Upon reading our texts for today and remembering our dialogue in class yesterday, I'll attempt to wrestle with the question as to what is style? How may I interpret it? Is it mannerism? Or language? I'm drawn to using analogy to describe what style is. In our class, everyone is very talented and fairly adept at some form of visual problem solving or another. (I've seen a lot of it with my own eyes. )If we were all asked to draw a picture or make a design for example, we all would indeed have our own styles evident in the result exhibited, but we all would still being using visual language. We also would all have our own method or manner as to how we all go about it. Sure, we'd all use a pencil or some mark making tool to draw a picture, but if at least two people in our class used a pencil to draw the same thing, there would still be some nuances as to how the pencil is used or held during the mark making; how hard or light it would be in contact with the surface and so on.
So where am I going here? Well, style seems to me like an interpretation of both mannerism and language. And if either of these two comparisons were like speaking a sentence, style would be the frequency of our voices, the tones used, the accents heard and the words chosen to speak this sentence using a language we all pretty much know. If we look at Sullivan's articles pertaining to architecture and designs of office buildings, we get a feel for what I've said...at least a little bit. Sullivan believes the biggest challenge in designing such a structure is the constant tension created with adding or omitting ornament, which in a general sense is "aesthetics to a project". Above is a picture I borrowed from his article of the Carson Pirie Scott Store to use as an example. Buildings look best without any ornament, or if ornamentation is to be used, a little goes a very, very, very long way. Most importantly it should be integrated and blended with the structure to not make it so obvious: like petals look on a flower stem. Having recently completed a few drawing courses here at NSCAD, I can kind of get a feel for what he's pointing out here. Have we all not "over-worked" a drawing at some point or another, if not for any reason than by accident of getting a little caught up in the details? Sure we have. When you're drawing a picture you only need to create as much as the image needs to work visually.
To somewhat wrap up, I tried my best to get my head around Eidelberg's article and how I could derive my point there. Ceramics and craft is an excellent example how styles were influenced, presented to the world, and appropriated. Without getting into the details of the actual ceramics themselves, I'd like to revert back to an analogous comparison regarding the main issue of style.
Getting back to that example mentioned above about everyone drawing a picture: and indeed yes, we all have a unique style despite using the same visual language or mannerism, we also can influence each other. Matt might be drawing a perfect character for a science fiction project and upon looking over his shoulder and seeing his drawing come to life, I might be inspired or behooved to make something similar to achieve my own goals for what I myself am doing. Hanna might be successfully designing a series of websites and Nate could take note the techniques and designs used to achieve the same result. And each of us are influenced by are past experiences: based on what books we've read, or movies or music we've seen or heard.
Now where am I going? Well, the long and the short of it is this: it makes perfect sense to compare this detailed example in an analogous fashion to that of nations, regions and how we influence each other as pointed out in Eidelberg's article. If nations or regions were like individual people their behaviors would almost seem to fit exactly: nationalism could be like ego, being influenced by another country would be like a person being inspired by looking over the shoulder of someone else and seeing what they're doing. Being influenced by my Grandmother would be a country deeply rooted in it's traditions and culture. And style? Style is like a boat that floats well in both waters I've used in this analogous comparison. Nations, past and present like people, have styles.
The readings were interesting and I enjoyed them. I look forward to further corollary in today's class.(^_^)
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