Shen Congwen And Study Of Fine Art Archaeology

Shen Congwen (1902-1988) is a well-known Chinese writer and fine art archaeologist. After he published around forty literary works, Shen devoted himself to the research of fine art archaeology. Shen published dozens of papers related to fine art archaeology and books such as "Research into Ancient Chinese Costume and Dress," "Chinese Silk Patterns," "Bronze Mirrors in Tang and Song Dynasties", "Brocade in Ming Dynasty", "Art of Dragon and Phoenix", "Lacquer in the Warring States," and "Flowers and Pots: Collected Papers on Antiques and Art by Shen Congwen". However, there has been little systematic study about his theories in fine art archaeology, neither his contribution to the fine art archaeology, antique display and etc.The main purpose of this paper is to look back into Shen's long-term study of fine art archaeology and to make an in-depth summary, combined with his lifelong aesthetic ideal and artistic concept. The paper starts from reading The Complete Works of Shen Congwen "Material Culture Section" (Volume 28 to 32), and mainly investigates Shen's research journey and academic significance through analyzing his studies of the ancient costume and dress, arts and crafts, fine art and image, and display design. It is combined with his life experiences, academic pursuit, aesthetic ideal and specific projects in the latter part of his life. A fair and appropriate evaluation is given by taking into account a larger context of academic history and disciplinary history.The approach is to choose "a scholar and a research field". Therefore this paper is to make an in-depth investigation into Shen's academic significance and his contribution to fine art archaeology. To a certain extent, it fills the gaps in the study of Shen's research journey during the latter part of his life and his concept and achievement in the field of fine art archaeology, which have been ignored by the academic community for a long time.