style in performance ❧ 145
beginning to end of their careers. But a perfectly clear and classic example of
evolution of style, of course, is furnished by Beethoven.
Connected with the “exercise de style” that I mentioned a little earlier is
the use of personal styles in caricature, the productions “a la manière de,” the
sets of variations with each variation in the style of a different composer. The
possibility exists for an enterprising performer to take a Bach suite or a partita
and play each movement in the style of a different, well-known identifi able
composer. The art of seizing on salient traits often denotes the best caricature.
A good caricaturist, by deforming one trait—a nose or an ear or an eye—can
make the part speak for the whole more eloquently than would a balanced
drawing or photograph.
There is the style which is self-forming. This is usually a personal style, but it
can also be a collective style, a style which forms itself totally unconsciously, as
is the case with certain individuals and is certainly the case in many primitive
cultures. It is hard then to distinguish originality from imitation. In a primi-
tive culture it is hard to tell what was innovative and what was merely imitated.
Within the work of certain artists it is very hard to tell when they are being
original and when they are simply copying themselves. Self-imitation is one of
the greatest dangers of the successful artist.
Then there is what one might call a total absence of style, the cultural mish-
mash, the compendium of things that have been lifted right and left from one
master and another, never fully assimilated, never incorporated, very much like
the caches that are occasionally unveiled when kleptomaniacs are arrested—
assemblages of indiscriminate, unused, useful as well as useless objects, never
coordinated into any form of employment or order. I remember overhearing
a remark at the exhibition of a minor painter who had very thoroughly pil-
laged the work of his contemporaries, to the effect that “this painter really has
a touch of the masters.”
There is also the connotation of style which has to do with the consistent ful-
fi lling of expectations. These expectations may have been caused by conventions
of the culture of previous generations, or by the previous work of a given art-
ist. Nothing calls down on an artist more severe storms of criticism, especially
on the part of journalists, than the unpardonable sin of changing styles. One
thinks of the carloads of opprobrium that have been poured over Picasso, for
example, in the last fi fty years, at each change of style. This perhaps has less-
ened when it became apparent that Picasso was not just Picasso but one of the
most versatile eclectic artisans of our time. But in the forties, when Picasso had
not yet unloaded his full bag of tricks, it seemed quite unpardonable for him
to do things that betrayed what one had learned to expect of him. I think that
Stravinsky, for the same reason, has not yet been forgiven for his later works.
But stylistic differences have a tendency to disappear as a period recedes
in time. The styles of the Renaissance no longer look as diverse as they did
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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