The concept of style for the practice of Art?History
The uses and limitations of the concept of style for the practice of art history.
The concept of style in art is a complex narrative; a fundamental idea collectively used in literature, anthropology, architecture, antiquity and art history. As a line of enquiry, it has fallen in and out of favour with scholars and historians alike; though style has been present in discussions surrounding ancient art through to the modern, postmodern art movements and still concerns art today. This essay is about the significance of the concept of style and the role it has had in the development and practice of art history.
Giorgio Vasari (1511- 1574), renaissance artist and writer, noted distinct changes in style throughout the Renaissance era; as artists strove to attain a representation of perfection. Though Vasari recognises each artist of his time had his own ‘maniera’, and attributed connoisseurship, broadly his writings dissected a common style of the period. Namely, all artists were part of a dynamic development whereby through the spirit of rivalry amongst others they built upon their skills and knowledge. ‘Maniera, or style, the working definition of which is one of Vasari’s great accomplishments is clearly associated with representational skill.’[1}
Significant to the concept of style, art historian Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) was able to chronologically classify Greek Art into differing chapters within its history and thus sparked further excitement around the consciousness of style. Art historian Willibald Sauerl?nder (1924-2018) reflected upon Winckelmann’s contribution ‘Style now became the keyword for the bridge leading from visual perception to historical insight.’[2] Since Winckelmann’s classification in 1764, the debate climaxed in the twentieth century, where the concept of style became its own discipline within art history. Key contributors to the discussion, through the concept of formalism or formal analysis, were art historians Heinrich W?lfflin (1864 – 1945) and Alois Reigl (1858-1905). Formal analysis disregards the topic or context of the piece of art; it simply means to explore the purely visual aspects and compositional components of a work of art.
W?lfflin developed five paired-principles around comparing and contrasting art from the classicism of the Renaissance period to the shift towards the more visually disruptive Baroque art. W?lfflin ‘s principles were: linear vs painterly; planar vs recessional; closed form vs open form; multiplicity vs unity; absolute clarity vs relative clarity.
A positive aspect of identifying art through W?lfflin’s lens is that it assists the art historian in the pursuit of fact; identifying familiar or differing compositional elements in a theoretically unbiased visual analysis. Although W?lfflin and Reigl contended that some social or contextual influences might have impacted an artist’s work, they never explored this deeply enough and thus the meaning of style could never fully be understood using formalism and could even be tainted by their own terms of a preferred style. ‘Gombrich’s charge was that Reigl and Wolffin’s division of art into period styles was largely a product of their own artificial systems.’ [3] However, W?lfflin and Reigl’s theories acknowledged that sequences in artistic development could be observed; this concept of period style has evolved and endured, contributing significantly to art history. Robinson argues that ‘it is largely in virtue of the style in a work that the art historian is able to “place” it in history.’ [4]
To aid the discussion of the usefulness of formal analysis, Wolfflin’s principles will be applied in a visual examination of two paintings from the Romantic genre. Both pieces are dated around the same time: Ary Scheffer’s painting The Vision, Dante and Beatrice, 1851 and Eugene Delacroix’s painting Andromeda, 1852.
1. Ary Scheffer, The Vision, Dante and Beatrice, 1851, oil on canvas, 180 x 99 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The narrative of the painting is love, it depicts the Italian poet Dante and his cherished Beatrice. This painting illustrates Dante’s poem; its verses are written on the frame.
The painting is smooth, with no visible brushstrokes. The focal point of the composition is toward the top of the picture; an arched frame encompasses two central figures. Beatrice is the primary subject; placed on a pedestal in relation to her position to Dante. The negative space around the figures definitively suggests the painting is about Dante’s love for Beatrice. The cloud illustrates his love is celestial. Their formation is intimate, yet there is a distance between them, again due to Dante’s position lower down the canvas. The forms of the figures look stoic – as if fixed in a moment in time.
Beatrice appears relaxed and natural in her stance. Her gaze is upward to the sky, and she seems oblivious to the figure of Dante so nearby. Her bare foot is noticeable; revealed under her pale pink robe. She wears a white cape; shaded, it emphasizes the folds. It drapes down her back, framing her. Adorning her light brown hair is a crown of laurel leaves – representing her morality. In contrast to her relaxed position, Dante appears rigid; one hand is raised in line with his shoulder, the other is held fixed to his chest. His gaze is serious and intense as he looks up to meet Beatrice’s pale neck and face. Dante wears a red hood and high collared red tunic; long dark sleeves are visible underneath the loose fabric.
Applying Wolffin’s principles then, it is clear the painting is linear, with strong contours separating the figures from one another and the background.P The picture as a whole is flat; forms are arranged on a series of planes – parallel to the picture plane. The scene is restricted to the canvas. The figures and other elements of the painting are independent of one another. All the elements in the painting are clear in their form.
2. Eugene Delacroix, Andromeda, 1852, oil on canvas, 33×25.1 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The narrative of the painting is the sacrifice of Andromeda. She was chained to a rock and left to be devoured by the monster Cetus. The focal point of the painting is a lone female nude; known to be Andromeda, visibly chained naked to a rock. Bound by her hands and seated uncomfortably; the rock, is covered with vivid gold and red fabrics – representing her nobility. Her feet rest on flinty formations below. She appears to be trying to free herself from her restraints through the motion represented in her body.
Andromeda’s gaze is away from the viewer and beyond the picture plane. Behind her is the muddied, unclear background of a cave; with an opening of bright turquoise sky to the right of the painting, the direction Andromeda is looking. Light shining down from above illuminates her torso and thighs, while her lower legs, in contrast, are in shadow; notable stronger tonal contrasts than the Scheffer. Her auburn hair cascades down her back; however, is indistinguishable against the background of blurry, heavy brushstrokes merging into one chaotic scene. The painting’s agitated brushwork creates depth and suspense; something could happen at any moment in this scene.
Again, applying Wolfflin’s principles, it is clear that the whole painting is created with unsteady and moving form – it is a ‘painterly’ painting. The use of colour is expressive; the paint is loosely applied. Components in the piece are not formally defined; with soft edges blending into one another. The picture plane is diagonal; enhanced by the shape of Andromeda’s body and through the use of light and shadow. The canvas does not restrict the scene; the opening of the cave suggests that the drama extends beyond the borders of the painting. All elements are interconnected and create an overall scene. There is no immediate clarity of form; the painting is dark and out-of-focus in many places creating an effect of high drama.
Scheffer’s painting (Fig 1) looks back to the classical style of art; accurate in detail and concerned with clarity and proportion. Delacroix (Fig 2) conveys urgency and disorder through his expressive brushstrokes. Their practices and representations of form are contrasting in their personal style, despite being part of the same ‘movement’. Though the content they paint is concerned with emotion; it is the qualities of their ‘expression’ which denote their style. This resonates with art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) who stated that style is ‘the constant form and sometimes the constant elements, qualities and expression – in the art of an individual or group.’ [5]
Formal analysis, then, offers a foundation for further study. Its unifying or differing stylistic consideration enables historians to place works of art with an epoch, and conceivably identify a creator. If one broadens the evaluation to include the social history of the piece: age, nationality, race, class hierarchy or gender of the artist and the values and philosophies of society at the time of the art’s creation, this allows the art historian to understand or place a work of art in a greater context than that of formal analysis. Schapiro considered style to be deeper than just forms used to analyse a piece of art; it is a window into the artist’s mind and culture at the time the art was produced. Schapiro established his own principles about style through three aspects: ‘form elements or motives, form relationships, and qualities (including an all-over quality) which we may call the expression.’ [6] Schapiro distinguished styles from one another or recognised similarities between pieces of art, cultures, or an era. However, he also demonstrated that using style as a lone acumen in the history of art has a flaw, in that it is a modern concept. For example, Byzantine art has been misjudged due to its combinations of differing stylistic forms within one piece of art, as Schapiro illustrates ‘scholars have mistakenly supposed that certain Spanish works were done partly by a Christian and partly by a Moslem artist.’ [7]
Even with later periods, style does not always enable one to identify a work of art or artist definitively; an artist can change his/her style within a short period of time. Picasso is an excellent example of this. Stylistic analysis will have to adapt to the challenges modernism, post-modernism and contemporary art creates for the art historian to use it as a tool for classification and identification – which will be covered later in this essay.
When understanding the meaning of a piece of art, content must be considered as an influence on style. For example, in contrast to the extravagant religious subject matter of Renaissance art in the 1600s, Dutch art depicted more secular content due to its differing protestant belief systems. Paintings comprised of everyday-life scenes, still life, landscapes and exploration. With this movement, artists specialised in their subject matter – developing individual stylistic techniques. Svetlana Alpers identified seventeenth-century Dutch art as ‘descriptive rather than narrative’ [8] differing from the narrative agenda of the Renaissance; which was often a benchmark used by art historians in defining their style theories like that of W?lfflin. Dutch art at this time was teeming with moral and political symbolism which was understood by its native audience – however, not necessarily by non-native contemporaries or modern-day scholars. This echoes with Sauerl?nder when he refers to the problem with ‘style’ and its misinterpretation.
Artists specialising in a particular technique or content, are offered an opportunity to shift focus from societal idealisms and norms of artistic acceptance and develop their art into a more singular viewpoint. Progression of this unrestrained outlook changes how one creates and inevitably how one observes art. Thus cultural or societal factors must be taken into consideration for the development of an individual, period or even a national style. This leads on to the significance of the invention and subsequent wider use of photography in the early nineteenth century. Artists were further freed from depicting ‘reality’ and could portray a different perspective of the world; seen by their eyes only, essentially creating ‘art for art’s sake’. Modernism (broadly c. 1870-1970) developed from artists seeking a better or an individual way of practising art. Rejecting traditional western values, artists and intellectuals sought to move away from realistic representation and express a renewed aesthetic and inner-truth through internal criticism. ‘The immediate aims of Modernist artists remain individual before anything else, and the truth and success of their work is individual before it is anything else.’ [9]
One painting stands out in the movement of modern art:
3. Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles – D’avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, 243.9 x 233.7 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The narrative of the painting is a scene of five prostitutes in a brothel. This was a revolutionary piece of art; Picasso dared to create something which was not familiar in its composition. He abolished all sense of perspective; there is no immediate focal point. The painting is linear, yet also painterly. Strong contours separate the figures from one another and the background; however, the background is so disordered, in part the women become it themselves through their angular and distorted bodies.
The scene of the brothel bulges out of the canvas. The well-known female nude is portrayed not as a gentle creature of beauty; but as a distorted, angular, monstrous being. Though, due to the women’s lucid and penetrating gaze directly at the viewer, they are also very much human. Picasso looks to the past at ancient art and differing cultures for inspiration; fusing this with radical ideas and innovative implementation. In this one painting, something had shifted; artists could reject beauty as content and they could cast-off conventional notions of style. Consequently, the visual elements of art, its forms, shape/s, texture, colours and the space in between bend purely to the will of the artist. ‘Expression’ is thus uniquely personal like never before, yet this can be recognised and attributed to the artist as their style. The viewer need not understand the piece of art; they can, however, experience it. Picasso is a good example of an artist whose style changed significantly over his long career.
Art movements have differed in proportion and significance over the centuries. The art historian’s ability to distinguish, and consider developments from one shifting movement to another through stylistic and/or formal analysis has shaped western and contemporary practice. Dating pieces and assigning an author is engineered through evaluating and categorising aesthetic changes; devising its identity, for example, The Dutch Golden Age, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Surrealism and so on. Jas Elsner contended that without W?lfflin ‘we would have no easy or shorthand way of dealing with our material in these fields.’ [10] Social art history has many critical and robust theories, Marxism and Feminist art criticism, for example, however, no artist, movement, period or culture can escape having a style.
References: https://littlewrenaccessories.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/the-concept-of-style-for-the-practice-of-art-history/