On The Relationship Between Baxandall And The Social History Of Art From The Historical Explanation Of The Pictures

When it comes to the famous western art historian and art critic in the 20 th century,Michael Baxandall(1933-2008)is a person who can’t get around.His Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy and The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany provide important theoretical resources for the development of the social history of art and he is also naturally regarded as a scholar on art social historian.However,Baxandall himself often refutes the academic recognition of him and uses the word “out of place” to show the distance between himself and social history of art.What’s the reason? In order to explain this question,The author tries to stand in the position of intention theory(that is,to explain the starting point of Baxandall’s Refutation)and attempts to explore the relationship between Baxandall and the social history of art by using the picture interpretation method(historical explanation of the pictures)in the Patterns of Intention.The first part of this paper is the introduction,which mainly give a general outline of Baxandall’s thoughts and to give a preliminary introduction to his research in the academic circle.The fitst chapter of this paper mainly discusses three main problems:first,why Baxandall was put into the camp of the social history of art;second,how he looked at his identity;third,the division of his research thoughts in the earlier and later periods.In this chapter,the author think that Baxandall’s thought takes the Patterns of Intention as the dividing line,regards himself as a social historian in the early stage and an art historian in the later stage,but does not regard himself as an scholar on art social historian.Then in chapter two and chapter three,the author takes the Patterns of Intention as the core,which is a work of turning significance,to explore a factorhidden in the Baxandall’s thought,that is,the attention to visual media.The author thinks that the hidden factor in Baxandall ’s thought comes from the influence of New Criticism on him.The main object of New Criticism in academia is historical-social criticism.Therefore,he always has to distance himself from the study of social history of art.However,it should be pointed out that this does not mean that Baxandall’s research has nothing to do with the social history of art.After all,his research has a great impact on the social history of art.Therefore,in Chapter four,the author thinks that Baxandall provides a scheme for the study of the social history of art to focus on the pictures,that is,taking the pictures into the whole process of the study.At the same time,the study of the social history of art also provides a reference for the study of Baxandall,that is,he can raise his research category from “visual experience” to“ideology ” with more sociological significance.Finally,the conclusion of this paper is that there is a similar relationship,but not the same,between Baxandall’s research and the research of social history of art.They have different ideological sources,research models and research purposes,but they can learn from each other.The appendix section is a translation of the text of the two analysis of picture content in Baxandall’s Shadows and Enlightenment.Because the article points out that Baxandall’s research focuses on the value of pictures and visual media and uses a text-based close reading similar to literary criticism to interpret pictures,the author will present a specific text in the appendix.