Schapiro's Studies On Medieval Art

Meyer Schapiro is one of the most influential and important art historians in America in the 20^th century. He has made great contributions to the development of American art history due to his broad scope of research and exploration ranging from the Middle Age to modernist art. What is more important is that he has always adopted the newly emerging theories from other disciplines into the study of art history by way of systematic and organic assimilation. Contemporary art history study is in the course of multidisciplinary transformation, various theoretical discourses have successively entered the domain of art history study, putting the traditional art history at stake for disappearance, but art history as one of the humanities is born with openness and comprehensiveness, and makes academic progress with the absorption and assimilation of other theoretical discourses.Schapiro has committed himself to borrowing the conceptual methodologies from other disciplines in his lifetime for the study of concrete art historical themes. His study of and contributions to art history and art per se will inspire us on the reorientation of art history research in today's academic enterprises.This dissertation focuses on his study on the art of the Middle Age, which is one of the topics selected from Schapiro's broad range of studies, aiming at summarizing his proposition of a semiotics of visual language based on his writing of inter-textuality embodied in the artworks in the Middle Age, such as sculptures and illustrated manuscripts. His efforts mean one of the most enduring and fruitful actions practiced by European and American art historians to reflect on the methodologies of art history, which signifies a kind of acute sensitivity on the nature of art history and its prospect of being open. Therefore, art history will retain its disciplinary features while growing among multi-possibilities, and no matter how it is confronted with the challenges of trans-disciplinary targets, it is always a conglomerate of history study, theory construct, and artistic ontology for becoming one of the important humanistic research activities.