Inherent to the concept of style is an idea of historical
necessity. A true style, like the Baroque of the seventeenth
century, is not copied from a previous epoch, but arises out of
some structural necessity, out of the manifest needs of man and
society. "Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality
and meaningful expression through which the personnality of the
artist and the broad outlook of a group are visible." (Meyer
Shapiro, Style, in M. Philipson Ed., Aesthetics Today, p.137)
(cf morphology) Style is an essential object of study for the
historian of art. For the synthesizing historian of culture or
the philosopher of history, style is the manifestation of the
culture as a whole, the visible sign of its unity. The style
reflects or projects the "inner form" of collective thinking and
feeling. As Meyer Shapiro points out, the term has both a
normative and a symptomatic or diagnostic usage. The
Archaeologist uses the coherences of motives or patterns to
localize and date works, while the critic,