Research On The Theories And Methods Of Chinese Art History In The First Half Of20th Century

The first half of the20th century is a time of great change in China.Pushing by the entrance of the western culture, Chinese modern history, newarts education and publishing agencies, modern art archaeology, and so on,Chinese art history has transformed from the traditional form to the modernform. Before20th century, Chinese art history that took the calligraphy andpainting as the main research object, was a classical form or traditional formwhose most distinctive feature was the predominant sense of art history withenlightment, the major content with artist biography, records of art work,inscriptive writings and so on, the leading writing method that was of the recordrather than the illustration with combination of history, theory and criticism,dominated by criticism, appreciation. A large number of remarkable arthistorians, such as Jiang Danshu, Huang Binhong, Chen Shizeng, Pan Tianshou,Fu Baoshi, Teng Gu, Li Puyuan, Hu Man, Zheng Wuchang and Yu Jianhua,appeared during the first part of the20th century. They who influenced byJapanese scholars, German pattern, Soviet pattern, and Chinese traditional arthistory, wrote a lot of pioneering and influential works of Chinese art historywhich played an important role in the establishment of modern Chinese arthistory, as well as the teaching art history at that time and the popularization ofart history knowledge.In the first half of the20th century, each kind of works of Chinese arthistory has their different characteristics of class due to the influence of fourkinds of patterns. Therefore, this paper set up four key chapters, includingresearch on Chinese art history studies under the influence of the Japanesescholars and independent studies, research on Chinese art history studies underthe influence of the German pattern, research on Chinese art history studiesunder the influence of the Soviet pattern, and research on Chinese art historystudies under the influence of the traditional pattern. In the concreteunderstanding of each pattern, this paper selects the period of representative ofChinese art history works, and tries to analyze the characteristics and the value of each work from sense of art history, stages of art history, research methods,compilation style and so on.The conclusion of the paper is divided into two sections. The first part isabout overall understanding of the studies of the art historian on Chinese arthistory in the first half of the20th century. And the second part is the discussionof influence and enlightenment that these research results give on the currentstudy of Chinese art history: first, Chinese art history writing form has becomemultiple patterns from the single mode; second, comprehensive Chinese arthistory writing becomes more mature and perfect, compared with the writing ofthe first half of the20th century; third, historical materialism has developed intoa guiding ideology of art historian writing the Chinese art history since thesecond half of the20th century. It is this arrangement which makes the doctoralthesis not only analyzes and researches on the first half of the20th centuryChinese art history, but also has the current significance of studies.