夏皮罗的艺术符号学——在文艺研究符号学范式变革的语境下

Schapiro,Semiotics and Iconography

一场符号学所带来的理论范式变革在20世纪席卷了几乎从人类学、文学理论到艺术史的所有人文学科。这一变革起初在于丰富文艺研究的方法,提高其理论化程度,但是在发展中却逐渐演变成以牺牲文艺作品的审美魅力为代价、排他性地关注文学与艺术的伦理和政治作用的一种大写理论(Theory)。而美国艺术史家迈耶·夏皮罗的实践在为传统艺术史研究引入符号学方法的同时却避免了这一危险:一方面符号学的引入让我们摆脱了本质论或形而上学的断言,让分析变得更丰富、细致,有更多可能性;另一方面,图像—符号的符号学基础打破了形式主义的"无意义说"和"纯形式论",建构了从再现艺术到抽象艺术在图像学意义上的可理解性。符号学的引入并不代表我们要放弃对艺术的形式与审美品质的分析。

During the 20 th century,a theory transformation brought about by semiotics has inserted profound impact on almost all the disciplines of humanities,including anthropology,literary theory and art history. Starting with the aim at theorizing these studies,the movement has evolved into a capitalized Theory during its development that shifts its focuses to the ethical and political functions of literature and art and sacrifices the aesthetic values of literary texts. When Meyer Schapiro introduced semiotic methods into his art history studies,he could avoid the hazard. His introduction of semiotics into art history study,by bypassing the essentialist or metaphysical claims,enriches and opens more alternatives in the analysis of artworks. Due to its foundation on the image-sign semiotics,it could also overpass the notion of meaninglessness of artworks and the idea of pure form,so that the iconological intelligibility from representational art to abstract art can be constructed. The introduction of semiotics into the study of art does not,however,mean to give up analyzing the aesthetic qualities and the formal aspects of artworks.