ABSTRACT
Linking sneakers with styles in art is not a new idea. It is usually associated with artists decorating traditional sneakers, thereby making them “art objects.” My interest here, though, is more in line with traditional art history and its sequence of major style categories, such as the progression from the High Renaissance through Mannerist to the Baroque and the Rococo. Just as Gramsci spoke of organic intellectuals naturally arising within a society, so we can think of something like organic cultural styles, sequences of shapes and forms that seem to arise naturally within the ebb and flow of normal social and economic life.
