中国艺术史与现代世界艺术博物馆：论“滞后”的好处

Chinese Art History and the Modern Universal Art Museum:On the Benefits of Belatedness

风格判断与鉴赏作为认知方式,不仅是揭橥不同视觉语言及其特定含义的必要手段,也是当下多元文化背景下进行跨文化研究的逻辑前提。由于各种各样的原因,亚洲许多国家的艺术史"纵向"而非"横向"的历史脉络,并未能很好为其发源国所熟知,以致于一直在学术研究上没能获得大的发展。对于中国艺术史研究而言,对艺术品风格分析和图像研究还大致处于开步阶段。在使中国艺术史的根本问题与世界艺术的"纵向"概念相关联的过程中,中国艺术史研究的这种"滞后",不仅有助于重构和洞悉中国艺术史背后潜在的精神演变历程,而且可以为世界艺术史提供传统欧洲艺术史学一直付之阙如的普遍批评原则和新鲜范例。惟有对全球艺术品进行严格而不带偏见的风格分析研究,现代世界艺术博物馆才能超越我们常常论及的有关"他者"文化多元并存状况而步上全球性哲学对话的轨道,并借助真正的跨文化影响力来丰富世界艺术史的研究。

Style and connoisseurship as modes of knowledge must be defended not only as the only means to understand a different visual language,but also as the basic premise of cross-cultural study in the hotchpotch of multicultural society.However,many Asian art histories,especially of the Inter-asian connections,which for a variety of different reasons are not well understood in their own countries of origin,have remained underdeveloped scholarly topics.Comparing with the study of Western art history,Chinese art history as analysis of the style and iconography of works of art is still a fledgling discipline.In applying the fundamental issues in Chinese art history to a vertical rather than horizontal conception of world art,the belatedness of Chinese art historiography,on one hand,can help us to reconstruct and understand the mental processes behind what is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant creative moments in Chinese art history on one hand;on the other hand,can offer possibilities of both universal criticism and fresh paradigms that have been sorely missing in traditional Eurocentric art historiography.