At Home With Art : Past and Present Blend Comfortably in Janss Collection

EDWIN AND Ann Janss have created a house built to hold a superbly discriminating, harmonious collec tion of 20th-Century art and antiquities from civilizations that range from those of the Far East to the pre-Columbian and American Indian. The unassuming exterior of their West Los Angeles home gives few clues to the spaciousness and beauty of the simple, but welcoming, loftlike interior. The interior provides gallerylike spaces for larger paintings and intimate spaces for art and objects.

Large paintings by contemporary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney harmoniously coexist with groups of tiny antique figurines, pre-Columbian textiles and Mimbres pottery casually placed against the walls.

The Jansses’ art collection is highly personal, formed slowly over more than 35 years. It reveals an underlying appreciation of humor and eroticism in art as well as a feeling for art’s “magical” properties. California artists in the collection include Wallace Berman, Bruce Connor and George Herms. An early, figurative Richard Diebenkorn painting called “Coffee” (1959) is among the pieces installed in the large living and dining room. The coffee table is a large piece of plywood set on four blocks; it displays a delicate Peruvian textile.

A simple bookcase acts both as room divider and subtle display area for a miniature collage by Kurt Schwitters, several exquisite Joseph Cornell boxes, constructions by Berman, and a group of tiny antiquities.

In the library, a Japanese screen of exceptional power and beauty by Tawaraya Sotatsu dominates the space.

In this collection of about 600 artworks and objects, art is never cosmetic; it is a profound expression and enhancement of life.

From the recently released book “Living With Art . “ Photographs by John Hall; text by Holly Solomon and Alexandra Anderson. Published by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Copyright 1988 by Holly Solomon and Alexandra Anderson. Photography copyright 1988 by John Hall.