Arnold Hauser's Thought On Social History Of Art At The Basis Of Marxism Historical Materialism

In a thorough and round perspective,Arnold Hauser successfully combined the Materialistic Perspective in History of Marxism with the Social History of Art.Besides,through the researches on the interactions between the art and social categories,he developed a wide range of perspectives to deeply analyze and discuss the art style from different historical eras,The social categories of Arnold Hauser's researches basically included factors on politics,culture,as well as market.In terms of the political factors of his theory,Arnold Hauser used the way how Marx analyzed our society as an important reference.What's more,Arnold Hauser's analysis towards art were more concerning about social institutions as well as various social status,led by these research methods,he investigated people's diverse preferences on art style from different social institutions to classes.As for his perspectives on culture,Arnold Hauser mainly dug into the deep reasons for which the art style occurred and existed originally.Many related fields and subjects were taken into consideration,from philosophy,religion to science and psychology.On this foundation,we may summarize his cultural perspectives as follows:Culture had a genuine influence on how human beings see the world,while the art actually could be referred as the expression of people's view of the world.Therefore,culture exerts crucial impact not only on artistic subjects,the choosing of the theme,but also the specific ways in which art themes are organized and expressed.At the last part of our article,we focus on the market considerations of Arnold Hauser.Art was considered as a part of production in our actual society,which means that art is being circulated as well as consumed.We can also find how those circulating process has influenced the art styles.From those two ground points above,Arnold Hauser thought the artists as a essential part of the art production,along this path,he compared the shifts in art circulating with the changes of regular art styles,from the period in which art was mainly sponsored to the period when the free art market began to form.Arnold Hauser's theories on social history of art are mostly based on the Marxism Historical Materialism.From his point of views,the expression of art were truly depended on the materials,even art itself was a material produced by human's mind,a result conducted by the social realities.However,Arnold Hauser had also pointed out the connections between art and social realities were not directly cause-and-effect relationship.In a much more general sense,art absolutely had its own artistic value as well as developing rules.Therefore,his researches on art history paid much attention on the unity of the time and space,led by this rule,he did specific analysis on how art style began and developed in different historical periods.In addition,Arnold Hauser valued the ideology in art for all the time,he not only investigated how ideology influenced art evaluation in different historical periods,he even went further to consider the history of art was the history of ideology in the essence.The significance of Arnold Hauser's research on Social History of Art has been illustrated by the whole structure in development of the art history.By putting art into the social realities in every single periods to do the research,Arnold Hauser has made us free from the limitation where explanation on inner discipline and regulations in art are much more valued for the research in art history,which exactly improved the previous formalistic pattern of researches in art history.Besides that,he was not restrained by the inherent connections between the art and the society,instead he took art as a whole complicated subject.In terms of the specific social status and social conditions on each individual artist,Arnold Hauser developed his perspectives on them,driven by these ideas and researches,Arnold Hauser pushed the early researches on Marxism art history into peaking.Meantime,on the foundation of breaking up the old traditions,Arnold Hauser's developed his own unique and deep perspectives on the range from systems applied in art producing,the difference between elite culture and mass culture to the commodity property of art,which had absolutely inspired the art history researches for the latter generations.