On May 25th, Qizhen Salon of Western Art History was held on Zoom for Honors College students. On the occasion of the anniversary of the Culture and Art Festival of Honor College, in order to improve students’ literacy of artistic, Qizhen Salon invited Professor Christopher Allison, Professor of Dominican University, who is also holding the PhD degree of Harvard University, to give students an open class entitled "Western Art History and Art Appreciation".
The meeting took place online. In view of students’ background in science and engineering, Professor Allison first introduced his main research fields in general, which are portraiture art and historical studies. "Through works of art, people look back to the past, think about history, and reflect on the present," he said. These profound ideas soon aroused everyone's interest.
In order to illustrate these ideas, the professor introduced the ‘history painters’, combined with many of their typical works, and also reviewed the life stories of many great painters. In order to recreate the true history of the world, painters of hundreds of years ago traveled far to make their paintings with their own "witnesses". The professor showed a painting of the Declaration of Independence, each of figures in the painting had counterpart in the reality, and none of them was fictional. The painter's pragmatic attitude to the arts also impressed students whose background are in science and engineering.
The professor also shared his own view of history -- "People think history is far away, but in reality, we are not so different from people in the Renaissance, except in clothes." In such a lively literature and art lecture, students are constantly exposed to many inspiring thoughts on arts and able to broaden their views and improve the understanding of the beauty of arts.
Before the lecture is closed, students also had the chances to get interactions with the professor in the Q&A session. With the host's summary, the lecture came to a successful end.
Editor: Liu Chengpeng Photos: Yuan Haocheng Reviewer: Yuan Yun
