Concept
Style (visual arts)
Overview
In the visual arts, style is a "distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories" or "any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made". It refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been the art historian's principal mode of classifying works of art. By style he selects and shapes the history of art".
Style is often divided into the general style of a period, country or cultural group, group of artists or art movement, and the individual style of the artist within that group style. Divisions within both types of styles are often made, such as between "early", "middle" or "late". In some artists, such as Picasso for example, these divisions may be marked and easy to see; in others, they are more subtle. Style is seen as usually dynamic, in most periods always changing by a gradual process, though the speed of this varies greatly, from the very slow development in style typical of prehistoric art 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Style (visual arts) is discussed.
Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is a more reliable key to character than the physiognomy of the body. To imitate another person's style is like wearing a mask.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays of Schopenhauer
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
We need not here repeat that we use the word Manner in a high and honorable sense, so that artists who, according to our definition, would be termed Mannerists have nothing to complain of. It is only incumbent upon us to preserve the word Style in the highest honor, in order to have an expression for the highest point art has attained or ever can attain. To be aware of this point is in itself a great good fortune…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's literary essays
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
But above style, and above knowledge, there is something, a vague shape like fate above the Greek gods. That something is Power. Style is the fashioning of power, the restraining of power. But, after all, the power of attainment of the desired end is fundamental. The first thing is to get there.
Alfred North Whitehead, The organisation of thought, educational and scientific
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean. The clearest style is that which uses only current or proper words; at the same time it is mean:--witness the poetry of Cleophon and of Sthenelus. That diction, on the other hand, is lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs unusual words.
Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Looked at in one way, such a work appears to reveal to us the very essence of the artist's personality, while regarded from another we only find there the essence of the subject-matter artistically treated, so that this very uniqueness of expression appears to arise from the unique characteristics of the material to which it is applied; and we may say with equal truth either that the expressed form is due to those…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
a chapter is titled for it; author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Style (visual arts)
Related ideas
- Giorgio Vasari
- Florence
- German language
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Neoclassicism
- Painting
- American English
- Archaeology
- Modernism
- East Asia
- Johann Joachim Winckelmann
- Art history
- Realism (arts)
- Aesthetics
- Orthography
- Pablo Picasso
- Rhetoric
- Renaissance
- Venice
- Visual arts
- Baroque
- British English
- Zeitgeist
- Critical theory
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of aesthetics.