ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2024.02.034
“Unification” and “Non-unification”: On Art Criticism and Art History Writing
Chuanzi Huang*, Yexin Huang
Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
*Corresponding author: Chuanzi Huang
Published: March 29, 2024
Abstract
Italian art historian Lionello Venturi asserted in "History of Art Criticism" (1936) that all art histories are histories of criticism. This paper first reviews the four recognized stages of art criticism, which include description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. It analyzes Venturi's "unified view" on art histories and the histories of criticism, pointing out that evaluation is indispensable to both art historical research and art criticism. Secondly, it explores the differences and similarities between art criticism and art history from the perspectives of theoretical ontology, basic form, timeliness, narrative mode, and analytical dimension. Finally, it considers the common and separate dilemmas faced by the current academic community in the fields of art historical research and art criticism. They face the challenge of "subjectivity disappearance" in the cultural environment of pluralism and relativism, and the issue of "discourse suspension" in the contemporary landscape of decentralized art creation and multimedia. In the face of such dilemmas, researchers need to revisit the artworks and reassess value judgments.
Keyword
Art history, art criticism, relations, evaluation, dilemmas
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Copyright
© 2024 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
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How to cite this paper
“Unification” and “Non-unification”: On Art Criticism and Art History Writing
How to cite this paper: Chuanzi Huang, Yexin Huang. (2024) “Unification” and “Non-unification”: On Art Criticism and Art History Writing. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 8(2), 496-500.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2024.02.034