Lecture on Style [with particular reference to sculpture]

1 document of 44 pages

A text written for delivery as Slade Professor at Oxford

Suggesting that the two motives in art are the moral and the sensuous (or physical) and that it is in the operation of these motives that style is to be found. Raises the importance of custom and fitness for purpose in relation to an appreciation of beauty (using an ironclad as an example). Introduces the concept of a spectrum running from the very general to the very particular, with perfection lying at a mid-point, using the Greek honeysuckle motif as an example. Perfect imitation is not not, mentions Madame Tussaud wax-works as perfect copies that no-one would mistake for fine art. He calls the point between abstract and real "Florid". Discusses the Parthenon marbles as the perfection of style. Then traces the development of style in sculpture from Egypt up to Bernini.

He then doubles back to discuss in more depth the process of the development of style from archaic times. Ponders the mystery of how Phidias gained such knowledge of the human form and the place of Greece's climate in the development of Greek style (contrasting the bright and light filled spaces with London's "dark climate, ugle streets and smokey dingy atmosphere".

RI2/7 and RI2/8.