Style The Elusive Essential

By: Gromyko Padilla Semper



Of all the elements which go to make Art- form, content, function, Style-the most elusive and indefininable is style. Form has to do with the way things are put together, wheter colors or sounds or words. Content has to do with subject matter, meaning, expression. Function refers to the use for which a work of art is intended, and is basic to architechture and ceramics, but not an essential element in music, painting, or sculpture. All good Art has Style, also. But what is it?

Style maybe thought of as that distinctive quality of a work of art which relates it to others at the same time distinguishes it from others. It is through its style that a work of art can be classified as to time, place,creator. Style is what enebles the cultivated man to look at such a picture as "the Persistence of Memory", and identify it as spanish, not Italian; as From the Catalonian regions not Madrid; as early 20th Century,not earlier and go on to reject De chirico and Ernst and place it as a Dali. Glowing golden portraits against a dark backgroud will imediately suggest Rembrandt; Melancholic spaces with mannequins as De Chirico, Sunflowers, thick paint, expressive colors as Van gogh; and so on.

Style seems to grow out of traits that are both individual and universal, personal and national, timeless and yet of a period. It is helpful in analysing the factors that give style to any work of art to determine which are external and which are internal. Psychologists use the terms heredity and environment. We may use the terms Nature-Nurture, nature referring to those factors which come from within the Artist, the need for self-expression, the urge to create in a certain material or in a certain way- his talent, temperament, personality. Those which surround him and help to mold him from the outside, nurture, are his forefathers, his teachers, the place and time in which he grows up and works. available materials, tools and skills are also important external factors. In Ancient Greece wood was scarce, but marble was abundant, hence stone sculpture and architechture developed. In the Philippines, fine hardwood is plentiful and thus led to the development of wood carving. Time is as important a factor as place. For instance, a person of artistic talent born in the hinterland of Germany in the 5th Century would have had little or no examples to study or teachers to instruct him. his art might have been crude or coarse. A thousand years later, however, a man born in the same place would have had the benifit of skilled teachers and fine examples to help him. Such a man was Albretch Durer, whose father taught him the goldsmith's craft and sent him to a good drawing teacher in his hometown. Later Durer benifited by the Art which he observed in both Italy and Holland and returned to Germany to become the greatest German Artist of all time.

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of style is the Artists personal way of looking at things. Every great work of art is a commentary on life-not just a statement of fact, but an interpretation. In early stages, an artist copies other art, and hence sees the world as other artists saw it before him. But as he develops, his own personality determines his viewpoints and he sees things differently from any other artists. An artist's own nature will also determine wether he is more interested in the materials he uses, or in the technique of shaping them; in the beauty of the form which he is creating, or in communicating message through that form.

There is a second approach to style in art. All art have both form and content, some emphasizing one, some the other; and the element of style is often the result of just this difference in emphasis. For this we may use the term matter-manner, the what and the how of art. One of the ways of classifying Art is according to wether form or content recieves more emphasis: when form seems more important, the work is called classical: when the content dominates, it is called romantic. the terms apply to movements and periods in art history, but can also refer to some individual artist and even individual works of an artist.

The greeks have devised a way to differentiate Art and represented a God for each aspect of Art. Being aware of the dualistic nature of Art, and understanding the form-content empahsis, they named it after Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo was the god of formal beauty, and the term apollonia has come to stand for classical art with traditional form, handed down from the past, controlled and balanced and expressing only restrained emotions of the calmer sort such as joy, contentment, delight. Dionysus was the god of revelry, and dionysian is an adjective covering the romantic qualities of abandonement of restraint, giving way to free emotional expression of love, hate, frenzy, ecstasy, strife, fear, wantoness, drunkenness,et.al. The art of the 17th and 18th centuries was Apollonian, while that of the 19th and 20th, as well as that of the recent century which strove to break away from the old formalism and give free expression to romantic content, seems Dionysian by Contrast.

Below is the classification of Art based on Time-Period:

I have Classified Style in three divisions or epoch: Early Period(Primitive, Archaic), Middle Period(Classical), and Late Period(Decadent)

Early Period Art

Primitive or Archaic art is Bold and Daring, Experimental and Strong by concept. it is Original. It has something to do with the Symbolic,the Sacred. It is Idealistic in Nature.
It is simple, general, geometric, rough(raw), and in an upright form.
It is a mental image.
Early period artists have respect for their craft and use of materials.

Middle Period Art

Classical Art is confident, experienced , and calm. It is ideal, universal and serves to seek the perfect(perfectionistic). It combines originality with tradition. It is natural, detailed, refined, and has a balanced form. It is a Visual Image and is illusionistic in nature. They strive for the mastery of craft, and honest use of material.

Late Period Art

Decadent(Modern or Late) art is characterized by a languid or restless and habit bound mannerism. It is traditional or eclectic but seldom original. It is specific, unique, bizarre, strange, grotesque,ugly. They are complex, elaborate, realistic, delicate and is mostly in an oblique form. They go for the distorted, fragmented or multiple image. Late artists are virtuoso craftmen, exhibitionists,egotists, they deny and conceal the material for illusionistic means and is psychologically striking at the meaning of truth and life.