The Tradition Of Description And Interpretation In Western Art History

The tradition of description and interpretation in western art history has a long history,as early as classical period,there is ekphrasis describing and interpreting works of visual arts.In the Middle Age,people were more pleased to describe and interpret the whole world,and the methods of symbolization developed from it.During the time of Renaissance,this tradition became the way to revive classical rhetoric and make an art criticism.In the modern times,scholars explored and exploited this tradition to form the studies of iconology emerged in modern art history.As a matter of fact,it is this time-honored tradition that laid a solid foundation for western art history.This dissertation offers a brand new view to understand the study of western art history,in order to further explore the tradition of description and interpretation.Description and interpretation is the language s representation of object by the subject of narrator,which involves the problem of subjectivity and objectivity,and is similar to the artistic creation but has some differences.When the subject of narrator uses language to describe and interpret a scene or an art work,there is some tendence,which successfully influences scholars' research text.Indeed,this intentional or unintentional tendence is hard to define,but through the analysis of the texts of art history,we can grasp it and explore the formation and development of the theory of art history,This dissertation uses iconology as an entry point to trace back the tradition of description and interpretation,and in the meantime finds out some intrinsic features which can be used to explore certain texts of description and solve some relevant problems.Although the theme discussed in this dissertation appeared frequently in the documents of western art history research,yet there is no monograph on this problem no matter in domestic or overseas academic world.hope this dissertation could summarize the source of interpretation and description of western art history,to exhibit a different view of art history.