世界艺术研究和中国艺术史学

World Art Studies and the Historiography of Chinese Art

世界艺术的观念源于全球史,乃是19世纪欧洲的知识成果。20世纪初,全球史的观念引入中国,引起了中国的"新史学革命"。处于这一史学革命前列的艺术学者,接受了梁启超等人的进化史观,意识到只有将中国艺术史置于世界艺术的语境之中,才会真正获有意义。整体来看,所谓的"绘画史"并没有提供中国艺术文献的全幅图景,这些历史实际上呈现了中国艺术论著最主要的形态,尤其是和艺术批评、艺术理论、艺术鉴赏和艺术收藏相比之时。如果我们将世界艺术研究视为全球史这一旧观念的新形式,那么我在本文中强调的是,中国史学在艺术上的得与失都是非常显豁的。

The idea of world art has its origin in the concept of universal history,an intellectual product of nineteenth- century Europe.The introduction of the concept of universal history into China at the dawn of the twentieth century and made a new tide of “new historiographical revolution” in China.Art scholars who were at the forefront of this new battle not only agreed with Liang Qichao,s evolutionist view, but also came to realize that a true history of Chinese art could only be meaningful if situated in the context of world art.Considered as a whole, the so-called “histories of painting” do not offer a comprehensive image of Chinese literature on art; these histories in fact represent the least powerful form of Chinese writing on art, notably when compared to art criticism, art theory, connoisseurship, and art collecting.If we take world art studies to be a new form of the old idea of universal history, my argument in this essay underscores that its gains and losses for Chinese historiography in art are obvious.