acceptance of his scholarship was slow in coming, in part because of his disparaging of “Gallic effusions.” However, after several important collaborations in the 1990s, he was appointed Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2000. English recognition could also be fickle as well, he was omitted from the essayist to the catalog for the Tate exhibition “Constable to Delacroix: British art and the French Romantics, 1820-1840” in 2003. Since 2001, he had developed Churg-Strauss Syndrome, leaving his confined to his home. His wife, Michelle Combes died in 2002. In 2006, his son, blaming him for the breakdown of the son’s marriage, beat the elderly art historian to death and set the Hampstead home on fire to make it appear as an accident. Johnson laid the foundations of much of the current work on Delacroix (Times). His catalogue superseded the earlier ones of Alfred Robaut in 1885, and the summary one by Luigina Rossi Bortolatto of 1972. A dry wit at times rankled fellow scholars, particularly continential ones. He was a note detractor of speculative writing in art history, notably psychological approaches, deconstuctionism and the “new” art history, which he termed “dishonest”. Revisions to his manuscripts–largely to incorporate the latest findings from others–meant galleys close to production were halted and reworked.


Selected Bibliography

Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863. Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto. 1962; Delacroix. New York: Norton,1963; Eugène Delacroix: Further Correspondence, 1817-1863. Oxford: Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1991; Delacroix Pastels. New York: George Braziller, 1995; The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix : a Critical Catalogue, 1816-1831. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981-2002; Delacroix: the Late Work. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1998.


Sources

Hough, Andrew. “Son Charged in Killing of Ex-U of T professor, Retired Art Historian Lee Johnson Beaten, then Burned to Death in London Last July.” Toronto Star, May 11, 2007, p. A2, 394; [obituaries:] “Professor Lee Johnson.” Times (London), August 26, 2006, p. 73, Michaelides, Chris. ” Professor Lee Johnson, Leading Authority on Delacroix who Produced a Six-volume Catalogue Raisonne of the Artist’s Work.” Independent (London), August 10, 2006, p. 34.




Citation

"Johnson, Lee." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/johnsonl/.


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Delacroix scholar. Johnson’s father was an Italian immigrant, Tommaso Bruno Bertuccioli, a businessman of originally from Pesaro; his mother, Carol Johnson, was an American from Uncasville, Connecticut who had come to London to study acting. Johns

Johnson, Ellen H.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Johnson, Ellen H.

Other Names:

  • Ellen Hulda Johnson

Gender: female

Date Born: 1910

Date Died: 1992

Place Born: Warren, PA, USA

Place Died: Oberlin, Lorain, OH, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Oberlin College professor of art history (1945-1977) and early academic exponent of modern art. Johnson was the daughter of Jacob Augustus Johnson, a hotel operator, and Hulda Headlund Johnson. She was raised in Warren, PA. Johnson entered Oberlin College as an undergraduate, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1933 and her master’s degrees in art history in 1935. She never completed a Ph.D., despite additional study at Columbia University, Uppsala University in Stockholm, and the Sorbonne, Paris. She joined the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, in 1936 as the librarian and a member in the department of education. In 1939, Johnson returned to her alma mater as art librarian and part-time art history instructor, giving free lectures on modern art. The following year she raised funds for a lending collection of original works of art for students at Oberlin, renting prints, from Rembrandt or Picasso, for as little as $2.50 a semester. She was elevated to full-time instructor in 1945. Though Johnson was never officially a museum curator, she was appointed a member of the Allen museum’s collection committee in 1947, the group assigned to make recommendations on purchases of works art. Johnson was familiar with the New York galleries and studios of emerging artists. She became an assistant professor in 1950. Thereafter, she began organizing a series of biennial shows in Oberlin on contemporary artists, known as the Young Americans exhibitions. Over the years, it featured the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Joan Mitchell, Bruce Nauman, Jackie Winsor among others. She was Visiting professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, for the 1950-51 academic year. In 1958 Johnson was appointed associate professor. Even during the 1960s, more prominent and larger Ohio museums, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art doubted the importance of contemporary art. Johnson, however, mounted modernist exhibitions at Oberlin and buying significant works for a comparatively small amount for the museum and herself. In 1963 she gave Oldenburg his first show at an academic museum, the famous “Three Young Americans” exhibition. She was also the first to show the black-striped paintings that established the reputation of Frank Stella. Many works in her personal collection were gifts from artists grateful for Johnson’s attention at crucial stages in their careers. In 1964 she was appointed full professor. Johnson purchased the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Weltzheimer house (1948-1950) in Oberlin, in 1968 from a developer. The Usonian-era house had been sold to a succession of local developers who extensively remodeled the structure. Johnson spent a considerable part of her free time and money restoring the building, hunting down custom-built furniture from the home and buying it back. The house became a center for cultural functions and the display of Johnson’s own modernist collection. She was appointed honorary curator of modern art at the Allen Art Museum in 1973. Her lectures were so evocative that they had to be held in the college’s Hall Auditorium. She used her reputation with the now famous abstract and pop artists to organize a benefit auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 1975. The auction raised funds for an expansion of the Oberlin museum named for Johnson. Johnson became a professor emerita and honorary curator of modern art at the museum in 1977, followed by a visiting professorship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1978. Her anthology, American Artists on Art, appeared in 1982, the same year as her retrospective on Eva Hesse. She died of cancer at age 81, willing her house and art collection to the University. Johnson was one of the first academics in the United States to teach and acquire contemporary art seriously. Her first-hand knowledge of the pop and abstract expressionist artists resulted in a lecture form inclusive of primary source material. She was an early and continual supporter of artists in addition to Oldenburg, Rauschenberg and Nauman, included Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, and Larry Poons. Her famous “Three Young Americans” exhibitions accelerated many of their careers.


Selected Bibliography

[master’s thesis:] Modern Painting and its Traditional Aspects. Oberlin College, 1935; American Artists on Art from 1940 to 1980. New York: Harper & Row, 1982; Modern Art and the Object: a Century of Changing Attitudes. New York: Harper & Row, 1976; Eva Hesse, a Retrospective of the Drawings. Oberlin, Ohio: Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1982; “The Development of Edvard Munch.” Art Quarterly (Spring 1947): 85-99.


Sources

Spear, Richard. “Ellen H. Johnson, 1910-1992.” in, Johnson, Ellen H. Fragments Recalled at Eighty: the Art Memoirs of Ellen H. Johnson. North Vancouver, BC: Gallerie Publications, 1993, pp. 7-14; Shinn, Dorothy. “Retired Professor’s Influence is Celebrated at Oberlin College.” Akron Beacon Journal March 22, 1992, p. D8; Litt, Steven. “Ellen Johnson: The Object of Oberlin’s Affection for Years of Appreciation. [Cleveland] Plain Dealer March 8, 1992, p. 1H.; [obituary:] “Ellen H. Johnson, Art Teacher, Historian and Curator, Dies at 81.” New York Times, March 24, 1992, p. D21.




Citation

"Johnson, Ellen H.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/johnsone/.


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Oberlin College professor of art history (1945-1977) and early academic exponent of modern art. Johnson was the daughter of Jacob Augustus Johnson, a hotel operator, and Hulda Headlund Johnson. She was raised in Warren, PA. Johnson entered Oberlin

Janson, Dora Jane

Full Name: Janson, Dora Jane

Other Names:

  • née Dora Jane Heineberg

Gender: female

Date Born: 1916

Date Died: 2002

Place Born: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Place Died: Devon, Chester, PA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States


Overview

Wife of art historian Horst Woldemar Janson and co-author of his books. Heineberg met her husband while an undergraduate at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA, and he a graduate student at Harvard. Janson had fled Germany in 1935 using a graduate scholarship. After his Ph.D. was completed in 1941, they were married. Dora Janson never denied that she consciously sacrificed her career to raise children. She collaborated with her husband on Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in 1952, which won her husband a Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association in 1956, and The Story of Painting for Young People (1954). In 1962, her husband’s famous History of Art, appeared, which has been updated through numerous editions and for which most of the popular readership knows their names. In 1971 she wrote an innovative exhibition catalog for the art museum at Duke University on Art Nouveau jewelry, From Slave to Siren: The Victorian Woman and Her Jewelry from Neoclassic to Art Nouveau. Her son, Anthony Janson, is also an art historian.



Sources

CAA News 27 no. 6 (November 2002),




Citation

"Janson, Dora Jane." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jansond/.


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Wife of art historian Horst Woldemar Janson and co-author of his books. Heineberg met her husband while an undergraduate at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA, and he a graduate student at Harvard. Janson had fled Germany in

Janson, Horst Woldemar

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Janson, Horst Woldemar

Other Names:

  • "Peter" Janson

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 October 1913

Date Died: 30 September 1982

Place Born: St. Petersburg, Russia

Place Died: Europe [Died on a train between Zürich and Milan.]

Home Country/ies: Germany and United States

Subject Area(s): Renaissance and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): New York University and Washington University in St. Louis


Overview

Renaissance sculpture specialist, chairman and professor of the department of art, New York University, 1949-1979; wrote the famous survey of art history. Janson was born to Friedrich Janson (1875-1927) and Helene Porsch (Janson) (1879-1974). His parents were of Swedish and Latvian extraction living in Russia. The family moved to Hamburg after the Russian Revolution, where Janson graduated from the Wilhelms Gymnasium in 1932. He studied at Munich and then at the new art history program at the university in Hamburg where he was a student of Erwin Panofsky. He was a part of the so-called Hamburg school of art history whose other students included William S. Heckscher, Lotte Brand Foerster, and Klaus Hinrichsen (b. 1927) and Liselotte Müller. In 1935, at the suggestion of Panofsky, who had fled Germany in 1933 for the United States, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sponsored Janson as an immigrant to the United States where he had been awarded a Charles Holtzer fellowship at Harvard University. Janson studied at Harvard between 1935-1942 under Chandler R. Post and Paul J. Sachs. He became close and lifelong friends with fellow Harvard art-history student Sydney Joseph Freedberg. Janson worked at the Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, MA, 1938, while pursuing his graduate degree and then at the University of Iowa, 1938-1941. According to his son, Anthony, Janson drew the ire of the chairman of the Iowa department of art, the painter Grant Wood, for taking art students to see a Picasso show in Chicago. In 1941 he left Iowa for Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an assistant professorship, marrying Dora Heineberg, an art-history undergraduate at Radcliffe, the same year. His Ph.D. was awarded from Harvard in 1942 on the subject of Michelozzo. His family remained in Germany during World War II, where his brother, fighting for the Nazis, was killed in 1943. During World War II, when many universities had been converted to soldier training camps, Janson lectured on physics and Russian to American soldiers in St. Louis. He became a citizen in 1943. In 1946 he was appointed associate professor of art history.

Janson left Missouri for New York in 1949 where he was appointed professor and chairman of the department of art at New York University. He remained chair for twenty-five years, developing the undergraduate (Washington Square) program into one of the finest in the nation. He was adjunct faculty at the Institute of Fine Arts, the graduate program at NYU, though frictions developed between the graduate faculty and Janson. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for 1952-1953. That same year he published Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, for which he was a recipient of the Charles Rufus Morey Prize from the College Art Association. In 1957, using the initial work of the late Jenö Lányi, Janson published a book on Donatello, The Sculpture of Donatello, which was again awarded a Morey Prize from the College Art Association. In 1959. Janson issued a book of plates of the monuments of art history, titled Key Monuments of the History of Art, to aid his undergraduates in their student of art since the availability of good personal study images was not then available. He followed this in a work co-written with his wife, Dora, with a survey of Western art, their History of Art. It grew over the years to be the best-selling textbook of any subject in the United States and, known simply as “Janson,” was for years was the standard text. Janson’s interests turned to nineteenth-century art in later years. In 1974 Janson delivered the Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. on 19th-century sculpture. Together with Peter Fusco (b. 1945), he organized a show of that era sculpture for the Los Angeles County Museum of art in 1980. Janson was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1981. He was working on revisions of his Mellon lecture for a book at the time of his death on a train between Italy and Switzerland.

Janson built the (undergraduate) art history department of New York University to the eminence it enjoys today, hiring Jane Costello, Anne Coffin Hanson, Isabelle Hyman, Sarah Landau, Lavin, Robert Rosenblum, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gert Schiff, Marvin Trachtenberg, and Guy Walton. He was one of the first to hire a significant number of female art historians at a time when teaching faculty in art history were, outside of women’s colleges, largely male. Because Janson’s appointment at NYU was primarily at the undergraduate level, he had few Ph.D. students compared to others of his profile at the University. His students (at Washington University) included Irving Lavin and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin. Janson’s work, especially his Ape lore book, show the influence of the Hamburg school/Warburg influence. The book focuses on the history of art or styles as much as it does mythological phenomenon and its manifestation in material culture. Janson 1962 History of Art was an instant best seller, contrasting it from the other predominant art-history text, Art Through the Ages by Helen Gardner, which by its numerous posthumous revisions treated art as a history of styles. Janson’s book came under criticism in later years for its lack of any women artists. Subsequent editions written by his son, Anthony F. Janson (b. 1943), altered this.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of H. W. Janson” in, Barasch, Moshe, and Sandler, Lucy Freeman eds. Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson. New York: H. N. Abrams/Prentice-Hall, 1981, pp. 805-812; [dissertation:] The Sculptured Works of Michelozzo di Bartolommeo. Harvard University, 1942; Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1952; and Lányi, Jenö. The Sculpture of Donatello. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957; Key Monuments of the History of Art: a Visual Survey. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959; and Janson, Dora Jane. History of Art: a Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day. New York: Abrams, 1963; and Janson, Dora, and Kerman, Joseph. A History of Art & Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968; and Cauman, Samuel. History of Art for Young People. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1971; “The Myth of the Avant-Garde.” in, Art Studies for an Editor: 25 Essays in Memory of Milton S. Fox: New York: Abrams, 1975, pp. 167-75; and Fusco, Peter. The Romantics to Rodin : French Nineteenth-century Sculpture from North American Collections Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/G. Braziller, 1980; Form Follows Function – or Does It? Modernist Design Theory and the History of Art. Maarssen, The Netherlands: Gary Schwartz, 1982; and Rosenblum, Robert. 19th Century Art. New York: Abrams, 1984; and Herschman, Judith. An Iconographic Index to Stanislas Lami’s Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l’Ecole française au dix-neuvième siècle. New York: Garland 1983.


Sources

  • [obituaries:]
  • White, John. “H W Janson.” The Burlington Magazine 125, no. 961. (April 1983): 226;
  • Russell, John. “Prof. H.W. Janson Is Dead at 68, Wrote Best-Selling ‘History of Art’.” New York Times October 3, 1982, p. 44.
  • Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 65,
  • cited; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 543;
  • Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 332-8;
  • Janson, Anthony. “Janson, Horst Woldemar” American National Biography;
  • About DAH NYU Department of Art History and “Masters of the Third Floor: NYU Art History Documentary.” (video) https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/departments/arthistory/about.html


Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Janson, Horst Woldemar." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jansonh/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Renaissance sculpture specialist, chairman and professor of the department of art, New York University, 1949-1979; wrote the famous survey of art history. Janson was born to Friedrich Janson (1875-1927) and Helene Porsch (Janson) (1879-1974). His

Jantzen, Hans

Full Name: Jantzen, Hans

Other Names:

  • Hans Jantzen

Gender: male

Date Born: 24 April 1881

Date Died: 15 February 1967

Place Born: Hamburg, Germany

Place Died: Freiburg im Breisgau, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)


Overview

Medievalist art historian. Jantzen initially studied law in college, switching to art history, archaeology and philosophy taking classes at various universities as was standard among humanities students in Germany. He studied under Henrich Wölfflin in Berlin and Adolph Goldschmidt in Halle. His doctorate was granted at Halle in 1908 under Goldschmidt with a dissertation written on the topic the depiction of architecture in Netherlandish painting. After writing his Habilitationschrift, Jantzen lectured at Halle in 1912. He fought in World War I in 1916 (on the infamous Western Front). The same year he succeeded Wilhelm Vöge as ordentlicher (full) professor at the University in Freiburg im Breisgau in the department Vöge had created. During his Freiburg years, Jantzen struck up a close relationship with the classicist art historians Ernst Buschor, who was teaching at Erlangen, and Ludwig Curtius at Freiburg. He also developed a friendship with the Freiburg philosophers Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Husserl’s assistant, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). His attention turned to the middle ages at this point, a topic he continued the rest of his career. In 1925 he published his book Deutsche Bildauer des 13. Jahrunderts (German Sculptors of the Thirteenth Century). Appearing, as it did in the years after the War, the book became controversial because of the prominence and primacy it placed on German sculptors in period traditionally thought of as having its roots in France. In 1927, Jantzen published his groundbreaking essay, “Über den gotischen Kirchenraum und andere Aufsätze,” where he set forth his theory of Gotikforschung. He moved to the university at Frankfurt am Main in 1931. Jantzen accepted the professorship at Munich Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in 1935, succeeding Wilhelm Pinder as senior professor of art history. Jantzen joined the Nazi party as a “sustaining member” (Fördermitglied) of the SS and a member of the National Socialist People’s Welfare (NS-Volkswohlfahrt). In 1942 he wrote an article, “Deutsche Kunstwissenschaft 1933-1942,” evaluating in positive light the accomplishments art history under the Nazis. Because of this, Jantzen was dismissed in 1946 from teaching, but reinstated shortly thereafter. In 1947 Jantzen published on monograph on Ottonian art, Ottonische Kunst; he was one of the first art historians (along with Vöge) to consider the Ottonian a stand-alone period for art history (Metzler). He remained at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität until his retirement emeritus in 1951, succeeded by Hans Sedlmayr, returning to Freiburg to lecture in 1953 as an honorary professor. In an essay in the Festschrift Kurt Bauch, “Wert und Wertung des Kunstwerks,” 1957, he again emphasized that artistic quality was not the standard for art-historical importance, but instead whether a spiritual achievement had been attained by the viewer. In the English-speaking world, his fame rests largely on another 1957 work, his essay-length book on three Gothic cathedrals, Kunst der Gothik, which appeared in English as High Gothic (1962). His students included Julius S. Held, Werner Cohn, Robert Oertel, Paul Wescher, Martin Gosebruch, Willibald Sauerländer, Hans Curjel and Kurt Bauch. His son was the classical art historian Ulf Jantzen. Jantzen developed a concept of Gotikforschung or a special theory of Gothic esthetics and analysis, an elaborate theory of diaphanous layers and spaces in Gothic architecture. Jantzen’s innovative approach to art history began with his dissertation, an examination of buildings or ruins in 16th- and 17th-century Netherlandish paintings. Jantzen noted that the production of these paintings indicate an interest in architectural styles and the knowledge of linear perspective. His fame as a post-war art historian rests with his monograph on Ottonian art (Metzler). Jantzen considered Ottonian a genuinely German art form, emphasizing its spirituality. His thinking was deeply affected by Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s existential ontology, particulary from Heideggers Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes of 1935.


Selected Bibliography

[collected essays and complete bibliography:] über den gotischen Kirchenraum und andere Aufsätze. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1951; [complete bibliography:] [this is an update of the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (1951)] Jantzen, Ulf. “Bibliographies Hans Jantzen.” in, Jantzen, Hans. Über den gotischen Kirchenraum und andere Aufsätze. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000, pp. 149-171; [dissertation:] Das niederländische Architekturbild. Halle, 1908, published, Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, Year: 1910; [habilitation:] Farbenwahl und Farbengebung in der holländischen Malerei des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Parchim i. M.,1912; “Deutsche Kunstwissenschaft 1933-1942,” Forschungen und Fortschritte 18 (December 1942): 341-348; Ottonische Kunst. Munich: Münchner Verlag, 1947; and Hackelsberger, Berthold. Festschrift Kurt Bauch. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverl., 1957, p. 9 ff. Kunst der Gotik: klassische Kathedralen Frankreichs: Chartres, Reims, Amiens. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957, English, High Gothic: the Classic Cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, Amiens. New York: Pantheon Books, 1962.


Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46 mentioned; Hüttinger, Eduard, and Boehm, Gottfried. Porträts und Profile: zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte. St. Gallen: Erker, 1992, pp. 118-124; Kuder, Ulrich. “Hans Jantzens kunstgeschichtliche Begriffe.” in, Jantzen, Hans. Über den gotischen Kirchenraum und andere Aufsätze. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000, pp. 173-187; Held, Jutta. “Kunstgeschichte im ‘Dritten Reich’: Wilhelm Pinder u. Hans Jantzen an der Münchner Universität.” in, Papenbrock, Martin, ed. Schwerpunkt: Kunstgeschichte an den Universitäten im Nationalsozialismus. Göttingen: V-und-R-Unipress 2003, pp. 17-59; Held, Jutta. “Hans Jantzen an der Münchener Universität (1933-1945). in Drude, Christian, ed. 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik 1780-1980. Munich: Deutschen Kunstverlag, 2003, pp. 154-167; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 208-211. Dictionary of German Biography 5: 324; [obituary:] Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69 (May 1967): supplement 28.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Jantzen, Hans." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jantzenh/.


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Medievalist art historian. Jantzen initially studied law in college, switching to art history, archaeology and philosophy taking classes at various universities as was standard among humanities students in Germany. He studied under

Jantzen, Ulf

Full Name: Jantzen, Ulf

Gender: male

Date Born: 1909

Date Died: 2000

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): archaeology and Classical


Overview

Classical art historian and archaeologist; associated with the Nazis during the DAI in Athens. Jantzen was the son of the medievalist art historian Hans Jantzen. During the Nazi era in Germany, Jantzen was asssigned to the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut or DAI) under Walther Wrede. He served there during the highly politicized years of the institute, working as a military official. When Wrede left Greece during the German withdrawal from Greece in 1944, Janzten and Roland Hampe remained behind to run the Institute. It was they who handed it over to the Greek authorities. After the war, Jantzen received his Ph.D. from the university in Marburg in 1953.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Griechische Greifenkessel. University of Marburg, 1953. Published as same, Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1955; Einhundert Jahre [DAI] Athener Institut, 1874-1974. Mainz: Ph. von Zabern, 1986; ägyptische und orientalische Bronzen aus dem Heraion von Samos. Bonn: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut/R. Habelt, 1972; Griechische Griff-Phialen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1958.


Sources

“German Archaeological Institute — Athens.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 495.




Citation

"Jantzen, Ulf." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jantzenu/.


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Classical art historian and archaeologist; associated with the Nazis during the DAI in Athens. Jantzen was the son of the medievalist art historian Hans Jantzen. During the Nazi era in Germany, Jantzen was asssigned to the

Jarves, James Jackson

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Jarves, James Jackson

Gender: male

Date Born: 1818

Date Died: 1888

Place Born: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Place Died: Tarasp, Canton Grisons, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): art collectors and art critics


Overview

Art writer and collector. Jarves was the son of Deming Jarves (1790-1869), an inventor and Anna Smith Stutson (Jarves). After attending Chauncy Hall School in Boston, Jarves was briefly disabled with a strange disease at age 15. Though recovering, he sought warmer climes. He traveled to South America and Hawaii in 1837. Returning to Boston, he married Elizabeth Russell Swain in 1838, returning to Hawaii in 1839. There he tried journalism and silkworm husbandry before returning to Boston in 1840. He published several travel recollections, including History of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands and Scenes and Trip Through Central America. A second try at newspaper publishing in Hawaii in 1844 resulted in a second incarnation of the Polynesian, which the Hawaiian government bought as their official organ. In 1848 Jarves returned to the United States where he negotiated treaties for the island kingdom. Jarves traveled to Europe in 1851 which captured his interest so profoundly, he seldom returned to the States and never again to Hawaii. A book of Parisian experiences, Parisian Sights and French Principles (1852) preceded his settling permanently in Florence. Jarves became part of the ex-patriot cultural community there, which included the Brownings and Anna Jameson. In 1861 Jarves’s first wife died in the city and the following year he married Isabella Kast Heyden. In Florence, Jarves began his career as an art writer. His first work was an art primer for American audiences, Art-Hints, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting,1855. A travelogue filled with art description, Italian Sights and Papal Principles followed in 1856. Jarves also began assembling art collections for himself and others, focusing personally on the early Italian masters. In 1859 he approached Charles Eliot Norton hoping to sell his art collection. Norton declined and Jarves spent the next years vainly trying to recoup his investment. Jarves’ Art Studies: The “Old Masters” of Italy, Painting was published in 1861. In 1864, his most important work, The Art Idea: Part Second of Confessions of an Inquirer made press. It had first appeared as part II of his confessional Why and What I Am? The Confessions of an Inquirer (1857). In addition to the text, the book contained an essay on Jarves’ personal principles of collection, based upon two earlier books by Alexis-François Rio and Alexander Crawford Lindsay. Jarves’ collecting and writing promoted the less-realistic but (as he saw it) more (Christian) spiritual dugento Italian painting over the later periods. Art Thoughts, the Experiences and Observations of an American Amateur in Europe (1869), followed. His Glimpse of the Art of Japan, 1876, was written without a trip to the country. In the late 1870s, Jarves assembled a collection of drawings (including nine Michelangelos, two Raphaels, nine Rembrandts, and examples by Titian, Tintoretto and Leonardo) which he sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), a significant enough collection to get Vanderbilt on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met, however, turned down an offer to buy his important Italian paintings. Instead, Yale University took them as collateral on a loan; when Jarves defaulted, a significant portion of his painting collection was acquired by Yale for $22,000 in 1871. A second part was sold in 1884 to Liberty E. Holden (1833-1913) who donated it to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Jarves served vice consul for the United States in Florence between 1880 and1882. Isabella died in 1887. The following year while vacationing in Switzerland, Jarves contracted jaundice and died. He is buried in the Protestant (English) cemetery in Rome. Jarves is an example of the great 19th-century amateurs who helped develop American art collections, aesthetics, and popular interest in art history. The orderly historic method in his Art-Idea reflects the particular influence of the 1847 Sketches of the History of Christian Art of Alexander Crawford Lindsay (Rowland). In Art-Idea, Jarves defines art as the increasingly-naturalistic progression of objects which edify and and re-enforce morality. But Jarves distrusted the (Roman Catholic) church as commissioner of renaissance art. He praised Greek art for having thrown off the bonds of religiosity. Like most historians who defined the progress of art as ever-increasing naturalism, he was dismayed by Manet’s Olympia (for example) because of the regression it seemed to make in flat painting. Today, Jarves is most consulted for his opinions, considered typical, on American artists. He disparaged Copley, considered Thomas Cole “greater in idea than action…” and praised Elihu Vedder. From John Ruskin, Jarves borrowed the idea of state support for the arts and a predilection for building modern construction in gothic architecture instead of renaissance. The quattrocento sculptor Apollonio di Giovanni (di Tomaso) was known as the “Master of the Jarves Cassoni” before being securely identified, from the Jarves example in Yale’s collection.


Selected Bibliography

The Art-idea: Part Second of Confessions of an Inquirer. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1864, [republished the same year as] The Art Idea: Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture in America. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1864; Art Thoughts: the Experiences and Observations of an American Amateur in Europe. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869; Italian Sights and Papal Principles seen through American Spectacles. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1856; Art Studies: the “Old Masters” of Italy: Painting. New York: Derby and Jackson, 1861; Parisian Sights and French Principles, seen through American Spectacles. New York: Harper & Bros., 1852; Italian Rambles: Studies of Life and Manners in New and Old Italy. New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1883.


Sources

Colbert, Charles. “A Critical Medium: James Jackson Jarves’s Vision of Art History.” American Art 16, no. 1 (Spring, 2002): 18-35; Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, pp. 20, 22, 20, 69; Hackler, Rhoda E. A. “Jarves, James Jackson.” American National Biography; Steegmuller, Francis. The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951; Rowland, Jr. Benjamin. “Introduction.” Jarves, James Jackson. The Art-idea. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1960, pp. xi-xxix; Boas, George. “Critical Practice of James Jackson Jarves.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 23 (May 1943): 295-307.




Citation

"Jarves, James Jackson." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jarvesj/.


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Art writer and collector. Jarves was the son of Deming Jarves (1790-1869), an inventor and Anna Smith Stutson (Jarves). After attending Chauncy Hall School in Boston, Jarves was briefly disabled with a strange disease at age 15. Though recovering,

Jedlicka, Gotthard

Image Credit: Carter Museum

Full Name: Jedlicka, Gotthard

Gender: male

Date Born: 1899

Date Died: 1965

Home Country/ies: Switzerland


Overview

Art historian and author. Jedlicka wrote his dissertation in 1929 on Toulouse-Lautrec. Jedlicka kept “Taghefte” or pocket-sized notebooks, writing down personal impressions and encounters with people. These include famous artists, such as Alberto Giacometti. His papers, including his diaries, are housed at the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich. He is buried in the Enzenbühl cemetery in Zürich. In 1954, while working on his Ordinarius on Ferdinand Holdler, Jedlicka discovered a painting in a Geneva gallery Waldinneres bei Reichenbach (1903). He recommended its purchase for the University in Zürich. In 1998 it was discovered to have been stolen in 1945 from a bank. The question, raised much after Jedlicka’s death as to whether he could have known this or not, remains unresolved.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation] Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: 1864-1901. Bern: Laupen, 1929, 2nd ed. 1943; Alberto Giacometti als Zeichner. Olten: s.n., 1960; Anblick und Erlebnis: Bildbetrachtungen. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1955; édouard Manet. Erlenbach-Zürich: E. Rentsch, 1941; Die Matisse Kapelle in Vence: Rosenkranzkapelle der Dominikanerinnen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955; edited by Jedlicka, Friedel and Weber, Werner. Max Gubler. Frauenfeld, Stuttgart: Huber, 1970; Pariser Tagebuch. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1953; Wilhelm Gimmi als Zeichner. Olten: privately printed for the Vereinigung Oltner Bücherfreunde, 1961; Pierre Bonnard: ein Besuch. Erlenbach-Zürich: E. Rentsch, 1949; Pieter Bruegel: der maler in seiner zeit. Erlenbach: E. Rentsch, 1938, 2nd ed. 1946; Anblick und Erlebnis; Bildbetrachtungen. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1955; Spanische Malerei. Zürich: Atlantis-Verlag, 1941, English: Spanish Painting. Trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Viking Press, 1964.


Sources

Hüttinger, Eduard und Lüthy, Hans A. Gotthard Jedlicka: eine Gedenkschrift; Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Zürich: Orell Füssli, 1974; Swiss National Library Archive, Jedlicka http://www-zb.unizh.ch/sondersa/hands/nachlass.htm; Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural, Press, 1980, p. 493.




Citation

"Jedlicka, Gotthard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jedlickag/.


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Art historian and author. Jedlicka wrote his dissertation in 1929 on Toulouse-Lautrec. Jedlicka kept “Taghefte” or pocket-sized notebooks, writing down personal impressions and encounters with people. These include famous artists, such as Alberto

Jencks, Charles

Image Credit: Metropolis

Full Name: Jencks, Charles

Gender: male

Date Born: 1939

Place Born: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Postmodern, and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): University College London


Overview

Architectural historian; coiner of the term “post-modernism” for architecture. Jencks studied under Reyner Banham.


Selected Bibliography

and Baird, George, editors. Meaning in Architecture. London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1969; and Bunt, Richard, and Broadbent, Geoffrey, editors. Signs, Symbols and Architecture. New York: Wiley, 1980.


Sources

KRG, 109 mentioned



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Jencks, Charles." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jencksc/.


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Architectural historian; coiner of the term “post-modernism” for architecture. Jencks studied under Reyner Banham.