EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Note on Style

Style, the traditional method of classifying art, is rarely mentioned on this site because it has little effect on interpretation. Mark Roskill, the late art historian, wrote in his book The Interpretation of Pictures:

‘Discussion[s] of style provide measures of constancy in artistic language...which reach beyond the individual to the group, and beyond that potentially to some larger cultural entity. They also serve as ways of....grouping under a single descriptive heading particular, identifiable ways of doing things. But while all of this makes style an apt and adaptable tool for classificatory purposes, it is not clear if, so understood, it either has or is left with any kind of a role for interpretative purposes.’¹   

In other words, when early art historians needed to make sense of art, they used style to group artists into various schools though it did little to explain art's meaning. Style influences an individual's taste but is unlikely to effect universal judgment. It is one of those aspects of art that is either individual or cultural but, either way, is of little help to the emerging master of another time. What they look for in developing their method are those aspects of earlier art that are inherited and which can be seen evolving from one variety to another down through the ages. Great artists share a common understanding of human perception, a deep communion with nature and common ideas that express basic truths about the human condition. Much of this they learn and absorb through the language of forms which evolves with modifications from one artist to the next. To understand art, we must be alert to it.

Many art historians fail to recognize that forms contain meaning from a prior incarnation, especially when the shape seems to represent quite different objects. Leonardo, for instance, turned the form of his own eye into a Storm over the Alps so that, even if only the rare viewer recognizes it, the shape of the storm conveys meaning from his earlier image. In this case, the storm is internal. Indeed Plato's word for form was idea and it is through forms that artists learn and pass on their philosophy. Though many art historians use the word form for style, as in the title of Gombrich’s classic book Norm and Form, on this site form always means shape.

1. Roskill, The Interpretation of Pictures (The University of Massachusetts Press) 1989, pp. 99-100