# Style  ## Metadata - Author: [[Aaron Meskin]] - Full Title: Style - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Style is a key concept in the arts, serving various roles in art criticism and interpretation. Individual style may impact artistic value, while general style categories are influenced by shared norms in art-making practices. The relationship between style, form, and content in art is complex and interconnected. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/168426702 - Source File: STYLE by Aaron Meskin.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The term “style” (derived from the Latin word “stilus,” which refers to the mechanism used for writing on wax tablets in ancient Rome) is used widely in ordinary discourse to characterize a range of nonaesthetic and non- artistic activities and objects ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq2svd11rfmhhqxw72zw6w3)) > It is useful then to distinguish style from “signature,” where the latter concept picks out the features of a work of art that are most useful for establishing provenance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq2x5bvdskvmrk6mc1n1n35)) > Goodman (1978: 35) suggests that stylistic features are always relevant to the symbolic functioning of the work while the features that make signature are not. This does seem to exclude features such as the chemical properties of pigments from (ordinarily) counting as stylistic, but it relies on Goodman’s tendentious semiotic approach to style and art. An alternative way of distinguishing style from signature is provided by Wollheim (1987: 36). While Wollheim treats individual style as a matter of objective psychological fact, he characterizes signature as consisting in the aspects of an artist’s work that are most useful to a connoisseur (or group of connoisseurs) for establishing authorship. If this is right, signature must be understood as being implicitly relativized. On Wollheim’s account, then, a given feature may count as both an aspect of signature and as a feature reflective of an artist’s individual style. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq2y4ve6ntj7rnrk7nfsf7z)) > On most accounts, such objects could di"er with respect to style and even with respect to whether they possess style at all. (But according to Walton 1979: 60, “the style of Pierre Menard’s Don Quixote is archaic and that of Cervantes’s Don Quixote is not; yet these works are in the same style.”) Determining the style of a particular red square might then require some knowledge of its context of production. But all of this is consistent with the identificatory function of style, since stylistic attribution may in such cases enable the art historian to move from knowledge of very general features of provenance to more specific ones. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq30sywe833rn89pq0mkdfq)) > Walton points out that “a cubist work might look like a person with a cubical head to someone not familiar with the style” (1970: 345). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq32z0r7vkha2thbpagnw74)) > It lacks style ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq35bwccxgtvrmszzvgxd48)) > Lang claims that “to find a work without style would ordinarily be a negative and probably decisive judgment” (1998: 320). If one considers the role of individual style in certain Western high-art traditions (in which the development and manifestation of individual style was an important artistic goal), then at least the first part of this claim appears accurate. To characterize a painting as prestylistic or poststylistic is typically to imply a criticism of it. In such cases, the lack of individual style is plau- sibly a pro tanto demerit (i.e. it is flawed to the extent that it lacks individual style). But very often this is not a decisive judgment. Vermeer’s early works, arguably pro- duced before he developed any individual style, are recognized to possess significant artistic merit (Gowing 1997: 29). And what about forms of art in which the exhibi- tion of individual style is not a goal or is explicitly rejected? In such cases, the failure to exhibit individual style may not be any sort of flaw, let alone a decisive one. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq36rb445gbw18j227pgkfz)) > In fact, the absence of individual style may be irrelevant to the value of some forms of art that eschew the value of achievement. (Duchamp’s ready-mades may be an example of this.) While individual style may then be directly relevant to artistic value, it is not clear whether general style categories can be relevant in quite the same way. Gombrich claims that the style categories used in art history originally “derive from normative contexts” (1968: 354). But while this is true of many period style categories (“Gothic,” “baroque,” “mannerist” and “rococo” all initially had negative connota- tions), these categories no longer appear to have any normative dimension. Nor does Gombrich’s claim seem true of all the myriad of style categories bequeathed to us by the twentieth century. In general, normative conceptions of style (and stylistic devel- opment) are largely dismissed in contemporary discussion. As Schapiro suggests, the dominant contemporary view is that no style is intrinsically better than any other > and that “perfect art is possible in any subject matter or style” (1994: 57–58). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3fd8ew3fp2wkgq0bdmpbw)) > As mentioned earlier, many traditional approaches to style treated general style categories as fundamentally akin to individual style. For example, physiognomic approaches treated general style as expressive of the character or personality of cultures or peoples, just as individual style is often treated as the expression of the person- ality of the individual artist (Schapiro 1994: 90–91, and Gombrich 1968: 358–59, criticize these approaches ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3hye4vzk974qzd2qj4h5s)) > The core of the putative di"erence is that individual style has “psychological reality” and, hence, is an explanatory notion, while general style categories are purely “taxonomic” (Wollheim 1979: 134–35). That is, general style categories are simply “shorthand for a set of characteristics which we and those who share our outlook find particularly interesting, arresting, innovatory, in that stretch of painting” (Wollheim 1987: 26) and, hence, they lack any capacity to explain ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3jknpx7725cxa9c47cvma)) > For Wollheim, individual style is a matter of the way a particular artist works. In the case of painting, it is a matter of the “processes or operations characteristic of his acting as a painter” (Wollheim 1979: 135). So talk of individual style is not merely a convenient way of picking out features typically found in an artist’s work; rather, it is a way of referring to the processes that give rise to those features. And because individual style is not identical to any set of features but, instead, causes those features, we may explain why particular works of art look the way they do by reference to ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3mxq6mne57tc0t3td8pz3)) > More explicitly, Wollheim notes, as others have before (e.g. Gombrich 1968; Schapiro 1994), that general style categories are unstable. Developments in art his- tory led to changes in the features that are associated with particular general style categories and to corresponding stylistic reclassifications of artworks ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3q98gg758s5hk6c9r1dja)) > What then could be the basis of general style categories? It is plausible that artists working in such styles can be said to be working in shared practices or traditions – their art-making is governed by various shared norms. If this is right, then such gen- eral style categories need not be thought of as simply shorthand for various char- acteristics of interest to critics and historians; rather, legitimate general stylistic attribution may be underwritten by the shared norms that govern the art-making practices of particular groups. General style categories may, then, be socially real and hence serve explanatory functions. Perhaps art criticism and art history make use of both sorts of general style categories – taxonomic categories as well as socially real ones. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq3yg6e57jxjd4y7pzqn9gv)) > However, there are a number of criticisms that have been lodged against views that style and content are fundamentally distinct (see Goodman 1978: 23–27). And there seem to be clear cases in which content, meaning and subject matter count as > aspects of style. As Goodman puts it: “part of a poet’s style … may consist of what he says – of whether he focuses on the fragile and transcendent or the powerful and enduring, upon sensory qualities or abstract ideas, and so on” (1978: 26). In fact, it is plausible that “anything can be an element of individual style” (Robinson 1984: 148). If this is right, then there are reasons to think that content can be relevant to style ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq413tegwngb2hepa1126m6)) > Is style essentially an intentional notion, that is, can something utterly unrelated to intentional agency have a style (or be in a style)? It is natural to associate style cate- gories with intentional agency, and this is explicitly built into some definitions of style (Gombrich 1968). But Goodman suggests that we may want to attribute styles to purely natural events; for example, he o"ers “a sunrise in Mandalay style” as an example of the attribution of style to a natural object (1978: 36). Walton suggests that natural objects in “unusual cases” may (derivatively) possess style (1979: 46). While Goodman is right to point the appropriateness of some such usages, it is likely that such attributions of style are metaphoric or that it is sometimes appropriate to treat (and talk about) natural objects as if they had a style. We will, therefore, assume that style has an essential link to intentional agency. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq444m2e49hcnhzpb4b2k6p)) > An alternative to actual intentionalism and anti-intentionalism can be found in Robinson’s work on literary style. Robinson argues that literary style is a matter of the “relatively consistent” way in which an author performs various literary activities and, thereby, expresses his or her personality (1985: 230). Nonetheless, she evades traditional (actual) intentionalism in favor of a version of hypothetical intentional- ism. What a literary style expresses is not, according to her, typically the personality of the actual artist; instead, it is the personality of an implied artist – “the author as she seems to be from the evidence of the work” (ibid.: 234). What pushes Robinson to this conclusion? One consideration seems to be the conspicuous mismatch between the personality traits apparently expressed by certain literary works and the actual personalities of their authors. Such a mismatch suggests that the personality expressed by the style of a literary work is not, in fact, that of the author, but rather the personality of its implied or hypothetical author. There is certainly room to be skeptical of this argument, even if one accepts this sort of character-based approach to individual style – perhaps some authors express aspects of their personalities in writing that they do not express in other contexts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq4br1td24054cehce6jmbm)) > Since there are works of art that appear to lack individual style (e.g. the prestylistic work of some great painters), it is hard to see why the development of individual style should count as a requirement for being an artist, although it might be a require- ment for being a good artist of a certain sort. But consider also the work of con- temporary artists who employ techniques (e.g. aleatoric strategies) that are expressly designed to subvert the attribution of individual style. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq4dge4b51bn4xmcaetp7g8)) > The term “style” (derived from the Latin word “stilus,” which refers to the mechanism used for writing on wax tablets in ancient Rome) is used widely in ordinary discourse to characterize a range of nonaesthetic and nonartistic activities and objects. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq1ww0pwkqy02szvx27dmfn)) > Criticism, history and theory of the arts make reference to a wide range of kinds of > style, which may be individuated with respect to the ultimate bearers of the style. Individual style (e.g. Vermeer’sstyle, Hitchcock’s style) may be distinguished from various forms of general style: historical or period style (e.g. Impressionism, Postimpressionism), national and regional style (e.g. Russian ballet style, Celtic folk music), school style (e.g. in the style of Giotto, the style of the Second Viennese School, the Metaphysical style) and universal style (e.g. classicism, naturalism, realism) (Wollheim 1979). There are also style characteristics or style qualities (e.g. bombast, flamboyance, pretentiousness), which do not, on at least some accounts, amount to full-fledged styles on their own (Walton 1979). And there may even be other distinguishable categories of style such as genre style and the style of a particular work of art (Carroll 1998). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq23sj46wrw4845xr4wqjwq)) > One complication is that determining the style categories that a work falls into > may itself be dependent on background knowledge about the origins of the work. This is because determining the style that a work possesses (and even whether it possesses a style at all) depends, at least in some cases, on establishing its meaning (Robinson 1981) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwq2bzwsz8wxqfrkwzaf0cam)) > ——(1987) Painting as an Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——(1995) “Style in Painting,” in C. Van Eck, J. McAllister and R. van de Vall ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwqjy8nj9x2fsh7m7j3q26ds))