T.J. Clark’s Theories Of Social History Of Art

T.J.Clark is a famous British art historian and an outstanding historian in studying of the social history of art.He is known as "Leader of studying social history of art","Subversion of the traditional writers" and "Standard-bearer of the new art history".He has been influential in developing the field of art history.His books were introduced to our country as early as the late 1980s,but it is regrettable that the current research on Clark’s theories of social history of art still weak in our country.So,the thesis chooses them as the research object.It will take a more detailed and systematic research.The full thesis can divide into four chapters:The first chapter is to review Clark’s academic life and bases of his theories,then take the development of Western art history and social history of art as a standard to discuss Clark’s status,and also compare other art historians with Clark to explore his contributions to the social history of art.The second chapter focuses on Clark’s opinions about social history of art,including"why choose social history of art","two basic issues in studying of art history","the basic principles of the use of the social history of art".The third chapter takes interpretations of Impressionist painting in the The Painting ofModern Life as examples to analyze his core concepts in the study of art history and to explore his research methods.The fourth chapter discusses the "practice of negation" theory which proposed by Clark.Based on Clark’s opinions and methods about social history of art,the "practice of negation" is a summary of the development of modernist art.After research,we can conclude that Clark’s theories of social history of art is a breakthrough in the traditional theories of art history,but also different from the traditional Marxist Art theories.Clark advocates that art history and sociology should be combined.And we also find that Clark’s theories are actually explorations of modernist.Because he focused on the modern art and he proposed "practice of negation" theory which is a summary of the law of development of modernist art.The values of this thesis are these:we can make up for deficiencies and we believe Clark’s theories of social history will also be very useful for studying of the history of Chinese art.