Marshall Mcluhan And His “Artist” Conception

Marshall McLuhan was a famous Canadian media theorist,and he was pioneer of the media environment school which puts forward the criticism on the modern technological society from a unique angle.McLuhan believed that the media is the message and it would bring changes on our perception that people usually ignore.In the era of electronic technology,mankind will soon face a huge crisis of perception changing,and only "artist" in his sense can make some efforts for mankind to ease the crisis.This article reviews McLuhan’s basic theory about media and his exposition of the upcoming crisis and clarifies the conception of "artist" by combing the development history of McLuhan’s thinking and retrospective development,interpretation of McLuhan’s concept and its theoretical potential.This article studies McLuhan’s educational history and the context of his thought development.Through the in-depth exploration of the communication between the "New Criticism",Thomas Aquinas’ s theory,the relationship between McLuhan and other famous artists,the author summarizes several most significant sources of the idea of “artist”.While searching for clues of this conception,the author combined McLuhan’s theory to understand and interpret the concept and trying to make further development in connection with other schools’ theories.