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La Vie by Pablo Picasso, 1903.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), also by Picasso in a different style four years later.

In the visual arts, style is a "...distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories." or "...any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made." It refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist or one from the same period, training, location, "school" or art movement. In critical analysis of the visual arts, the style of a work of art is often treated as distinct from its iconography, which covers the subject and the content of the work.

By changing the way they paint, apply colour, texture, perspective, or the way they see shapes and ideas, the artist establishes a certain set of "rules". If other artists see the rules as valid for themselves they might also apply these characteristics. The works of art then take on that specific "style". An artist may give the style a name such as "Expressionism", or a name may be applied later, as in the case of "abstract art". The names of many styles are the invention of art historians and would not have been understood by the practitioners of those styles. Some originated as terms of derision, including Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical.

See also

• Art movement

References

Further reading

• Davis, W. Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. (Chapter on "Style and History in Art History", pp. 171-198.) ISBN 0-271-01524-1
• Panofsky, E. Three Essays on Style. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0-262-16151-6

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