This fourth volume of Professor Meyer Schapiro's Selected Papers contains his most important writings - some well-known and others previously unpublished - on the theory and philosophy of art. Schapiro's highly lucid arguments, graceful prose, and extraordinary erudition guide readers through a rich variety of fields and issues: the roles in society of the artist and art, of the critic and criticism; the relationships between patron and artist, psychoanalysis and art, and philosophy and art. Adapting critical methods from such wide-ranging fields as anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, biology, and other sciences, Schapiro appraises fundamental semantic terms such as "organic style, " "pictorial style," "field and vehicle, " and "form and content"; he elucidates eclipsed intent in a well-known text by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci, in another by Heidegger on Vincent van Gogh. He reflects on the critical methodology of Bernard Berenson, and on the social philosophy of art in the writings of both Diderot and the nineteenth century French artist/historian Eugene Fromentin. Throughout all of his writings, Meyer Schapiro provides us with a means of ordering our past that is reasoned and passionate, methodical and inventive. In so doing, he revitalizes our faith in the unsurpassed importance of both critical thinking and creative independence.

邁耶夏皮羅（Meyer Schapiro, 1904—1996），曾為哥倫比亞大學校級教授，藝術史學科中*卓越的人物之一，與思想史界的以賽亞伯林齊名，長期以來被公認為美術史界的傳奇。夏皮羅的學術成就集中體現在四捲本的選集中，它們是《羅馬式藝術》（1977）、《現代藝術：19與20世紀》（1978）、《古代晚期、基督教早期和中世紀藝術》（1979），以及《藝術的理論與哲學：風格、藝術傢和社會》（1994）。夏皮羅一生獲得過無數榮譽，其中包括美國國傢書評奬和米切爾藝術史奬，均頒給他的代錶作《現代藝術：19與20世紀》。

瀋語冰，浙江大學美學與批評理論研究所所長、教授、博士生導師。著有《20世紀藝術批評》，並獲教育部二等奬。獨立或閤作譯有《塞尚及其畫風的發展》等十二部，其中《現代生活的畫像：馬奈及其追隨者藝術中的巴黎》獲AAC第八屆“藝術中國年度影響力”年度藝術類齣版物*終提名奬。因“長期緻力於係統翻譯介紹西方現當代藝術理論，為中國藝術研究做齣重大貢獻，豐富瞭中文世界的學術視野”，獲第二屆當代藝術思想論壇藝術理論奬。

王玉鼕，1991年畢業於北京大學，2007年獲芝加哥大學藝術史博士學位。2009年至今，任職於廣州美術學院藝術與人文學院，主要從事中國中古美術史和美術史理論的教學與研究工作。