The Affective Properties of Styles: An Inquiry into Analytical Process and the Inscription of Meaning in Art History *

In the wider arena of the way(s) in which the arts and the sciences generate appropriate terms and concepts to be used as instruments in analytical operations, the term/concept “style” occupies a rather special place: applicable both to the ways in which the operations are undertaken ¹ and to describable characteristics of the objects of analysis. In the present chapter, I wish to pursue, on the one hand, the lack of discreet boundaries between “style” as it is manifest in a work and subject matter—hence, content and meaning—and, on the other hand, the hermeneutic problems raised by attempts to correlate style and meaning through “stylistic analysis” as operationalized in art history.