大家好，我今天要开箱的是我的新书——《大美之言：唐宋题画文图学》武漢：崇文書局Chongwen Publishing House Co.,Ltd.，2026年。ISBN 9787540384999Unboxing I Lo-fen’s The Aesthetic Power of Words: Text and Image Studies on Painting Inscriptions in the Tang and Song Dynasties!
这本书为什么叫“大美之言”？因为唐宋人的题画诗、题画文，不只是写在画旁边的几行字。它们其实是在告诉我们：一幅画，应该怎样被看见；一个时代的审美，怎样被说出来；文字和图像之间，怎样互相照亮。传统水墨画有一个非常重要的特点：画上有诗，诗中有画；图像需要文字诠释，文字也因为图像而产生新的书写题材。这就是我长期研究的“文图学”关心的问题。《大美之言：唐宋题画文图学》讨论的，不只是“题画诗写了什么”，而是进一步追问：文字如何进入图像？图像如何影响文字？诗、书、画如何共同构成中国艺术的美学世界？在这本书里，我以唐宋时期的题画文学为核心，讨论诗画关系、观看方式、艺术批评、文人审美，以及题画文字如何成为中国艺术史中不可忽略的一部分。如果你喜欢中国古典文学、书画艺术、宋代美学，或者你想理解“诗中有画，画中有诗”到底是什么意思，这本书会带你进入一个更细致、更有层次的世界。它不是一本只给专家看的书。我希望读者翻开它的时候，可以重新发现：原来一幅画旁边的几行字，竟然藏着这么丰富的审美思想和文化记忆。这也是我想通过“文图学”做的事情：让我们不只是看见图像，也读懂图像；不只是阅读文字，也看见文字描绘的画面。所以，如果你想更深入理解唐宋艺术，想知道中国文人为什么要在画上题诗，想从文字和图像的关系重新认识中国美学，欢迎关注这本书——《大美之言：唐宋题画文图学》。新书已经上架，欢迎大家进入唐宋题画文图学的大美世界。
The May Fourth Movement That Went “Down to Nanyang”
I Lo-fen
On May 4, 2019, the centenary of the May Fourth Movement, the Text and
Image Studies Society, which I founded, organized a forum in Singapore titled
“A Century of May Fourth in Singapore: So What?” The phrase “So What” spoke
precisely to a long-standing question among Chinese communities in Nanyang:
What, after all, does a movement that took place in distant Beijing have to do
with us?
On the same day, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, then Prime Minister of Singapore,
posted a message on social media, noting that “today marks the centenary of May
Fourth, a day also known as Star Wars Day.”
This intriguing juxtaposition appears at the beginning of Dr. Law Lok-yin’s
new book, *May Fourth in Nanyang: The Cultural Memory and Chinese Imagination
of the Chinese Communities in Singapore and Malaysia*. When I read this
passage, I could not help but smile knowingly. Is this not a perfect snapshot
of the situation of Nanyang Chinese? One foot stands in the century-old
tradition of Chinese culture, while the other stands in the present moment of
global popular culture.
Dr. Law’s book is one of the most refreshing studies of the May Fourth
Movement that I have read in recent years. It does not follow the conventional
approach of examining “the influence of May Fourth on Nanyang and its
responses.” Instead, it asks a more fundamental question: how was May Fourth
received, transformed, forgotten, and continuously reinvented in Singapore and
Malaysia?
This is a question I have also reflected on. In 2019, I wrote “A Century
of May Fourth: Ripples in Nanyang,” later included in my book *Creativity in
Singapore: Texts, Media, and Images*, in an attempt to trace this historical
thread. Yet Dr. Law’s research is more comprehensive and broader in vision. He
introduces the perspective of “New Nanyang Studies,” advocating a departure
from the traditional “China-centered” framework. In his view, Nanyang Chinese
were not merely passive recipients of Chinese culture; they possessed their own
agency, as well as their own local choices and forms of creativity.
In terms of academic method, Dr. Law draws on Foucault’s concept of the
“capillary action of power,” shifting the study from elite narratives to
everyday life. He does not only examine how scholars and intellectuals
discussed May Fourth; he also looks at what was hidden in newspaper supplements,
school classrooms, and street cartoons. This turn toward social history allows
readers to see the diversity and contradictions of May Fourth as it unfolded in
Singapore and Malaysia. The May Fourth Movement was never a neat and singular
“influence”; rather, it quietly permeated and transformed itself in the daily
lives of countless ordinary people.
What moved me most in the book is the chapter on language. The promotion
of the May Fourth vernacular language movement in Singapore and Malaysia, and
the transition from dialect-based private schools to Mandarin-medium schools,
was not merely a replacement of educational tools. It was also a reshaping of
the “tongues” and “minds” of several generations. This linguistic unification
laid the foundation for the later formation of Chinese identity in Singapore
and Malaysia.
The chapter on higher education is equally compelling. The founding of
Nanyang University was marked by strong popular enthusiasm and the academic
atmosphere of Republican China. By contrast, the Department of Chinese Studies
at the University of Malaya had to operate within the framework of the colonial
government, struggling to balance the “Sinological tradition” with “local
needs.” The two universities inherited the spirit of May Fourth in different
ways, yet each became, in its own manner, a carrier of May Fourth memory. This
analysis weaves together educational history, political history, and
intellectual history in a convincing way.
Another chapter that gave me particular pleasure is the one on
historical memory in comics and picture books. This is also a field that Dr. Law
and I have long been concerned with. We once co-edited *Converging from All
Directions: Text and Image Studies of Picture Books and Comics in Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Mainland China, and Singapore*. Through works such as Liu Jingxian’s *The
Art of Chen Fu Cai*, one can see how historical memory is “played with” and
reinterpreted in popular culture.
During the centenary commemorations of the May Fourth Movement,
Singapore’s official discourse linked May Fourth with cultural heritage and the
history of nation-building, while the Chinese community in Malaysia more often
associated it with anxieties over Chinese-language education. The same movement
grew into different forms on different lands. This reminds us that every act of
commemoration is an act of rewriting, and every act of rewriting reflects the
interpretations and expectations of the present.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once said, “A people who do not
understand their past history, origins, and culture are like trees without
roots.” Placed in the context of *May Fourth in Nanyang*, this statement gains
another layer of meaning: roots do not necessarily have to be singular; a tree
can also grow its own shape in the soil of a foreign land.
Text and Image Studies: an interdisciplinary field and method proposed by I Lo-fen, grounded in a broad concept of text. It examines the relationships, interactions, tensions, and generative processes among words, images, and other textual forms, and explores the production, transmission, transformation, and understanding of texts and their meanings within media mechanisms, social networks, cultural contexts, and historical circumstances.
Text and Image Studies on AIGC: an interdisciplinary field and method proposed and developed by I Lo-fen. Grounded in a broad concept of text, it responds to the new condition in which artificial intelligence can generate multiple forms of text, including words, images, sound, and video. It studies how texts are formed, understood, and judged, and explores the relations, mechanisms, and meanings of different textual forms, as well as their media conditions, social networks, cultural contexts, and historical circumstances.
This article examines the scholarly legacies and methodological paradigms of six pivotal figures in the study of Chinese art history: James Cahill (1926–2014), Wen C. Fong (1930–2018), Joan Stanley-Baker (1934– ), Wu Hung (1945– ), Shih Shou-chien (1951– ), and I Lo-fen (1964– ). Rather than treating these six as simply parallel contributors, the article maps the distinct ways in which each relates to the Princeton School founded by Wen Fong. Shih Shou-chien completed his training under Fong and carried the structural-formalist method into Taiwan's institutional art history, subsequently mentoring I Lo-fen. Joan Stanley-Baker began doctoral studies under Fong at Princeton but departed without completing her degree following fundamental disagreements over method and temperament; she later earned a PhD from Oxford, and her 'brushwork behavior' methodology constitutes a critical counter-response to the Princeton training she had first absorbed. James Cahill trained under Max Loehr at the University of Michigan with no institutional connection to Princeton, developing an independent social-economic historiography of Chinese painting. Wu Hung brings a wholly distinct formation: trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Palace Museum in Beijing, then at Harvard under archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang, he has developed a spatial-temporal critique centered on monumentality, medium and representation, and the aesthetics of ruins — a path independent of all other traditions represented here, whose engagement with the mechanisms of viewing (especially in The Double Screen) enters into direct dialogue with Text and Image Studies. Against this genealogical background, the article systematically compares all six scholars across five dimensions: academic positioning, core methodology, treatment of text-image relations, shared concerns, and fundamental divergences. Special attention is given to I Lo-fen's Text and Image Studies as the field's most theoretically self-conscious contemporary development, arguing for its fourfold innovation — disciplinary construction, relational ontology (from 'interaction' to 'intertextual generation'), historical reach from classical painting to the AIGC era, and methodological universality — as a new humanistic framework for the age of generative AI.
摘要
本文以高居翰（James Cahill）、方闻（Wen C. Fong）、徐小虎（Joan Stanley-Baker）、巫鸿（Wu Hung）、石守谦（Shih Shou-chien）与衣若芬（I Lo-fen）六位学者为考察对象，从学术谱系、研究范式、核心方法论、共同关怀与最大差异五个层次展开系统比较。
文章梳理六位学者与普林斯顿学派之间各异的师承与渊源关系——石守谦为方闻的传承弟子，衣若芬为石守谦的学术后裔。徐小虎曾师从方闻，因学术与性格分歧未获学位而离开，后转赴牛津取得博士。高居翰师从密歇根大学 Max Loehr（罗越）。巫鸿则兼具中央美院—故宫与哈佛—张光直的双重训练背景，独立发展出空间—时间批评路径——在此基础上，重点论证文图学（Text and Image Studies）在学科建构、关系论、时代性与普适性四个维度上的创新突破与当代价值。
《3分钟衣若芬：AIGC文图学》由人文学者衣若芬讲述
节目围绕AIGC文图学（Text and Image Studies on AIGC），分享 AI时代的人文思考与文本理解。
万物皆文本，文本可生成。
AIGC文图学，理解生成的世界。
3 Minutes with I Lo-fen：Exploring Text and Image Studies on AIGC
Humanistic reflections in the age of AI.
Everything is text.
Text can be generated.
Through Text and Image Studies on AIGC, we learn how to understand a generated world.
衣若芬：《暢敘幽情：文圖學詩畫四重奏》杭州：西泠印社，2022年
I Lo-fen, Free Our Most Hidden Feelings: Quartet of Text and Image Studies. Hangzhou: Xiling Seal Art Society (ISBN:9787550837256)
你有什麽人生困惑,生活煩惱嗎?
把話留在這個影片下方
讓我陪你問一問蘇東坡
Do you have any life confusions or worries?
Leave your words under this video.
Let me accompany you to ask Su Dongpo.
