On WANG Shou-zhi's Theories Of Modern Design History

Mr. Wang Shouzhi is a world well-known scholar on design theory, teaching in the famous design college of art center in Los Angelse. Since his returning to China to deliver academic lectures in the mid 1990s, he has been so impressed by the abuse that domestic design circle lays more stress on practice than theory, pays more attention to form than text that he brought out a large number of reasearch results on his systematical research on the theories of world design history and concentrated on the popularization of design culture to promote both the theoretical and practical development of modern art of design.This paper systematically clarifies the construction of Mr. Wang's theories of design history on the basis of retrospection of Mr. Wang's designing activities.The author not only shows a panorama of Mr. Wang's works on design history, but also condenses his theories of design so as to give overall summary and evaluation to Mr. Wang's contribution to Chinese art of design.This paper believes that for the first time Wang Shouzhi provided the complete system of detailed western modern design history for Chinese readers, and put forward some original ideas. Mr. Wang was engaged in design animadversion actively, and popularized the design knowledge to Chinese readers through evaluating the design projects and participating in the design planning so as to promote both the theoretical and practical development of modern art of design.Meanwhile, the paper points out that there are still some shortcomings in Mr. Wang's works, such as tracks of translating and editing, overlaps, lack of profound theoretical foundation.