Chapter 2 Style "Every apparition can be experienced in two ways. The two ways are not at random, but they are attached to the apparitions – they are derived from the nature of the apparition, from two of their characteristics: exterior – interior.” Wassily Kandinsky1 “Le style c’est l’homme même.” Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon2 Although people find it difficult to define the concept of style spontaneously, they classify each other as belonging or not belonging together by respective styles. They always do so when they see others as punk, nerd, hipster, hippie, yuppie, emo, or belonging to hip hop or the mainstream. Which succeeds more fre- quently than not! Yet, the question is how this works and why. Sociology asserts style to be either representative or constitutive of social groups, or else both.3 However, there is consensus in all of sociology that social 1 Kandinsky 1973 (1926), p. 13, my translation. 2 Cited after Saisselin 1958. 3 Modernist sociology regards differences in endowment (financial and cultural capital) as being constitutive for forming social groups; style is merely representative of social groups (for exam- ple, the Birmingham School in its analysis of British youth cultures [Hebdige 1988]). In contrast, in the postmodern variant of sociology, the group style is understood as the constituent charac- teristic of the group; it is only by showing a style, that groups can come into being and are able to persist; other socio-cultural characteristics, for example the endowment with capital, play no or only a secondary role. Bourdieu (1982) marks the transition from modernism to postmodernism, 48 Part 1: Culture of Dissimiarity groups and their style form an inseparable entity. Group identities possess group-specific styles; and social distance between groups manifests itself in such differences. I will refer to the group-specific style as the common style (of a group). If social distance between groups is established by means of different group- specific styles, how then will proximity be established within a group? As I will argue in chapter 3, this is achieved by means of the individual style of the group members. The more similar individual styles are, the greater proximity is within the group; the more dissimilar they are, the less proximity there is. Individual style and individual identity form an entity. Collective identity and common style form a corresponding pair, and indi- vidual identity forms one with individual style. So, the very core of the produc- tion of social distance and proximity is affected by the question of exactly how and why human beings recognise social groups and individuals by their style. To answer this question I need to clarify the concept of style, which is the aim of this chapter. In science, style is addressed at different levels of aggregation. Sociology ad- dresses it at the aggregate level of object ensembles. The ensemble as a whole, a subset from the world of objects, is defined as a style, freed from its constituent components, and assigned to a social group. At this level of aggregation, the style has lost the material substance of its empirical evidence, ‘anything goes’ as an ensemble as long as it differs from the ensembles of other groups. Archaeology and art history search for style on the disaggregated level of the particular object, e.g., an (antique) vase, or a painting. There, characteristics are found which are subsequently searched for in other objects. The subset of objects with these characteristics, remaining variable in number, is then seen as consist- ing of elements made in their shared style. Objects are thus assigned to different cultural taxa, referred to as a style. For example, ceramic fragment may belong to the cultural taxon of the Ionic style and another to the Corinthian style. Or a painting may belong to the cultural taxon of the High Renaissance and another to mannerism. The assignment of human beings to a style is done eclectically: be they those known by name, painting in a certain style (e.g., abstract expression- ism), or the artistic avant-garde of a time and place (for example, the Vienna postulating that their outward signals are as representative of social groups as they are constitu- tive for them. Style 49 Secession), or members of a style who will never be identified (e.g., Funnelbeaker culture), showing up in history only through association with that style.4 The following considerations remain in the tradition of art history and ar- chaeology if we start from the analysis of style in the world of things. However, from a sociological point of view, I perceive this material style as being interwo- ven with the social. In this context, I will define the term ‘style’ more precisely, step by step. Beauty versus the Aesthetic Beauty is a value and a quality, aesthetics is merely a quality.5 In the following, style is understood as an aesthetic concept: a style can be, but isn’t necessarily beautiful. A punk wearing a safety pin in his or her ear and a representative of goth, pale as death, also show style – no matter how ugly they may be perceived to be. The aesthetics of a style is reflected in the quality of the ensemble of objects that constitute it. In this interpretation, style is a neutral concept. So, when I re- fer to the style of one group and that of another, I am referring to the different qualities as they are shown in their 0/+consumption. As a concept of aesthetics and not a term for beauty, style has an important implication for all that follows: two styles cannot be ordinally ranked. As a style is not a value but merely a quality, it defies ordinal comparisons such as: more or less beautiful than another style, more or less accomplished, more or less appeal- ing, more or less contemporary. Two styles are incomparable in this normative sense, they are economic substitutes for “Yes to this, no to that!”, or alternatively, ‘No to this, yes to that!’ As they are merely different qualities, styles lend them- selves to the production of social distance and proximity without imposing hier- archies themselves. Style, understood as being aesthetic, is therefore equally suitable for the anal- ysis of stratified and non-stratified societies. As the object of scientific investi- gation, the human being may be admiring or pejorative of other people’s ‘styles’, but the sentiment of beauty cannot be the issue here. Instead I take both the in- dividual and the common style as the fundamental scientific concept for the anal- ysis of stratified and non-stratified society. 4 Much like archaeology, material culture starts from the analysis of individual objects, but it fur- ther investigates their systematic connection to the human. Ensembles of objects are, however, not in its focus, and therefore not the style. 5 Costello 2004. 50 Part 1: Culture of Dissimiarity Individual versus Common Art historians define the style of objects using the signature model. They look for the artist’s ‘hallmark’ in an object. The origin of the word style, stylus – the pen of the writer – already points to this. In the signature model, the style of an object is the unmistakable hallmark of its creator. Knowing his individual style, the art historian accredits a newly discovered fresco, previously concealed under a coat of paint, to Titian. Or the art historian exposes a painting previously attributed to Kazimir Malevich as a fake. Or they attribute a newly discovered object to a particular but unknown artist, whose hallmark has already become visible in other works. One such artist is the fifth century B.C. Greek known as ‘The Master of the Berlin Amphora’, whose stylistic signature is evident on over 300 vases.6 The signature model is also used in archaeology. However, there the aim is not to identify a creator as an individual, but rather to assign, for example, the finds of a certain area to a culture defined only by its style, such as the Funnelbeaker culture.7 Thus, in the signature model, the origin of a thing or a subset of the world of things is determined by means of style, regardless of whether the origin is an in- dividual, a group, or an epoch. In doing so, intentionality is always assumed. As a result, things from nature cannot be of a style, only artificial things can. Their style makes them part of culture. Intentionality may refer to the thing as a whole, as is the case with Joseph Beuys’ Fat Corner (1982), which he intended to be seen as a whole. It can also refer to the use of a manufacturing technique alone, such as the potter’s wheel, which leads to common characteristics of the things pro- duced on it. Analysts in the tradition of the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin and the phi- losopher Richard Wollheim, further refine the concept of ‘signature’ by distin- guishing between two basic concepts of style. A work that shows, for example, Titian’s individual style, is created by him. A work in the common style of Titian is not by him, but shows (as do all paintings of the High Renaissance) characteris- tics which are exemplary in Titian’s individual style. In other words, the individ- ual style of an artist, whether they’re known by name or not, is causal for their output. The common style, on the other hand, has a purely taxonomic function; it is a way of classifying objects and thus ordering them into subsets of the world of objects. The individual style is associated with a proper name (of an artist) or 6 Lezzi-Hafter 2017.