“美的回归”是当代艺术批评话语中一个既重要又极富争议性的命题。尽管从艺术实践上看,20世纪80年代以后的当代艺术对“美”的探索与反思已经层出不穷,而首次将这一命题搬上理论舞台的,是美国艺术批评家戴夫·希基(Dave Hickey)。他于1993年撰写了《神龙:美学论文集》一书(以下简称《神龙》)。在当代观念艺术依旧盛行的20世纪90年代,希基大胆预言,90年代之后艺术将会重新转向“美”。这一预言 “Returning Beauty ” is an important and controversial proposition in the critical discourse of contemporary art. Although from the artistic practice point of view, the exploration and reflection on “beauty” of the contemporary art after the 1980s have been endlessly emerging. For the first time, this proposition has been brought to the theoretical stage by the American art critic Dave Schick (Dave Hickey). In 1993, he wrote “Dragon: A Collection of Aesthetics” (hereinafter referred to as “Dragon”). In the mid-1990s, when contemporary concept art was still prevalent, Hickey boldly predicted that art would be redirected to “beauty” after the 1990s. This prophecy