1894, the famous German art historian Grosse (1862- 1927) published The Beginning of Art, which is recognized as a masterpiece of Grosse's art history and a pioneering work of art anthropology. The Origin of Art embodies Gross's artistic view. Through the investigation and study on the origin of art of all nationalities in the world, he initially established the discipline framework of art anthropology, which laid a solid foundation for the establishment of modern art. In the school division of western modern cultural anthropology, Gross undoubtedly belongs to the school of social evolution, represented by Taylor, Spencer, Morgan, Wilhelm Wundt and Fraser. The main principle of the school of social evolution is to identify with the "psychological consistency theory" of all ethnic groups and the "gradual theory" of all ethnic cultures. Gross was deeply influenced by these schools of thought. This paper intends to make a preliminary discussion on the gains and losses of Gross's artistic anthropology research in order to seek advice from local experts.
Gross begins his book The Origin of Art with a clear vision, discussing the purpose of art science, how to establish art science, and the inherent defects of art history and philosophy and their disadvantages in establishing art science. Gross believes that there are two main lines in art research: one is art history (narrative), and the other is art philosophy (interpretation). Art history is a historical fact to examine the development of art and artists. Its task is not to explain, but to explore and record the facts. This kind of study of judging and connecting facts can't satisfy the human spirit of seeking knowledge. However, another general study on the nature, conditions and purposes of art, the narrow sense of art philosophy, often declines with philosophy. The broad sense of art philosophy, that is, the study of art criticism, is not based on objective scientific research and observation, but on subjective and erratic imagination, so it is definitely unconvincing. This so-called "art science" which combines art history with art philosophy is not satisfactory, and it does not have the conditions that science should have.
From this point of view, to establish "art" in a scientific sense, we must emphasize the "objectivity" of academic principles. Engaged in art research, "can't help but keep this calm." [2]P3 Art science is controlled objectively, while art criticism is controlled subjectively; The purpose of art criticism is to establish laws, and the purpose of science is to seek laws. In addition, Gross believes that neither art philosophy nor art criticism can fully explain the facts in art history.
From the perspective of the internal system of art discipline, the so-called "art study" is based on the nature, conditions and purposes of art in art history and art philosophy, and it is possible to construct a panoramic history of art development only after the information of the activities of "pre-art" and "primitive art" of primitive people enters the field of vision of western scholars. At the same time, with the help of a large number of graphic materials, physical objects and ethnographic materials of foreign art, scholars can turn around from the abstract philosophy of art, change their perspectives, and conduct aesthetic research on primitive art with a scientific "empirical" attitude. Under this academic background, it is inevitable that the ethnography and ethnography of Gross's art research will turn.
Gross pointed out, "In art science, the first thing we may expect is the method to develop art according to our wishes-that is, the magic to make the flowers of artificial art bloom in an era when art cannot be produced naturally." However, it is still a big question whether the arts and sciences can fulfill this wish. Because the direct purpose of science is not practicality, but theoretical knowledge; The main purpose of art science is not to apply, but to master the knowledge of artistic life and development law. Even the purpose of pursuing legal knowledge is usually just an "ideal that can never be realized". An art science cannot have a detailed and basic explanation for all artistic phenomena. Therefore, Gross believes that as long as art science teaches us a rule that dominates the seemingly irregular and arbitrary process of artistic development, art science has completed its task. As long as art science can show a regular and fixed relationship between a certain cultural form and an art form, art science has completed its mission.
Gross also admitted that compared with the old philosophy of art, art science is only a scientific explanation, not a metaphysical revelation, which only involves the surface of things' experience and cannot go beyond the mystery.
Gross's distinction between art science and philosophy of art shows that he wants to abandon the old philosophy of art and calls for the creation of a new science to study art-art science. Although art science cannot solve all the problems of art, it is based on science, not metaphysics, but real science.
The problem of artistic science is to describe and explain many phenomena contained in artistic concepts. There are two forms of artistic science research: individual and social. The individual form of art is to study the normal relationship between artists and their works, and artistic creation is the normal product of artistic individuality under certain conditions. The main body of social form "should be extended to all ethnic groups, especially the most neglected ethnic groups in the past." He believes that "scientific knowledge of civilized national art" must be based on the understanding of the nature and situation of barbaric national art. Therefore, the premise of establishing art science is to carry out the research of art anthropology-starting from ethnology. Gross asserted: "The origin of art lies in the place where culture originated." Ethnography may tell us what primitive people are like now.
In The Origin of Art, Gross emphasized that the primary research task and method of art science is based on the classified investigation of primitive nation and primitive art ... He did not shy away from his recognition of evolution, and clearly pointed out the "basic" role of studying primitive art in art science. Gross brilliantly pointed out:
"If we can get the scientific knowledge of national art one day, it must be after we can understand the nature and situation of barbaric national art ... It's like we must learn the multiplication table first to solve the problem of advanced mathematics. Therefore, the primary and urgent task of art science is to study the primitive art of primitive people. In order to achieve this goal, the study of art should not turn to the study of history or prehistoric times, but should start with ethnology. History does not know primitive people. "
Thus, Gross affirmed the value of ethnographic materials and methods, and showed his practice of this research idea in the second half of this book. He emphasized that the so-called "primitive people" he studied were tribes with primitive lifestyles, because their culture was the most primitive compared with other known national cultures, so understanding some social clusters was to facilitate the understanding of the most primitive art forms that could be found. According to the research idea of "primitive life style-primitive cultural system-primitive art", Gross mainly engaged in the artistic analysis of primitive people in Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa and America. His panoramic description of various primitive artistic activities and his concern and reflection on the social context in which they are rooted objectively give his research a methodological color of holistic view of cultural events on which cultural anthropology depends. But at the same time, we notice that although he admits the diversity of art, he tends to control all art forms with the overall consciousness of the development sequence from simple to complex, shuttling between artistic phenomena that can be roughly classified into the same kind in different times and regions, trying to summarize and refine the general aesthetic laws of art, and finally pointing to the essential pursuit of artistic origin.
Since the second half of19th century, the evolution wave of natural science and humanities has spread rapidly to various disciplines, and so has the field of art research. Starting from the fresh data of primitive nationalities, scholars can engage in art research, so the origin of art, the study of art genesis, national cultural psychology and its mechanism have become the main topics. Under this academic background, a number of works on the origin and evolution of art have come out one after another.
Like Hegel and Taylor, Gross's artistic anthropology research is in the early stage of anthropological development-1from the middle and late 9th century to the early 20th century, full of classicism. Anthropologists in this period were mostly influenced by the theory of evolution. In their view, human culture and art have developed from primary to advanced, and from backward to advanced. So primitive art is the primary stage of art, just as Hegel regarded primitive art as art before art, anthropologist Taylor also thought primitive tribal art was "artificial in form and unnatural in layout." The law of art was only developed in ancient Greece. "Moreover, he divided art into primitive tribal art-ancient Greek art-Byzantine art-Renaissance classical art-modern art, with European art as the center.
Gross consciously pays attention to the research methods of artistic anthropology. He believes that art science should be based on ethnology, which can tell us the true image of a large number of primitive peoples with the help of modern science. However, the method of ethnology is incomplete, and the first difficulty in studying primitive national art is the collection of data. The second difficulty is that it is difficult for us to determine whether the materials of primitive people are aesthetic or other displays of spiritual life.
Gross believes that only by painstakingly comparing and studying many different facts can the research of art science obtain considerable truth. Because it is not easy for us to form a correct concept of the meaning of primitive art to primitive people, Grosse believes that the study of original works should first grasp the "general aesthetic characteristics" and then "understand various special aspects of aesthetics". Art has not yet participated in ethnology, but made a systematic investigation from the standpoint of science. I hope that the future art science will replace our theory with more content and progressive theory.
Before investigating primitive art, Gross should first understand the essence of art. He believes that a thorough study should start with the discussion of the essence of art, and the task of science is of course to find common phenomena from special phenomena. Gross believes that "our so-called aesthetic or artistic activities, in its process or direct result, have an emotional factor-most of the emotions in art are pleasant." Therefore, aesthetic activity is an end in itself, not a means to an end other than the end itself. " Gross believes that art is concerned with itself and has no external purpose. "Getting happiness directly is the characteristic of artistic activities."
Regarding the classification of art, Gross insists on the most popular classification method and divides art into static and dynamic. Under this classification, it divides primitive art into human body decoration, decoration, dance, music and so on. Gross made a preliminary classified investigation on the origin of primitive art, and discussed it from six aspects: human body decoration, appliance decoration, plastic arts, dance, poetry and music. In "The Origin of Art", Gross proposed to understand art from the perspective of different nationalities, and thought that to study art scientifically, we must understand the art of different nationalities, including primitive tribal art. He believed that the first urgent task of art science was to study the primitive art of primitive people. It advocates the study of primitive national art, because it is the most elementary art of mankind. The study of art must also start from its original form, still based on the idea of evolution.
Gross's evolutionist view of art history may also be influenced by Hegel. In Aesthetics, Hegel believes that the defects of national "artistic works" outside Europe cannot always be attributed to the unskilled skills of the subject, and the defects of form always begin with the defects of content. For example, the artistic images of various ethnic groups in China, India and Egypt, such as idols and idols, are formless, or ugly and unreal, and the true beauty cannot be achieved because of their mythological concepts. The contents and ideas of their works of art are not clear, or they are clear but poor, which is not absolute. Hegel also believes that primitive art is only "art before art" and has not yet reached the minimum artistic standard. This is not only Hegel's own view, but also the concept of an era, which has had an important impact on the study of classical art anthropology that rose in the second half of the19th century. As mentioned above, Gross belongs to anthropology and social evolution school. The school of social evolutionism takes Darwin's evolutionism as the guiding ideology and pursues three principles of cultural anthropology research: First, the theory of psychological unity, that is, all human beings, no matter what kind of nation, are psychologically consistent. The second is the so-called "single-line development theory", that is, all ethnic groups have the same material environment, the same psychology, the same stimulation and reflection, so all ethnic groups will form their own culture. The third is "gradualism". The cultures of different nationalities all follow the same route, but to different degrees, representing an online stage. [1]P26 Gross basically agrees with these three principles. After a comprehensive investigation of the primitive art of various primitive peoples, he believes that the primitive art has amazing consistency among all ethnic groups: "The artistic works of those hunting tribes all show extreme consistency; No matter in human body decoration, appliance decoration, plastic arts, practice, poetry and even music, we repeatedly encounter the same characteristics as all other ethnic groups. This broad consistency directly proves the characteristics of race and has no definite significance for the development of art. "
At the end of The Origin of Art, there is a "conclusion". In the conclusion, Gross believes that in the initial definition, it has been said that artistic efforts should be caused by its whole process or its results. But it must be admitted that this definition is not very practical in the strict sense. Because most of the originality of artistic works is not purely based on aesthetic motives, the main purpose is its function, the practical purpose is the main motive, and the aesthetic requirements are only to satisfy secondary desires. Gross also found that "the consistency between the art of the most savage nation and the art works of the most civilized nation is not only in width, but also in depth." The difference between primitive art and advanced art is quantity rather than quality. The emotion expressed by primitive art is narrow and rough, its materials are poor, and its form is rough and clumsy, but its main creative motivation, skills and purpose are consistent with those of all other times.
In addition, in the conclusion, Gross also pointed out that the value of art is not only aesthetic value, but also social value. "Art is not a meaningless game, but an indispensable social function, which is one of the most effective weapons in the competition for survival ... People's commitment to artistic activities was only its direct aesthetic value at first, but it was maintained and developed mainly because of its indirect social value in history." At the same time, he also stressed that art should not be a tool of moral education. "Art is most devoted to social interests only when it is devoted to artistic interests."
Gross's research on "limited to primitive art" laid an important foundation for the establishment of modern art anthropology and modern art science. Gross's contribution to cultural anthropology is self-evident. The development of modern cultural anthropology in China is also mostly influenced by Gross, especially The Origin of Art, such as Cultural Anthropology by Mr. Lin and published by the Commercial Press 1934, which are China's early modern anthropological works. The book quotes Gross's views and the literature in The Origin of Art in large numbers. For example, the eight chapters of the sixth book "Primitive Art" basically copy the viewpoints and argumentation materials in "The Origin of Art". Deng Fuxing's doctoral thesis "Art before Art-A Study of Prehistoric Art" also draws on Gross's main viewpoints and materials. In addition, Yi Zhongtian's Anthropology of Art, written in the late 1980s, also quoted and referred to the views and materials of Gross's The Origin of Art. In the book, the author praised The Origin of Art as a genius work that "opened up new horizons and new ways for human art research" [3]P6. Yi Zhongtian also evaluated Gross's innovative courage and methodological significance in introducing ethnology into art research. It is hard to imagine what Yi Zhongtian's art anthropology society would be like without The Origin of Art..
The goal of Gross's anthropology of art is to lay the foundation for the establishment of a scientific theoretical system of art, but the establishment of the real theory of art and the opening of art research were completed by Max Desso, and the prospect of the prosperity of art still needs the efforts of global art scholars in 2 1 century.