Editing Style (visual arts) (section)

==Individual style==
{{redirect|Signature style|the American company known as '''Signature Styles''' 2009–2012|Signature Styles}}
Traditional art history has also placed great emphasis on the individual style, sometimes called the '''signature style''',<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Suffern|first=Erika|date=2013|title=Review of The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/670435|journal=Renaissance Quarterly|volume=66|issue=1|pages=212–214|doi=10.1086/670435|jstor=10.1086/670435 |s2cid=163333589 |issn=0034-4338|url-access=subscription}}</ref> of an artist: "the notion of personal style—that individuality can be uniquely expressed not only in the way an artist draws, but also in the stylistic quirks of an author's writing (for instance)— is perhaps an axiom of Western notions of identity".<ref>Elsner, 103</ref>  The identification of individual styles is especially important in the attribution of works to artists, which is a dominant factor in their [[art valuation|valuation for the art market]], above all for works in the Western tradition since the Renaissance.  The identification of individual style in works is "essentially assigned to a group of specialists in the field known as [[connoisseur]]s",<ref>Alpers in Lang, 139, a situation she sees as problematic</ref> a group who centre in the art trade and museums, often with tensions between them and the community of academic art historians.<ref>Exemplified in grumbling by Grosvenor; Crane, 214–216</ref>

The exercise of connoisseurship is largely a matter of subjective impressions that are hard to analyse, but also a matter of knowing details of technique and the "hand" of different artists. [[Giovanni Morelli]] (1816 – 1891) pioneered the systematic study of the scrutiny of diagnostic minor details that revealed artists' scarcely conscious shorthand and conventions for portraying, for example, ears or hands, in Western [[old master]] paintings.  His techniques were adopted by [[Bernard Berenson]] and others, and have been applied to sculpture and many other types of art, for example by Sir [[John Beazley]] to [[Pottery of ancient Greece|Attic vase painting]].<ref>Elsner, 103; [http://arthistorians.info/morellig ''Dictionary of Art Historians'': "Giovanni Morelli"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106132620/http://arthistorians.info/morellig |date=2018-11-06 }}</ref>  Personal techniques can be important in analysing individual style.  Though artists' training was before Modernism essentially imitative, relying on taught technical methods, whether learnt as an apprentice in a workshop or later as a student in an academy, there was always room for personal variation.  The idea of technical "secrets" closely guarded by the master who developed them, is a long-standing ''[[Literary topos|topos]]'' in art history from Vasari's probably mythical account of [[Jan van Eyck]] to the secretive habits of [[Georges Seurat]].<ref>Gotlieb, throughout; 469–475 on Vasari and van Eyck; 469 on Seurat.</ref>   
[[File:Manner of rembrandt harmensz van rijn christ among the doctors d5343274h.jpg|thumb|left|220px|Painting of ''[[Christ among the Doctors]]'', catalogued by [[Christie's]] as "Manner of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn" and sold for £750 in 2010]]

However the idea of personal style is certainly not limited to the Western tradition. In [[Chinese art]] it is just as deeply held, but traditionally regarded as a factor in the appreciation of some types of art, above all [[Chinese calligraphy|calligraphy]] and [[literati painting]], but not others, such as Chinese porcelain;<ref>Rawson, 92–102; 111–119</ref> a distinction also often seen in the so-called [[decorative arts]] in the West. Chinese painting also allowed for the expression of political and social views by the artist a good deal earlier than is normally detected in the West.<ref>Rawson, 27</ref>  Calligraphy, also regarded as a [[fine art]] [[Islamic calligraphy|in the Islamic world]] and [[East Asia]], brings a new area within the ambit of personal style; the ideal of Western calligraphy tends to be to suppress individual style, while [[graphology]], which relies upon it, regards itself as a science.

The painter [[Edward Edwards (painter)|Edward Edwards]] said in his ''Anecdotes of Painters'' (1808): "Mr. [[Thomas Gainsborough|Gainsborough]]'s manner of penciling was so peculiar to himself, that his work needed no signature".<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2942274/13_Ritchie_Gainsboroughs-signature-22.pdf | title=Gainsborough’s signature style | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211027181258/https://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2942274/13_Ritchie_Gainsboroughs-signature-22.pdf | archive-date=2021-10-27 }}</ref>  Examples of strongly individual styles include: the [[Cubism|Cubist]] art of [[Pablo Picasso]], the [[Pop Art]] style<ref>{{Cite web|title=Pop art {{!}} Characteristics, Definition, Style, Movement, Types, Artists, Paintings, Prints, Examples, Lichtenstein, & Facts|url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Pop-art|access-date=2021-10-13|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref> of [[Andy Warhol]], [[Impressionism|Impressionist]] style of [[Vincent van Gogh|Vincent Van Gogh]], [[Drip painting|Drip Painting]] by [[Jackson Pollock]]