ABSTRACT
We speak of style in relation to a period, a school or movement in the arts and we also use the term to pick out features or characteristics of works of art across periods, schools or movements. These are matters of what might be called general style. We also speak of the style of an individual artist: individual style. This distinction corresponds roughly to that which Roland Barthes makes for literature between writing and style in Writing Degree Zero. For the teacher, the question of style is connected to questions about the role of emulation and imitation in arts education. This is discussed in Rod Taylor's and Gavin Bantock's contributions to The Symbolic Order, edited by Peter Abbs. The trouble with Wollheim's approach is that it tries both to deploy the concept of style normatively - to distinguish artists from mere, painters and to use the concept descriptively, as locating a psychological fact.
