Kenneth Clarks’ Concept Of Art And Personal Achievement

This paper mainly tries to show Kenneth Clark’s unique personal charmingwriting style of art history through his two books, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form,Civilization: A Personal View and Leonardo Da Vinci, on the basis of which canoutline his artistic ideas and explain the different reaching styles betweenBritish and German art historians. Clark created some new ideas that can bereferenced forever in the study of art history. The importance and value of hisart history writing are here of.Clark had close relationship with Berenson, Roger Frey and other famousexperts, and esteemed the theory and the writing skills of Walter Pater andRuskin. He was also influenced by Warburg, Freud, etc, who were in the samegeneration of his. But Clark did not seem to show his own art history writingsystem. When he used the method favored by German art historians to analyzethe art work, he never applied them to the extreme. Therefore, Clark’s vitalitywork often inspired us to have a new vision of Art, and also aroused people’spassion for art at the same time.Among the researchers who studied art history in twentieth century, Clarkwas one of the most important figures. He was good at using sensibility,imagination, aesthesis and insight, which helped to convey his experience of artwork itself in a historical framework with vivid language. There is not so muchresearch about him so far in China. He still has a profound influence on artcircles both at home and abroad.