A Study On Meyer Schapiro's Modern Art Criticism

Inmid and late 18 th century,with the establishment of modern art system,the modern art criticism came into the world.In the 20 th century which is “the critical century”,some art critics claimed artistic history is the history of criticism.And the tasks and responsibilities of art criticism are the description,interpretation and evaluation of artwork in art history.Meyer Schapiro is one of the greatest personages in the field of the history of art and art critics in this century.In his thesis,he always had an open mind towards the modern artworks and he usually used different kinds of critical methods.This is the open critical approach because he resisted those theoretical schools.In the meantime,it is also one of the important reasons that he had unique point of view of modern art.This article is not attempt to sum up and explain the whole content about Meyer Schapiro's modern art criticism instead it tries to follow him to think deeply by taking modern artists and their artworks as examples,to clarify and to understand these critical views about art itself in Meyer Schapiro's modern art criticism.The four parts of this thesis are as follows:The first part is Introduction,mainly presenting the domestic and overseas researches' present situation and summarizing the main achievements in the study of Schapiro's criticism of art,especially domestic researches in aesthetics and art theory circles.Meanwhile it expounds the research purposes,ideas and methods of this article.The second part is chiefly discussing the birth of modern art and the criticism of it.Moreover,this part briefly describes the modern art criticism of Schapiro in this art criticism environment,including his objects and his methods of criticism.The third part is the main part of the thesis,and it is also the core point of this paper.This part is divided into two chapters which mainly elaborate two important supporters of Schapiro's modern art criticism,namely artwork and artist.Beginning with concrete artworks,Schapiro discussed the field of artwork in depth,specific form characteristic and the latest vision expressions and observation styles brought by the form of modern art.More importantly than all of that,behind this type of form,this paper discusses the social environment,the subject consciousness of artists and the meaning of the human nature of the artworks.The last part is the conclusion of this article.It is intended to show that Schapiro's modern art criticism is not a specific criticism,instead he explored the concepts of modern art and aesthetic concepts through the specific examples of modern art.As an art historian and an art critic,Schapiro showed the adherence of humanities scholars under the circumstance of modern art criticism.