Winckelmann's Art History

Johann Joachim Winckelmann is a cross-time character in western art history and thoughts history. He laid a foundation to a new time which people study history of art scientifically and systematically, thus was honored as father of modern art history. He collected artistic ideals of both classicism and romanticism in a body's character. He influences not only other cultural giants like Goethe, Lessing, Schiller and his successors like Burckhardt, but also leads the currents in seeking the ancient Greek spirits to improve humanities in Germany and Europe.As to the present, most domestic and foreign studies in Winckelmann are still concerned about the aesthetic analysis, mainly focusing on his thoughts of art and aesthetic theory. But researches on his concepts of art history are weaker. In summarizing research fruits of predecessors', I attempt to take the method of text research as a breach to combing out Winckelmann's concept of art history. I hope the attempt would provide us with a new angle of view and a new train of thought to lead us to a more thorough and comprehensive understanding about Winckelmann's thoughts. Simultaneously I also hope the attempt can bring us some helpful inspirations to construct our harmony society.In arranging the structure of the thesis, firstly, I elaborate the boring background of Winckelmann's concept of art history, including two aspects as his unique experience and the grand social and cultural conditions in his times. Then elaborate the primary coverage of Winckelmann's concept of art history in detail. I divide Winckelmann's concept of art history into the generalized concept of ancient art history and the comparatively narrow sensed concepts of Greek art history, and perform to elaborate these two parts separately. Basing on the above work, I reach the goal of summarizing and reorganizing Winckelmann's concept of art history by listing charts and forms and finally obtain the conclusion that Winckelmann is a typically systematized thinker. At last, in order to understand the influences of Winckelmann's concept of art history, I elaborate the influences of Winckelmann's concept of art history on two groups of representative figures that indicate Goethe and Schiller, Hegel and Burckhardt.Overall, Winckelmann's concept of art history is romantic. And its core is to pursue freedom. In his mind, political democracy is the most important condition that Greek art could develop fully and achieved perfection finally. In addition, his notion that a man with unique character and artistic pursue still has an inspiriting significance in today's society.