Style as Evidence

JAMES ACKERMAN OBSERVES in his descriptive definition of art history as a scholarly discipline that what distinguishes art historians from other historians is that their primary data are works of art.1 Although they share with historians the fundamental goal of enlarging our understanding of man through increased knowledge of the past and in the process may utilize many of the same techniques and source materials, art historians are methodologically exceptional in that aspect of art history known as formal or stylistic analysis. The terms "formal analysis" and "stylistic analysis" apply to those aspects of art historical investigation that concentrate on the art object itself, its configuration and style. "Form" and "style" have overlapping but different meanings. Form is restricted to the configuration of the object itself, while style refers to a distinctive manner or mode which, whether consciously intended or not, bears a relationship with other objects marked in their form by similar qualities. The argument of this essay is that style is inescapably culturally expressive, that the formal data embodied in objects are therefore of value as cultural evidence, and that the analysis of style can be useful for other than purely art historical studies.2