Style (visual arts)

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Style (aesthetics)
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La Vie by Pablo Picasso, 1903; falling under the "style label" of Picasso's Blue Period
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), also by Picasso in a different style ("Picasso's African Period") four years later

In the visual arts, style is a "... distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories"[1] or "... any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made".[2] Style refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates to other works with similar aesthetic roots, by the same artist, or from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been historian's principal mode of classifying works of art".[3]

Style can be divided into the general style of a period, country or cultural group, group of artists or

Ancient Egyptian art to the rapid changes in Modern art
styles. Style often develops in a series of jumps, with relatively sudden changes followed by periods of slower development.

After dominating academic discussion in art history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called "style art history" has come under increasing attack in recent decades, and many art historians now prefer to avoid stylistic classifications where they can.[5]

Overview

Any piece of art is in theory capable of being analysed in terms of style; neither periods nor artists can avoid having a style, except by complete incompetence,[6] and conversely natural objects or sights cannot be said to have a style, as style only results from choices made by a maker.[7] Whether the artist makes a conscious choice of style, or can identify his own style, hardly matters. Artists in recent developed societies tend to be highly conscious of their own style, arguably over-conscious, whereas for earlier artists stylistic choices were probably "largely unselfconscious".[8]

Most stylistic periods are identified and defined later by art historians, but artists may choose to define and name their own style. The names of most older styles are the invention of art historians and would not have been understood by the practitioners of those styles. Some originated as terms of derision, including

Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo.[9] Cubism
on the other hand was a conscious identification made by a few artists; the word itself seems to have originated with critics rather than painters, but was rapidly accepted by the artists.

Western art, like that of some other cultures, most notably

Jas Elsner this distinction is "not, of course, true in any actual example; but it has proved rhetorically extremely useful".[11]

History of the concept

14th-century Islamic ornament in ivory, centred on a palmette; Alois Riegl's Stilfragen (1893) traced the evolution and transmission of such motifs.

Classical art criticism and the relatively few medieval writings on aesthetics did not greatly develop a concept of style in art, or analysis of it,[12] and though Renaissance and Baroque writers on art are greatly concerned with what we would call style, they did not develop a coherent theory of it, at least outside architecture:

Artistic styles shift with cultural conditions; a self-evident truth to any modern art historian, but an extraordinary idea in this period [Early Renaissance and earlier]. Nor is it clear that any such idea was articulated in antiquity ... Pliny was attentive to changes in ways of art-making, but he presented such changes as driven by technology and wealth. Vasari, too, attributes the strangeness and, in his view the deficiencies, of earlier art to lack of technological know-how and cultural sophistication.[13]

realistic depiction of nature and idealization of it; this debate was to continue until the 19th century and the advent of Modernism.[14]

The theorist of

Georg Hegel codified the notion that each historical period will have a typical style", casting a very long shadow over the study of style.[15] Hegel is often attributed with the invention of the German word Zeitgeist, but he never actually used the word, although in Lectures on the Philosophy of History, he uses the phrase der Geist seiner Zeit (the spirit of his time), writing that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit."[16]

Constructing schemes of the period styles of historic art and architecture was a major concern of 19th century scholars in the new and initially mostly German-speaking field of art history, with important writers on the broad theory of style including Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gottfried Semper, and Alois Riegl in his Stilfragen of 1893, with Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl continuing the debate in the 20th century.[17] Paul Jacobsthal and Josef Strzygowski are among the art historians who followed Riegl in proposing grand schemes tracing the transmission of elements of styles across great ranges in time and space. This type of art history is also known as formalism, or the study of forms or shapes in art.[18]

Semper, Wölfflin, and Frankl, and later Ackerman, had backgrounds in the history of architecture, and like many other terms for period styles, "Romanesque" and "Gothic" were initially coined to describe architectural styles, where major changes between styles can be clearer and more easy to define, not least because style in architecture is easier to replicate by following a set of rules than style in figurative art such as painting. Terms originated to describe architectural periods were often subsequently applied to other areas of the visual arts, and then more widely still to music, literature and the general culture.[19]

In architecture stylistic change often follows, and is made possible by, the discovery of new techniques or materials, from the Gothic

Marxist art history.[20]

Although style was well-established as a central component of art historical analysis, seeing it as the over-riding factor in art history had fallen out of fashion by World War II, as other ways of looking at art were developing,

Jas Elsner put it more strongly: "For nearly the whole of the 20th century, style art history has been the indisputable king of the discipline, but since the revolutions of the seventies and eighties the king has been dead",[25]
though his article explores ways in which "style art history" remains alive, and his comment would hardly be applicable to archaeology.

The use of terms such as

Marcia B. Hall, a leading art historian of 16th-century Italian painting and mentee of Sydney Joseph Freedberg (1914–1997), who invented the term, was criticised by a reviewer of her After Raphael: Painting in Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century for her "fundamental flaw" in continuing to use this and other terms, despite an apologetic "Note on style labels" at the beginning of the book and a promise to keep their use to a minimum.[26]

Georges Seurat's very individual technique and style, Le Chahut, 1889–90

A rare recent attempt to create a theory to explain the process driving changes in artistic style, rather than just theories of how to describe and categorize them, is by the

Darwinian principles.[27]
However this cannot be said to have gained much support among art historians.

Individual style

Traditional art history has also placed great emphasis on the individual style, sometimes called the signature style,[28] of an artist: "the notion of personal style—that individuality can be uniquely expressed not only in the way an artist draws, but also in the stylistic quirks of an author's writing (for instance)— is perhaps an axiom of Western notions of identity".[29] The identification of individual styles is especially important in the attribution of works to artists, which is a dominant factor in their valuation for the art market, above all for works in the Western tradition since the Renaissance. The identification of individual style in works is "essentially assigned to a group of specialists in the field known as connoisseurs",[30] a group who centre in the art trade and museums, often with tensions between them and the community of academic art historians.[31]

The exercise of connoisseurship is largely a matter of subjective impressions that are hard to analyse, but also a matter of knowing details of technique and the "hand" of different artists.

old master paintings. His techniques were adopted by Bernard Berenson and others, and have been applied to sculpture and many other types of art, for example by Sir John Beazley to Attic vase painting.[32] Personal techniques can be important in analysing individual style. Though artists' training was before Modernism essentially imitative, relying on taught technical methods, whether learnt as an apprentice in a workshop or later as a student in an academy, there was always room for personal variation. The idea of technical "secrets" closely guarded by the master who developed them, is a long-standing topos in art history from Vasari's probably mythical account of Jan van Eyck to the secretive habits of Georges Seurat.[33]

as "Manner of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn" and sold for £750 in 2010

However the idea of personal style is certainly not limited to the Western tradition. In

literati painting, but not others, such as Chinese porcelain;[34] a distinction also often seen in the so-called decorative arts in the West. Chinese painting also allowed for the expression of political and social views by the artist a good deal earlier than is normally detected in the West.[35] Calligraphy, also regarded as a fine art in the Islamic world and East Asia, brings a new area within the ambit of personal style; the ideal of Western calligraphy tends to be to suppress individual style, while graphology
, which relies upon it, regards itself as a science.

The painter

Manner

"Manner" is a related term, often used for what is in effect a sub-division of a style, perhaps focused on particular points of style or technique.

art trade for the relationship between a work for sale and that of a well-known artist, with "Manner of Rembrandt" suggesting a distanced relationship between the style of the work and Rembrandt's own style. The "Explanation of Cataloguing Practice" of the auctioneers Christie's' explains that "Manner of ..." in their auction catalogues means "In our opinion a work executed in the artist's style but of a later date".[39] Mannerism
, derived from the Italian maniera ("manner") is a specific phase of the general Renaissance style, but "manner" can be used very widely.

Style in archaeology

Paleolithic stone tools grouped by period

In

Ice Age art of the European Upper Paleolithic.[41]

As in art history,

Sherds of pottery are often very numerous in sites from many cultures and periods, and even small pieces may be confidently dated by their style. In contrast to recent trends in academic art history, the succession of schools of archaeological theory in the last century, from culture-historical archaeology to processual archaeology and finally the rise of post-processual archaeology in recent decades has not significantly reduced the importance of the study of style in archaeology, as a basis for classifying objects before further interpretation.[43]

Stylization

Aerial view of the very stylized prehistoric Uffington White Horse in England

Stylization and stylized (or stylisation and stylised in (non-Oxford) British English, respectively) have a more specific meaning, referring to visual depictions that use simplified ways of representing objects or scenes that do not attempt a full, precise and accurate representation of their visual appearance (mimesis or "realistic"), preferring an attractive or expressive overall depiction. More technically, it has been defined as "the decorative generalization of figures and objects by means of various conventional techniques, including the simplification of line, form, and relationships of space and color",[44] and observed that "[s]tylized art reduces visual perception to constructs of pattern in line, surface elaboration and flattened space".[45]

Ancient, traditional, and

arabesque
are often highly stylized versions of the parts of plants.

Even in art that is in general attempting mimesis or "realism", a degree of stylization is very often found in details, and especially figures or other features at a small scale, such as people or trees etc. in the distant background even of a large work. But this is not stylization intended to be noticed by the viewer, except on close examination.

modelli, and other sketches
not intended as finished works for sale will also very often stylize.

"Stylized" may mean the adoption of any style in any context, and in

typographic style of names, as in "AT&T is also stylized as ATT and at&t": this is a specific usage that seems to have escaped dictionaries, although it is a small extension of existing other senses of the word.[citation needed
]

Computer identification and recreation

In a 2012 experiment at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, a computer analysed approximately 1,000 paintings from 34 well-known artists using a specially developed algorithm and placed them in similar style categories to human art historians.[48] The analysis involved the sampling of more than 4,000 visual features per work of art.[48][49]

Apps such as Deep Art Effects can turn photos into art-like images claimed to be in the style of painters such as

Van Gogh.[50][51] With the development of sophisticated text-to-image AI art software, using specifiable art styles has become a widespread tool in the 2020s.[52][53][54][55][56][57]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Gombrich, 150
  2. ^ George Kubler summarizing the view of Meyer Schapiro (with whom he disagrees), quoted by Alpers in Lang, 138
  3. ^ Elkins, s. 1
  4. ^ Elkins, s. 2; Kubler in Lang, 163–164; Alpers in Lang, 137–138; 161
  5. ^ George Kubler goes further "No human acts escape style", Kubler in Lang, 167; II, 3 in his list; Elkins, s. 2
  6. ^ Lang, 177–178
  7. ^ Elsner, 106–107, 107 quoted
  8. ^ Gombrich, 131; Honour & Fleming, 13–14; Elkins, s. 2
  9. ^ Honour & Fleming, 13
  10. ^ Elsner, 107–108, 108 quoted
  11. ^ classical authors did leave a considerable and subtle body of analysis of style in literature, especially rhetoric; see Gombrich, 130–131
  12. ^ Nagel and Wood, 92
  13. ^ See Blunt throughout, with in particular pp. 14–22 on Alberti, 28–34 on Leonardo, 61–64 on Michelangelo, 89–95 and 98–100 on Vasari
  14. ^ Elkins, s. 2; Preziosi, 115–117; Gombrich, 136
  15. ^ Elkins, s. 2, 3; Rawson, 24
  16. ^ Rawson, 24
  17. ^ Gombrich, 129; Elsner, 104
  18. ^ Gombrich, 131–136; Elkins, s. 2; Rawson, 24–25
  19. ^ Kubler in Lang, 163
  20. ^ Alpers in Lang, 137
  21. ^ Elkins, s. 2 (quoted); see also Gombrich, 135–136
  22. ^ Elkins, s. 2; analysed by Kubler in Lang, 164–165
  23. ^ Elsner, 98
  24. ^ Murphy, 324
  25. ^ Summarized in his article "Evolution of Ancient Art: Trends in the Style of Greek Vases and Egyptian Painting", Visual Arts Research, Vol. 16, No. 1(31) (Spring 1990), pp. 31–47, University of Illinois Press, JSTOR Archived 2016-09-20 at the Wayback Machine
  26. S2CID 163333589
    .
  27. ^ Elsner, 103
  28. ^ Alpers in Lang, 139, a situation she sees as problematic
  29. ^ Exemplified in grumbling by Grosvenor; Crane, 214–216
  30. ^ Elsner, 103; Dictionary of Art Historians: "Giovanni Morelli" Archived 2018-11-06 at the Wayback Machine
  31. ^ Gotlieb, throughout; 469–475 on Vasari and van Eyck; 469 on Seurat.
  32. ^ Rawson, 92–102; 111–119
  33. ^ Rawson, 27
  34. ^ https://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2942274/13_Ritchie_Gainsboroughs-signature-22.pdf Archived 2021-10-27 at the Wayback Machine[bare URL PDF]
  35. ^ "Pop art | Characteristics, Definition, Style, Movement, Types, Artists, Paintings, Prints, Examples, Lichtenstein, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-10-13.
  36. ^ "What Is Poetry?", "Petronius Arbiter", The Art World, Vol. 3, No. 6 (Mar., 1918), pp. 506–511, JSTOR Archived 2018-12-15 at the Wayback Machine
  37. ^ Christie's "Explanation of Cataloguing Practice" (after lot listings) Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine. "Style" is not used for paintings etc., but for European porcelain they give the example:"A plate in the Worcester style" means "In our opinion, a copy or imitation of pieces made in the named factory, place or region". For examples, this painting, sold by Bonhams in 2011 Archived 2013-05-22 at the Wayback Machine as "Manner of Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn", is now attributed in their notes to "an anonymous eighteenth-century follower of Rembrandt". This example sold by Christie's Archived 2013-05-25 at the Wayback Machine fetched only £750 in 2010.
  38. ^ Kubler, George (1962). The Shape of Time : Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Kubler, p. 14: "human products always incorporate both utility and art in varying mixtures, and no object is conceivable without the admixture of both"; see also Alpers in Lang, 140
  39. ^ Bahn & Vertut, 89
  40. ^ Thermoluminescence dating can be used for much ceramic material, and the developing method of Rehydroxylation dating may become widely used.
  41. ^ Review by Mary Ann Levine of The Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by Margaret Conkey and Christine Hastorf (see further reading), pp. 779–780, American Antiquity, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), Society for American Archaeology, JSTOR Archived 2016-09-20 at the Wayback Machine
  42. ^ "Stylization" in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1979, online at The Free Dictionary Archived 2013-06-07 at the Wayback Machine
  43. ISBN 0851156827, 9780851156828, google books
  44. ^ See Elsner, 107 on Picasso as the paradigm of "the supremely self-conscious poseur in any style you like".
  45. ISBN 0521248043, 9780521248044, google books
  46. ^ a b Suzanne Tracy (ed.), "Computers Match Humans in Understanding Art", Scientific Computing, retrieved November 2, 2012 This is a summary of an article appearing in the ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage; the original article was not available at the time of this citation's insertion; citation for original publication follows: Shamir, Lior, and Jane A. Tarakhovsky. "Computer analysis of art." Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) 5.2 (2012): 7.
  47. ^ See also Gombrich, 140, commenting in 1968 that no such analysis was feasible at that time.
  48. ^ "A.I. photo filters use neural networks to make photos look like Picassos". Digital Trends. 18 November 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  49. ^ Biersdorfer, J. D. (4 December 2019). "From Camera Roll to Canvas: Make Art From Your Photos". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  50. ].
  51. ^ Vincent, James (5 September 2022). "DALL-E can now help you imagine what's outside the frame of famous paintings". The Verge. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  52. ^ Edwards, Benj (6 September 2022). "With Stable Diffusion, you may never believe what you see online again". Ars Technica. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  53. ^ James, Dave (27 October 2022). "I thrashed the RTX 4090 for 8 hours straight training Stable Diffusion to paint like my uncle Hermann". PC Gamer. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  54. ^ Ford, Paul. "Dear Artists: Do Not Fear AI Image Generators". Wired. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  55. ^ Metz, Rachel (21 October 2022). "These artists found out their work was used to train AI. Now they're furious | CNN Business". CNN. Retrieved 9 November 2022.

References

Further reading

  • Conkey, Margaret W., Hastorf, Christine Anne (eds.), The Uses of Style in Archaeology, 1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Review by Clemency Chase Coggins in Journal of Field Archaeology,1992), from JSTOR
  • Davis, W. Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. (Chapter on "Style and History in Art History", pp. 171–198.)
  • Schapiro, Meyer, "Style", in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, New York: Georg Braziller, 1995), 51–102
  • Sher, Yakov A.; "On the Sources of the Scythic Animal Style", Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1988), pp. 47–60; University of Wisconsin Press, JSTOR; pp. 50–51 discuss the difficulty of capturing style in words.
  • Siefkes, Martin, Arielli, Emanuele, The Aesthetics and Multimodality of Style, 2018, New York, Peter Lang,
  • Wölfflin, Heinrich, Principles of Art History. The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, Translated from 7th German Edition (1929) into English by M D Hottinger, Dover Publications New York, 1950 and many reprints
  • See also the lists at Elsner, 108–109 and Elkins