EPISTYLE
Style Matters: Scientific Pluralism and its Early-Modern Sources

Gottfried Semper: Style and the Thickness of Time - Isabelle Kalinowski, ENS Paris

In the 1830s, German architect Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) took part in the historical movement of rediscovery of ancient architectural polychromy. His main interest, however, was not limited to demonstrating the historical existence of polychromy: he wanted to explain the function of color and to find an interpretation of the décor’s necessity. He argued that polychromy has essentially to do with memory: the colored décor is a reminiscence of an origin which is more structural than strictly historical. The elements of décor are always linked to something which is remembered: not only to an event in the people’s history, or to a symbolic value, but to the memory of architecture itself. It refers to another material. From the end of the 1840s onward, Semper identifies this architectural memory as a reminiscence of “textile.” In his major work, Style (1860–1863), he refines his conception of genealogy: according to him, the process of material metamorphosis accounts for the agency of architecture. In this lecture, I will explore Semper’s theory of style as material memory as well as the function of Stoffwechsel (metabolism) or migration from one material technique to another in its discontinuity and nomadic history. 

Beyond formalism: Heinrich Wölfflin’s concept of style - Rémi Mermet, ENS Paris

Swiss-German art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) is usually considered, along with Alois Riegl, Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky, to be one of the founding fathers of scientific art history (Kunstwissenschaft) in the early 20th century. His Principles of Art History, published in 1915, has been one of the most influential books in the history of the discipline. Yet, despite the recent celebration of the centenary of its publication, and its retranslation into English by the Getty Research Institute, this work still triggers strong opposition within the art-historical community: for a century, Wölfflin’s book has regularly been criticized for his so-called “formalist” approach to artistic styles—an approach that is generally deemed to be blind to the social, political and ideological context of the creation of the works of art. Against such interpretations, I aim to show that Wölfflin’s formalism is merely “tactical”. In the Principles of Art History, he turns away from the analysis of the content of the works to better grasp the inherent meaning of their form. His definition of style as Sehform (“form of seeing”), which owes much to the legacy of Goethe’s morphology, does not separate form and meaning, but apprehends form as the manifestation of meaning itself.

Style in art and style in perception: a problematic correlation - Andrea Pinotti, Università degli Studi di Milano

The German-speaking “Kunstwissenschaft” around the turn of the century (Riegl, Wölfflin and others) put forward a theory of style which suggested, although in an ambiguous way, a connection between styles of visual representation and styles of perception. Such “aisthesiological” approach found in Walter Benjamin and Erwin Panofsky two opposite interpretations: while the latter strongly opposed that connection, the former welcomed it and further articulated it in the direction of the notion of the historical character of perception. My paper will address this controversial constellation, following its successive developments in contemporary aesthetics (both on the analytic and the continental sides). 

Epistemological existentialism and stylistic of ideation - Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Knowledge is deeply anchored in the existence of subjects - it is, as existentialism has it, “situated”. From this "situation", and from what the subject of knowledge makes of it, follows a specific "style" of producing ideas which is always original. This way of understanding things blurs the lines, traditionally distinguished in France, between the subject and the concept, and attempts at extending existentialism to have it covering questions of knowledge, leading it furthermore to analyse how one forms ideas, while forming his or herself as a subject. Symmetrically, I would like to provide a wider understanding of epistemology, one in which the existential conditions for the production of knowledge are taken into account: the subject of knowledge is a subject in the strong sense of the term, and its subjectivity as well as the concrete conditions of its existence must be accounted for epistemologically. 

This meeting will exceptionally be held in French, however, it will be possible to participate in the conversation and ask questions in English.

Style and Solitude. The History of an Architectural Problem - Mari Hvattum, Oslo School of Architecture and Design

In the late 18th century, style underwent a conceptual transformation from a rhetorical device to a new notion of period style. The German art historian Willibald Sauerländer considered the shift a “fateful moment” in European intellectual history, describing the new notion of style as an “ambivalent hermeneutical construct” corresponding to an “alienated attitude towards the arts of the past.” Taking Sauerländer’s critique as a point of departure, this lecture queries the period style and its effect on 19th century architecture. Yet there is a twist. For, however profound those effects were, the period style was not the only notion of style at work in historicist architectural thinking. Looking particularly at Carl Friedrich von Rumohr and Gottfried Semper, I look at conflicting notions of style at work in architectural discourse and practice of the early 19th century.

Why Style Now? - Eva Geulen, ZfL Berlin

The abstract will be uploaded shortly

“Style” in an Interdisciplinary Perspective - Johannes Endres, ZfL Berlin

Today, “style” is a rubbery word that can mean almost anything in just about any context. That used to be different, from its origin in ancient rhetoric, through its rediscovery in the Italian Renaissance and the concept's advent as a technical term in art history in the eighteenth century, all the way to it reconceptualization in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, sociology, the history of science, and beyond. My talk is going to present relevant stages of the history of the concept, offering, at the same time, an overview of major epistemological traits on which its future use as part of an interdisciplinary language for the interpretation of visual and literary works of art could be based.

Reading well, writing well, living well. Friedrich Nietzsche and the question of style - Carlotta Santini, CNRS

The reflection on style in Nietzsche's philosophical work cannot be circumscribed to a specific period. It is in fact one of the most important leitmotifs of his œuvre, whose treatment, almost never systematic, is entrusted to anecdotes, mottos and quick remarks. Starting with his first study of the complex artificiality and conventionality of ancient literatures, Nietzsche lays the foundations for his future reflections on philosophical language and the great style. This "dispersed" form, however, in no way diminishes the theoretical weight of the considerations on style and modes of writing in Nietzsche's work. The aesthetic paradigm of the Greek literary work, its rigid formalism and exaggerated normativity to which the entire expressive potential of the artwork was entrusted, increasingly takes the form of an ethical paradigm in Nietzsche's reflection. The "unnatural naturalness" of the great style, the creative freedom within the closed realm of convention, which Nietzsche borrows from the experience of ancient rhetoric, drives him to conceive, through words and writings, an ethics of self-determination, a character-shaping action of stylistic choices. In contrast to the popular view according to which Nietzsche is the philosopher of irrationality, he concentrates all his efforts on the codification of a theory of education and self-control, self-determination, which affects not only writing, but also thinking and character, and thus aspires to achieve radical transformations in the human form of life. 

Fantasy, Scientific Thought and the End of Baroque Science - Raz Chen-Morris, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Since the early phases of the New Science, natural philosophers and mathematicians embraced fantastical stories and imaginary scenarios in order to undermine the traditional and well-entrenched Aritotelian and Ptolemaic systems of the world. Whether in Kepler's Somnium, or Galileo imaginary experiments, or Descartes' fictitious world-system, the assumption was that, in Shakepeare's words, only by "transfiguring" the audience's mind "so together" can a great constancy  grow. This utopian notion that in traveling to another fantastical place one can learn the truth about one's own world pervaded much of 17th century scientific thought in its aspiration to fashion a new world-picture. Beginning with the 1660's, however, the notion of a fantastic travel became leverage for criticizing and exposing the vain presumptuousness of the "New Science". Margaret Cavendish, in her Blazing World, blatantly attacked the Royal Society, mocking its reliance on such instruments as the telescope and the microscope. The Jesuit Gabriel Daniel, in his Voiage du Monde de Descartes, used the trope of space traveling to ridicule the French philosophers' system of the world. Thus, at the end of the 17th century, leading savants such as Fontenelle or Huygens turned to speculate on planetary worlds, marginalizing the role of fantasy and instead seeking to establish a new astronomical and physical commonsense. 

Du style en philosophie, à partir de Descartes – entretien avec Denis Kambouchner, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

This session focused on the analogies, the shifts and the possible points of contact between the notion of style and that of method. In this framework, what is the role of Descartes’ understanding of method? Is it possible to maintain that style, as a “way of thinking”, finds in Descartes its founding figure? It is Descartes, more than any other modern philosopher before him, to have explicitly linked and bent thought to the need for clarity. Is there a relation between the syntactic architecture of Cartesian language and his thought? To what extent “Descartes’ style” has been taken up and reproduced by others? To what extent is it the mark of a philosophical style which goes well beyond its creator? 

In this session we discussed these questions with Denis Kambouchner, one of the most renowned scholars of Descartes and modern philosophy. Professeur émérite at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, he has edited, for Gallimard, the complete works by Descartes, and he is the author of many works on the history of philosophy (e.g. Descartes et la philosophie morale, Hermann, 2001 et Descartes n’a pas dit, Les Belles-Lettres, 2015). Kambouchner is also the author of Le style de Descartes (Manucius, 2013), book which was the point of departure of our conversation, and which allowed us to reflect upon Descartes, the notion of style, as well as the thought of modernity and philosophy more broadly construed.  

* This meeting was exceptionally be held in French * 

Manner: Connoisseurship and Taxonomy, Individual and Collective Identity - Emilie Passignat, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

The word "Mannerism" is relatively recent in the vocabulary of art history: it appears in Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century. Though it can be useful to elaborate the periodization of arts, Robert Rosenblum has rightly referred to period markers as “semantic straitjackets”, considering these tools hard to tolerate as well as quite impossible to reject. “Mannerism” has a meaning deeply stigmatized and often pejorative inherited from previous centuries, due to the evolution of the use of the term Maniera in the art theory and criticism. The purpose of this paper is thus to focus on some significant aspects of the history of “Maniera”, by giving some new considerations on this key term of the artistic vocabulary. This will aim to present some reflections on the adoption of the term “Maniera” in the artistic literature of the 16 th Century, to highlight some underlying theoretical problems that have so far been much too neglected. Above all, “Maniera” was intrinsically linked to the notion of imitation and has been particularly involved in the gradual emergence of the concept of school, since its apparent polysemy follows from the declination at different scales of what is specific to the individual and collective artistic identity, in space, in time and in the choice of models.

The unbearable lightness of thinking: theory as "capriccio" in 17th-century medicine - Gianna Pomata, John Hopkins

My contribution will focus on a surprising and hitherto unnoticed aspect of early modern epistemology: the fact that the term “capriccio” was used in 17th-century natural philosophy and medicine to indicate conjecture, hypothesis, or theory - in other words, as an antonym for observation. The term conveyed, in this context, a negative view of theory as mere opinion or “fancy”. Indeed, it carried some of the flavor of arbitrariness and unruliness that the word “caprice” was acquiring, in the same years, in the language of political theorists, particularly with the critics of the absolutist state. Right at the same time, in striking contrast, “capriccio” was acquiring a strongly positive currency in the arts. Starting with music in the 16th century, the term “capriccio” was extended to the visual arts and then to literature, to indicate a fashionable multimedia genre associated with liberty of form - “a genre that combined order and chaos”. It appears then that a “capricious” style became fashionable in the arts right when it was being frowned upon in the sciences. What was the meaning of these parallel and contrasting trends? I will argue that the negative meaning of “capriccio” in the sciences indicated:

1. the changing relationship of theory and observation in the 17th century, which strongly privileged observation over theory; 
2. the beginning of a divergence between acceptable styles of thinking in scientific and artistic cultures, which would more fully develop in later periods.