This fourth volume of Meyer Schapiro's Selected Papers contains his most important writings on the theory and philosophy of art. His highly lucid arguments, graceful prose, and extraordinary erudition guide readers through a rich variety of fields and issues including the roles in society of the artist and art, of the critic and criticism, and 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", and "form and content". Here he elucidates eclipsed intent in a well-known text by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci, in another by Heidegger on Vincent van Gogh, and 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.

迈耶夏皮罗（Meyer Schapiro, 1904—1996），曾为哥伦比亚大学校级教授，艺术史学科中*卓越的人物之一，与思想史界的以赛亚伯林齐名，长期以来被公认为美术史界的传奇。夏皮罗的学术成就集中体现在四卷本的选集中，它们是《罗马式艺术》（1977）、《现代艺术：19与20世纪》（1978）、《古代晚期、基督教早期和中世纪艺术》（1979），以及《艺术的理论与哲学：风格、艺术家和社会》（1994）。夏皮罗一生获得过无数荣誉，其中包括美国国家书评奖和米切尔艺术史奖，均颁给他的代表作《现代艺术：19与20世纪》。

沈语冰，浙江大学美学与批评理论研究所所长、教授、博士生导师。著有《20世纪艺术批评》，并获教育部二等奖。独立或合作译有《塞尚及其画风的发展》等十二部，其中《现代生活的画像：马奈及其追随者艺术中的巴黎》获AAC第八届“艺术中国年度影响力”年度艺术类出版物*终提名奖。因“长期致力于系统翻译介绍西方现当代艺术理论，为中国艺术研究做出重大贡献，丰富了中文世界的学术视野”，获第二届当代艺术思想论坛艺术理论奖。

王玉冬，1991年毕业于北京大学，2007年获芝加哥大学艺术史博士学位。2009年至今，任职于广州美术学院艺术与人文学院，主要从事中国中古美术史和美术史理论的教学与研究工作。