A Theory of Style

ART HISTORIANS are especially preoccupied with defining the nature and behavior of style. For history to be written at all we must find in what we study factors which at once are consistent enough to be distinguishable and changeable enough to have a story. In political-social history these factors are sometimes institutions, sometimes persons or groups-units which retain their identity over a span of time or shift of locale, yet change and develop as they react to their environment and its changes. In the study of the arts, works, not institutions or people, are the primary data; in them we must find certain characteristics