If you only see the title of Jonathan 6 1 Harris's New Art History, you will feel that the style of this book is no different from the general art history monograph, and you will probably be dissatisfied with the author's grand title after reading it. Don't forget that this book also has a subtitle-Introduction to Criticism. This book is largely a text study. In addition to the preface and introduction, the discussion in the second to seventh chapters discusses the new changes in the development of art history (research) since the 1970s through the analysis and comments on some key and classic texts. Each chapter discusses a theme, and there are some different and even contradictory branch problems under this big theme, which are the basis of building a "new art history". The author's evaluation of various schools of art history research is based on text analysis. No matter whether this analysis eventually goes beyond the text, the original text and the interpreter's arguments should be compared with each other. The preface mainly explains the orientation of the book, text selection and the development of new art history. The author explained the words "new, critical, radical and social" and set the tone for this book. "New", "modern" and "present" are used to compare with "old", which means old-fashioned and outdated. "Critical", "questioning" and "explaining" are used to compare "thoughtless", "passive" or "accepted". Radical, fundamental, basic, relative to the edge, superficial, secondary. At the same time, it is pointed out that until the mid-1980s, the term "new art history" was usually used to refer to a development range related to the methods and approaches, theories and research objects of academic art history. This scope generally includes: Marxist historical, political and social theories; Feminism criticizes patriarchy and women's position in history and contemporary society; Psychoanalysis of visual representation and its role in the construction of social and gender identity: concepts and methods of semiotics and structuralism to analyze symbols and meanings. In this book, "new art history" refers to "radical art history" or "critical art history" to a great extent. It is not only the form of art history analysis, but also related to radical movements other than political motives, social criticism and academic research. In the author's view, the forms of description, analysis and evaluation developed in art history since 1970 are rooted in recent social and political radicalism, and at the same time, they have accepted the legacy of academic and political radicalism in the early 20th century and19th century. The first chapter investigates the difference between "new" and "old" art history, that is, the difference between "radical art history" and "art history dominated by system". Regardless of the old school (traditional school) or the new school (radical school), the academic works of art historians are all based on different opinions or interests and prejudices. The positive significance of prejudice and discrimination in academic activities lies in acknowledging problems and differences. The division of new/old, radical/traditional is not absolute. The "radical art history" discussed by the author is closely related to the social and political changes in Britain. The name "radical art history" refers to "a series of interrelated intellectual trends, which began to form various alliances with some direct political debates and activism forms." The next chapter is the basis of trying to describe, explain, analyze and reflect on the arguments and principles put forward by radical art historians when they ask about their intellectual, moral and social and political goals. Finally, taking Rosalind Krauss and T.J. Clark's exposition of Picasso in cubism as an example, when analyzing the relationship between "structure, media" and art, structuralism and Marxism have different positions, but they also have complicated intertwined relations. Key text: Rosalind E. Krauss: In Chapter 4, Chapter 2, "Modernity of Capitalism, Nation-State and Visual Expression" of The Essence of Picasso 23-40t. J· Clark, these studies mainly interpret five text examples of the social history of art and analyze Marxism in the history of radical art, although these studies all involve the relationship between historical objects and society. Clark's study of Courbet explores the way to understand a specific work of art, and holds that works of art can only be truly understood by people in the context of showing its complex "situational" interpretation and multiple relationships with other historical symbol forms. Clark's research does not simply correspond the economic base with the superstructure, which is very different from the rigid and mechanical Marxism. Paying attention to the interpretation and judgment of artistic objects is only a viewpoint of Marxist art history, while other scholars pay special attention to the function and role of the system in art production, dissemination and consumption. Boime's works examine the complex relationship between the avant-garde and French state institutions, involving the organization of artist training, sponsorship and exhibitions. He believes that only by accurately sorting out the history of these institutions and their relationship with the political and economic development of France can the artistic development of this period be expounded. Allen Wallach's works study American museums and exhibitions from 65,438 to 0,998, focusing on the role of art institutions in a wider society, including how these institutions reproduce conflicts and contradictions in some societies, and emphasizing the role of "visual ideology". The relationship between the other two fields of Marxist art history is/kloc-the representation of class and labor in British landscape painting since the 8th century and the way of understanding photography as practice, representation and related concepts. John Tagg's exposition of the history of photography and barrell's analysis of the pastoral scenery described by British landscape painters such as constable point out that photography and landscape painting are completely different from nature. The relationship between "truth" and "authenticity" and image creation is complicated. Key texts: T.J. Clark, "Preface to the New Edition" and "On the Social History of Art", in People's Image: Custave Courbet and 1848 Revolution, Ablert Boime, Academy and French Painting in the 19th Century, Allen Vacach, Exhibition Contradictions: Essays of American Art Museum, John barrell. The Dark Side of Scenery: the Rural Poor in English Painting 1730- 1840 John Tagg, The Burden of Expression: Photo Essays, the feminist art history includes both theoretical and institutional efforts, especially academic activities in universities: teaching, research, publishing, etc. Although Linda Nochling's article had the political demands of the time, its profound insight and foresight still made it have an unshakable position in the theory of women's art history. There are contradictions between the history of women's art and Marxism and psychoanalysis, which is more meaningful for reference and development. They think that "tradition" or "mainstream art history in the institutional sense" can't fully discuss the social situation of great works of art, and challenge romantic assumptions such as "genius", "individualism" and "creativity", and advocate that personal analysis should be incorporated into social relations. Parker and Pollock took a step forward on the basis of Noklin, and discussed the reasons why the discipline of art history marginalized female artists since the 20th century, as well as the status and identity of women in art practice and current art history. Pollock pointed out that there are three kinds of fallacies in the way vulgar Marxism treats female artists in a specific period, which are called ideological generalization, reduction, typicality and reflection, and called for abandoning formulaic expression and simple and linear narration and understanding society as a "historical process". Since the 1990s, women's art history has paid attention to contemporary artistic phenomena, mostly through the study of contemporary artists and their creations, involving many theories of modernism and modernity. Leaphard fundamentally believes that all female artists' creations are political, and studies the differences between British and American feminism. Anne Middleton Wagner believes that the history of women's art is still in the process of formation and should not be consolidated in a fixed position and professional field. More importantly, Wagner believes that there is no necessary connection between studying the artist's life and understanding the artist's creation, and advocates absorbing psychoanalysis. Key text: Linda Nochling, why are there no great female artists? How important are Rosica Parker and Griselda Polcock's Preface, Acknowledgement and Key Stress Types: Feminine Nature or Femininity? Griselda Pollck in Old Lovers: Women, Art and Ideology, Vision, Sound and Power: Feminist Art History and Marxism, Lucy Lippard, Problems and Taboos, Pink Glass Swan: Selected Works of Feminist Art, Anne Middleton Wagner, Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and Hessian Art, The fourth chapter of Krasner and O'Keeffe, "Subject, Identity and Visual Ideology", discusses the influence of psychoanalysis on the history of traditional art and the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and Marxism. Explain the background of psychoanalysis and radical political movement after 1960s. Researchers generally believe that "ideological analysis" is very important, but this analysis itself has fatal defects and obviously goes too far. Laura mulvey inspected the narrative of Hollywood movies, and discussed the dialectical relationship between women's experience and individual experience. He thought that psychoanalysis was needed to help us understand the charm of movies, so as to understand the narrative self, identity and gender essence of commercial movies. Peter Fuller studied Venus of Milo, discussed psychological fantasy (individual and collective), identity and its relationship with social history, and reached an amazing conclusion. He thinks that works like Venus can't be understood by people, but they can still be recognized and appreciated by us, not only because of the eternity and universality of beauty. Based on melanie klein's research on the relationship between mother and baby's psychological motivation, Fuller thinks that the self-fantasy when people stare at Venus sculpture symbolically compensates the internal psychological needs of losing their mother (the openness of Venus sculpture's incomplete explanation reflects the internal contradiction between mother and baby's basic love and hate). Claire Pajaczkowska talked about several French works, trying to put "textuality" (meaning and production) and "gendered gaze" together, and trying to combine the concept of psychoanalysis with the concept of structuralism or semiotics. Norman Bridson paid attention to the relationship among individual viewing subject, social structure and power relationship, and discussed how individual gaze was intertwined with the whole through representation from a highly abstract point of view. Vision, gaze, watching and seeing cannot be neutral activities in essence. Donald Kuspit used Freud's psychoanalysis to explain a group of "primitive" paintings created by Matisse around 19 10. He thought that these paintings told us about the relationship between Matisse and women (especially the relationship between Matisse and his mother) and revealed the artist's own mental state hidden under Matisse's paintings. Key texts: laura mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Film Peter Fuller, Acknowledgement, Two Preludes, and Venus and Internal Object, Claire Pajaczkowska in Art and Psychoanalysis, Structure and Happiness Norman Bridson, Staring at Donald Kusit in Expanding Fields, The process of women's ideas in Matisse's art Chapter V, the structure and significance of art and society, discusses artistic symbols, words and meanings. Radical art historians of Marxism, feminism and psychoanalysis all regard some "structures" as the key to analysis, and structure is also the focus of traditional art historians. However, Marxism and feminism have introduced other phenomena into the relationship with these structures, and the structures here have both concrete structural significance and more abstract nature. Meyer Shapiro confined his research to the scope of "non-imitation elements in image symbols and their functions in symbol composition", avoiding the study of formal tradition and realism of painting, and focusing on the symbol representation and material characteristics of works of art, with anthropological tendency. Norman Bridson and Michael Camille particularly emphasized the social and political importance of art in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and their exploration tried to establish a direct connection between semiotics and ideological criticism. Alpas and Mieke Bal's works focus on Dutch art in17th century, their relationship with reality, how they are accepted by people and how they are characterized. They are dissatisfied with the traditional iconology research, and think that this interpretation mode is a formulaic "visual symbol = meaning", which is divorced from the power and ideology problems in a specific society. Alpas questioned the research models originated from the Italian Renaissance, especially those of panofsky and Wolfling, and thought that these models were inappropriately abused in art research in other periods and regions. Barr's research takes Rembrandt as an example, and also studies the relationship between appearance, power and ideology in Dutch social order, but it does not simply distinguish between prospect ("art") and background ("society"). She pointed out that the names in the history of art, such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh, are not so much personal symbols as symbols of "human creative genius". Key text: Meyer Schapiro, some problems in visual art semiotics: Norman Bryson, field and carrier in image symbols, words and images: painting of ancient French regime, Michael Camille, Gothic idol: ideology and image making in medieval art Svetlana Alpers, The art of description: mie kebal, a Dutch art in the seventh century, and Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. The discussion in Chapter 6 "Exploration and Determinism" involves the development of post-structuralism and structuralist art history. Victor burgin's article was written for an exhibition of conceptual art in 1984, which involved "structure" in contemporary art practice, art history and related philosophical research. In fact, his article criticizes the conservative values of contemporary art, art criticism, British capitalist society and Thatcher's right-wing government from the perspective of so-called "left-wing post-structuralism", and holds that conceptual art has broken the hierarchy of the media and is subversive. (His analysis is very complicated, borrowing Derrida's theory.) Fred Orton's article is a discussion of jasper johns's untitled painting of 6 1+0972, avoiding the discussion of direct political position, making theoretical issues directly related to Johnson's painting, insisting that "the picture of painting" should be the core of concern and emphasizing the material basis of painting. Dick Hebdiger investigated the word "postmodernism" and thought that "postmodernism" refers to almost all objects, or the way of looking at objects, and also refers to a series of "endings" that happened in the real world. Kathy Myers' article is a study of a cosmetic brand, which analyzes the design and marketing strategy of the brand, and explains the relationship between products in these processes and the composition of women's "subject identity" in modern consumer capitalism and male-dominated society. Nick Green brings together the arguments and methods involved in Marxist art history and post-structuralism philosophy, and explains how "nature" is understood as an image commodity, which is very interesting for demonstrating "leisure discourse". Green believes that "nature" is essentially a historical role, which is closely related to the social use and significance of space in modern and modern life. It is also an integral part of culture and society. Key texts: Victor burgin, Absence from Present: Conceptualism and Postmodernism, Dick Hebdiger, "Defining Position" and "Post-Script 4: Learning to Live on the Road with Nowhere to Go", Fred Orton, "Now, the scene of self, the occasion of intrigue", Kathy Myers, a massive reader in visual culture, moving towards consumption theory: a case study of painting-cosmetics, in visual culture. Natural wonders: Landscape and 19th-century French bourgeois culture Chapter VII "Reproduction of gender characteristics" discusses the gendered body and the gender here, which is not only the similarities and differences between men and women, but also involves many gender issues such as body and homosexuality. Cmit Champa's article is one of the earliest articles affirming gay artists, but the problem of the article is that the symbolic meaning of the interpretation of things appearing in the works is stipulated by the researchers themselves, although Kempa thinks it is unnecessary to distinguish between things themselves and their symbolic meanings. Boyme's research on bonnard linked the gender issues and political identity in France in the middle of the19th century, and pointed out that we should be careful when using gender words such as "homosexuality" and not impose categories and values that did not belong to that era on artists. Campon studied the gender problem in ancient art and thought that "pornography" and "sex" must be distinguished. Alex Potts' work is an interpretation of winkelmann's History of Ancient Art. He thinks that if we ignore how desires (social, political and homosexual) promote and fill winkelmann's interest, we can't understand winkelmann's views on Greek art. Whitney Davies analyzed Endymion, the Sleeping Moon God, and thought that this painting reproduced the confusion and contradiction among the elements of politics, homosexuality and art history, which originated from the French revolutionary society in the 1790' s and American academic politics in 65438 ... Key text: Cmit Champa, Charlie is like that Albert Boim, The case of Rosa Bonhull: Why a woman should be more like a man Natalie Baeumel Campon, Introduction/J Clark "The Black Man with Excessive Sexual Desire in the Bathroom of Augustins" Alex Potts Introduction, "Narcissus Body" and "Nightmare and Utopia", in "Body and Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origin of Art History" Whitney Davis, Giraud "Endymion" . The author reiterates that what he calls "radicalism" refers to a series of beliefs, organizations and interventions with clear political and ideological goals, and thinks that it is inappropriate to separate "radical art history" from radical movements outside the academy, or that the two have cooperated. Boime's works are based on extensive historical materialism and unite practitioners of radical art history, including political practitioners who care about race and representativeness and political practitioners who care about gender and representativeness (a person who talks about women and art reasonably and fairly is not necessarily a woman, and a person who talks about African-Americans and art is not necessarily a black person). Anne E. Coombes analyzed the relationship between the popularity of racist ideology in English discourse and scientific research at the end of 19 and the beginning of 20th century. She is worried about the way and effect of the museum displaying the social goods of African tribes. James herbert's study of Matisse's painting is a typical post-colonial analysis, and he thinks that Fauvism painting implies the social class, gender, sexual characteristics and related issues in black Africa with its "expressive primitivism". Hooks also pays attention to the practice and works of visual expression, involving class, gender, race and other identities. Finally, the paper ends with Stuart Hall's cultural research. Key texts: Albert Boim, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Black People in the 19th Century, Anne E. Coombes, Remolding Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, James D. Herbert, Fauvism Painting: The Formation of Cultural Politics, Belhook, Introduction: Artistic Problems and Representing Black Male Bodies, in. The views of various schools in the history of radical art, once suffixed with "ism", seem monotonous and have a strong political tendency, which makes people feel that they can know the conclusions that researchers want to draw without looking at the argumentation process. Can not help but give people an impression of combing the contents of the book. In fact, both the discussion of the original text and the evaluation of the book are complicated, and the depth and breadth of the issues involved can not be clearly explained by a summary. However, as the author wants to explain, although there is some identifiable unity (extensive materialism) in the history of radical art, it has never been called a unified political party or ideology. It has no unified view on the priority of politics and the priority of the choice of research objects, and the existence of different schools is opposite and mixed. Generalized materialism holds that works of art, artists and art history should be understood as objects, media, structures and practices rooted in social life, which are meaningful only in the environment of production and interpretation. Radical art history is undoubtedly biased, so is traditional art history, trying to eliminate prejudice from prejudice. In a sense, the history of radical art is a thing of the past. It has lost its role in interfering with society (or partially fulfilled its mission) and has become the research object in the academy, but history is about the past and is also completed in the present. The achievements of radical art history are undeniable, and the research perspective it provides is still dynamic. There is nothing wrong with learning those traditional ideas, ideals, idealism and idealized cultures, but it is not enough. Formal research is of course important, but it will eventually move towards abstract and profound theory or fall into the trap of circular argument. (However, many research forms are not so simple now, and they are also related to social culture. What is a good work of art (who decides what is good, when and where), why is it good and why is it ideal? From the formal point of view, the limitations are obvious, and we need to explore a broader cultural definition and evaluation through the concepts of "mass", "fashion" and "working class". Culture can not only be understood as a set of classic works, but as a process. By the way, the final subtitle:' argument and value', not' theory and method', is awesome! I found that the final exam of professional English translation this semester is a passage by John Barrell, The Dark Side of Landscape: Rural Poor People in English Painting 1730- 1840! Only after the exam did I find out! 2014.1.12 ~13 Note: Version information of key texts is not given, please refer to the original text.