This seminar treats in historical overview, and from diverging disciplinary perspectives, major developments in the theory and interpretation of style in the visual arts. Style is, in effect, a culturally defined visual language that enables the transmission of meaning between the artist and his/her audiences, i.e., both to the artist's initial audience and to secondary audiences of later times. How does the style of a work of art relate to the sociocultural context in which it was produced? Are there definable and historically meaningful patterns of stylistic change? Readings and class discussions will focus on the writings of Hegel, Wölfflin, Panofsky, Kubler, Belting, and others who have made important contributions to a fuller understanding of these matters. On the whole, the approach to the material will be that of intellectual history, but intellectual history with the aim of helping one to clarify his/her thinking on style to evolve an understanding of stylistic change that is relevant to his/her own art historical (or, by extension, cultural historical) interests and everyday experience. |