Style: "Cited as a configuration of qualities shared by many objects spread throughout a long span of time [...]. (Style) means all the systemic changes we observe in the history of a cluster of traits or forms, much as the word "weather" stands for constantly changing relationships of temperature, pressure, humidity. [...] a strand in culture, which is best studied as to content, structure, and flow, with development as its most characteristic trait. [...] is a means of establishing relationships among individual works of art (James Ackerman), like the concepts of society and culture, which are also based on relationships." (p. 12)
"1. Styles, being historical configurations, are neither perpetual nor in random change. Being in change, however, their identity is in doubt at every instant.
2. Elements dispersed evenly throughout all historical time cannot mark style. Yet style presupposes such stable configurations within limited durations.
3. Style is identifiable only among time-bound elements. Yet if the components are in differential change, as they always are, the relation among them is a changing one.
4. Presupposing a style presupposes that it has a beginning and an end, although the components may have begun earlier, and might end later than the style itself.
5. Each kind of human action has its styles: no actions or products escape style. Yet the preceding observations suggest that such configurations are more instantaneous than extended in duration.
6. We participate in going styles, and we observe past style. But the operations of esthetic choice are unpredictable: a past style may at any instant be revived.
7. Different styles can coexist, like languages in one speaker. Such coexistance itself can be more various than style." (pp. 12, 13).
KUBLER, George: "Style and Representation of Historial Time"
En: Annals of the New York Academy of Science Nº 138, 1967: 853.
"1. Styles, being historical configurations, are neither perpetual nor in random change. Being in change, however, their identity is in doubt at every instant.
2. Elements dispersed evenly throughout all historical time cannot mark style. Yet style presupposes such stable configurations within limited durations.
3. Style is identifiable only among time-bound elements. Yet if the components are in differential change, as they always are, the relation among them is a changing one.
4. Presupposing a style presupposes that it has a beginning and an end, although the components may have begun earlier, and might end later than the style itself.
5. Each kind of human action has its styles: no actions or products escape style. Yet the preceding observations suggest that such configurations are more instantaneous than extended in duration.
6. We participate in going styles, and we observe past style. But the operations of esthetic choice are unpredictable: a past style may at any instant be revived.
7. Different styles can coexist, like languages in one speaker. Such coexistance itself can be more various than style." (pp. 12, 13).
KUBLER, George: "Style and Representation of Historial Time"
En: Annals of the New York Academy of Science Nº 138, 1967: 853.