In thevisual 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] It refers to the visual appearance of a work ofart that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location, "school",art movement orarchaeological 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".[3]
Style is often divided into the general style of a period, country or cultural group, group of artists orart 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".[4] In some artists, such asPicasso 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 ofprehistoric art orAncient Egyptian art to the rapid changes inModern art styles. Style often develops in a series of jumps, with relatively sudden changes followed by periods of slower development.
After dominating academic discussion inart 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]
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, includingGothic,Baroque, andRococo.[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 notablyChinese art, has a marked tendency to revive at intervals "classic" styles from the past.[10] In critical analysis of the visual arts, the style of a work of art is typically treated as distinct from itsiconography, which covers the subject and thecontent of the work, though forJas Elsner this distinction is "not, of course, true in any actual example; but it has proved rhetorically extremely useful".[11]
Classical art-criticism and the relatively few medieval writings onaesthetics did not greatly develop a concept of style in art, or analysis of it,[12] and thoughRenaissance and Baroque writers on art are greatly concerned with what modern scholars 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]
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) set out a hugely influential but much-questioned account of the development of style in Italian painting (mainly) fromGiotto to his ownMannerist period. He stressed the development of aFlorentine style based ondisegno or line-based drawing, rather than onVenetian colour. With other Renaissance theorists likeLeon Battista Alberti he continued classical debates over the best balance in art between therealistic depiction of nature and idealization of it; this debate would continue until the 19th century and the advent ofModernism.[14]
The theorist ofNeoclassicism,Johann Joachim Winckelmann, analysed the stylistic changes in Greek classical art in 1764, comparing them closely to the changes inRenaissance art, and "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 theGerman wordZeitgeist, but he never actually used the word, although inLectures on the Philosophy of History, he uses the phraseder 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 became a major concern of 19th-century scholars in the new and initially mostly German-speaking field ofart history, with important writers on the broad theory of style includingCarl Friedrich von Rumohr,Gottfried Semper, andAlois Riegl in hisStilfragen of 1893, withHeinrich Wölfflin andPaul Frankl continuing the debate in the 20th century.[17]Paul Jacobsthal andJosef 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 asformalism, 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 describearchitectural 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 general culture.[19]
In architecture, stylistic change often follows, and is made possible by, the discovery or adoption of new techniques or materials, such as the Gothicrib vault or modern construction with metal andreinforced concrete. A major area of debate in both art history and archaeology has been the extent to which stylistic change in other fields like painting or pottery is also a response to new technical possibilities, or whether new developments have their own impetus to develop (theKunstwollen of Riegl), or to change in response to social and economic factors affectingpatronage and the conditions of the artist, as current thinking tends to emphasize, using less rigid versions of Marxist art-history.[20]
Although style was well-established as a central component of the historical analysis of art, 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 started to develop,[21] and a reaction against the emphasis on style arose; forSvetlana Alpers, "the normal invocation of style in art history is a depressing affair indeed".[22] According toJames Elkins "In the later 20th century criticisms of style were aimed at further reducing the Hegelian elements of the concept while retaining it in a form that could be more easily controlled".[23]Meyer Schapiro,James Ackerman,Ernst Gombrich andGeorge Kubler (The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 1962) have made notable contributions to the debate, which has also drawn on wider developments incritical theory.[24] In 2010Jas 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 apply to archaeology.
The use of terms such asCounter-Maniera appears to be in decline, as impatience with such "style labels" grows among art historians. In 2000Marcia B. Hall, a leading art-historian of 16th-century Italian painting and mentee ofSydney Joseph Freedberg (1914–1997), who invented the term, was criticised by a reviewer of herAfter 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]
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, comes from thebehavioural psychologistColin Martindale, who has proposed an evolutionary theory based onDarwinian principles.[27] However, this cannot be said to have gained much support among art historians.
Traditional art history has also placed great emphasis on the individual style, sometimes called thesignature 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 theirvaluation 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 asconnoisseurs",[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.Giovanni Morelli (1816 – 1891) pioneered the systematic study of the scrutiny of diagnostic minor details that revealed artists' scarcely conscious shorthand and conventions for portraying, for example, ears or hands, in Westernold master paintings. His techniques were adopted byBernard Berenson and others, and have been applied to sculpture and many other types of art, for example by SirJohn Beazley toAttic 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-standingtopos in art history from Vasari's probably mythical account ofJan van Eyck to the secretive habits ofGeorges Seurat.[33]
However the idea of personal style is certainly not limited to the Western tradition. InChinese art it is just as deeply held, but traditionally regarded as a factor in the appreciation of some types of art, above allcalligraphy andliterati painting, but not others, such as Chinese porcelain;[34] a distinction also often seen in the so-calleddecorative 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 afine artin the Islamic world andEast Asia, brings a new area within the ambit of personal style; the ideal of Western calligraphy tends to be to suppress individual style, whilegraphology, which relies upon it, regards itself as a science.
The painterEdward Edwards said in hisAnecdotes of Painters (1808): "Mr.Gainsborough's manner of penciling was so peculiar to himself, that his work needed no signature".[36] Examples of strongly individual styles include: theCubist art ofPablo Picasso, thePop Art style[37] ofAndy Warhol,Impressionist style ofVincent Van Gogh,Drip Painting byJackson Pollock
"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.[38] While many elements of period style can be reduced to characteristic forms or shapes, that can adequately be represented in simple line-drawn diagrams, "manner" is more often used to mean the overall style and atmosphere of a work, especially complex works such as paintings, that cannot so easily be subject to precise analysis. It is a somewhat outdated term in academic art history, avoided because it is imprecise. When used it is often in the context of imitations of the individual style of an artist, and it is one of the hierarchy of discreet or diplomatic terms used in theart trade for the relationship between a work for sale and that of a well-known artist, with "Manner ofRembrandt" suggesting a distanced relationship between the style of the work and Rembrandt's own style. The "Explanation of Cataloguing Practice" of the auctioneersChristie'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 Italianmaniera ("manner") is a specific phase of the general Renaissance style, but "manner" can be used very widely.
Inarchaeology, despite modern techniques likeradiocarbon dating, period or cultural style remains a crucial tool in the identification anddating not only of works of art but all classes ofarchaeological artefact, including purely functional ones (ignoring the question of whether purely functional artefacts exist).[40] The identification of individual styles of artists orartisans has also been proposed in some cases even for remote periods such as theIce Age art of the EuropeanUpper Paleolithic.[41]
As in art history,formal analysis of themorphology (shape) of individual artefacts is the starting point. This is used to constructtypologies for different types of artefacts, and by the technique ofseriation arelative dating based on style for a site or group of sites is achieved where scientificabsolute dating techniques cannot be used, in particular where only stone, ceramic or metal artefacts or remains are available, which is often the case.[42]Sherds ofpottery 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, fromculture-historical archaeology toprocessual archaeology and finally the rise ofpost-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 andstylized (orstylisation andstylised 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, andmodern art, as well as popular forms such ascartoons oranimation very often use stylized representations, so for exampleThe Simpsons use highly stylized depictions, as does traditionalAfrican art. The two Picasso paintings illustrated at the top of this page show a movement to a more stylized representation of the human figure within the painter's style,[46] and theUffington White Horse is an example of a highly stylized prehistoric depiction of a horse. Motifs in thedecorative arts such as thepalmette orarabesque 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.[47]Drawings,modelli, and othersketches not intended as finished works for sale will also very often stylize.
"Stylized" may mean the adoption of any style in any context, and inAmerican English is often used for thetypographic 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]
In a 2012 experiment atLawrence Technological University in Michigan, a computer analysed approximately 1,000paintings 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 asVan Gogh.[50][51] With the development of sophisticatedtext-to-image AI art software, using specifiable art styles has become a widespread tool in the 2020s.[52][53][54][55][56][57]
