最近，中國藝術史在國內與國外研究方法，有不同的趨向。西方學者，從人類學的角度，不注重鑒定藝術品時代真假，用「感受」（reception）做出發點，來研究一件古畫的「文化傳記」（cultural biography）。這是「相對」的，「後歷史」的一種看法。我們要重建中國藝術史，必須從鑒定藝術品時代真假著手，方可用實物來做歷史證據。這類工作可比考古家發掘上古遺物，從萬千碎片中，湊成一大迷局，其中形式風格的分析是無法避免的一種工具。（所以最近傳董元「谿岸圖」時代的爭論，是形式風格研究方法上的一大考驗。）本文先要考定傳顧愷之《女史箴圖》在歷史時代上準確地位，方能用它來做中國藝術史人物畫發展的證件。我們先要了解中國藝術人體造型史，也要明瞭歷代畫史中這件《女史箴圖》的「文化傳記」，方能說明在歷代收藏家、鑒賞家、畫家的不同「感受」中，此畫如何繼續發生了不同的影響。

In current Western art history discourse, where problems of connoisseurship (in Western art history) are no longer at issue, scholars have argued that “art is too important to leave to art historians.” By focusing on the “cultural biography” of an art-object, an approach that owes much to anthropology, the concerns of the new materialist social art history shift to issues of “reception” (or “deconstruction”) where meaning is found in the eyes of the beholder rather than in objects at the point of their creation. Suffice to say that new, post-Modem art-historians are relativists, and “post-historical.” In modem study of ancient Chinese paintings, where a history based on reliable historical data remains to be assembled, our search for a history of styles based on paintings as objects resembles that of an archaeologist's fitting together a vast puzzle of material remains. (Remember the problems we experienced recently with the dating of the Riverbank attributed to Tung Yüan?) In this paper, I hope to demonstrate Admonitions scroll attributed to Ku K'ai-chih at the British Museum can be, and must be, dated precisely as a historical monument: first, through an understanding of a history of figural representation in Chinese art, and second, by reviewing the “cultural biography” of the Admonitions scroll as an object in Chinese art history.

傳顧愷之女史箴圖; 中國藝術人體造型史; 人類學研究「文化傳記」; 模擬描述; 文人畫

Attributed to Ku K'ai-chih; Admonitions Scroll; history of figural representation in Chinese art; anthropological study of "cultural biography"; mimetic representation; literati painting