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A Study in Classification: Style and Visual Perception

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949460600656584

1545-5920

Israel Abramov, Ann Farkas, Edward L. Ochsenschlager,

Conservation Techniques and Studies

Abstract The authors explore the process by which people determine that one object is similar to, or different from, another, and investigate how the process might affect our understanding of archaeological classification. Exploratory Data Analysis [Tukey] was conducted on measurements from 159 conical fired pots excavated at al-Hiba in Iraq. Although frequency distributions of single parameters did not show clear and consistent categories, certain correlated parameters showed a clear bimodal frequency distribution into two basic shapes which matched the traditional archaeological subdivision into "cups" and "bowls." Stylistic subdivisions perceived by undergraduate students (91, from Brooklyn College and New York University), when asked to sort profile drawings of pots (73) into perceived divisions and then group divisions into styles, agreed with the bimodal objective division. Exploratory Data Analysis can identify objective stylistic grouping of archaeological artifacts. Other findings of the authors during the conduct of this research include: (1) shape, independent of size, divides these pots into cups or bowls; (2) uniformity of surface and core colors indicates no basic differences in clays, kilns, or firing temperature and durations for nearly 1,000 years; (3) there is little inter-observer consistency in the division of the two major categories of perceived styles, but gender clearly affects the number of observed subdivisions. The study concludes with a look at statistical analyses of style in other objects and works of art and briefly explores some of the benefits that might accrue from the continued study of visual perception and art. Notes Some of the numerous writings on style include: Meyer Schapiro's art historical approach [1953 Schapiro , Meyer 1953 Style . In Anthropology Today . A. L. Kroeber , ed. Pp. 287 – 312 . Chicago : University of Chicago Press . [Google Scholar]: 287–312], in which style is constant form and sometimes constant elements, qualities, and expressions, in the art of an individual or a group; by contrast, James S. Ackerman [1963 Ackerman , James S. 1963 Style . In Art and Archaeology . J. S. Ackerman and Rhys Carpenter , eds. Pp. 164 – 86 . Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall . [Google Scholar]: 164–86] saw style as something without an objective correlate, something created by abstracting features from art so as to establish relations among works of art. From an anthropological viewpoint, H. Martin Wobst [1977 Wobst , H. Martin 1977 Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange . In For the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin . Chalres E. Cleland , ed. Pp. 317 – 42 . Ann Arbor : Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan ; Anthropological Papers, No. 61 . [Google Scholar]: 317–42] describes "stylistic behavior" as a strategy of information exchange; Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley [1992: chap. 7] offered a revisionist interpretation inspired by Foucault and Barthes, whereby style displays "a mediation of habituated forms of social consciousness, a restructuring of social reality in material form [and] an insertion of ideology at specific historical moments" [171]. Willibald Sauerländer [1983 Sauerländer , Willibald 1983 From Stilus to Style: Reflections on the Fate of a Notion . Art History , 6 ( September ): 253 – 70 . [CSA] [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 253–70] appropriated his etymology of style from John Flaxman (1755–1826), who had stated in his lectures on sculpture that style was first "applied to poetry" but "in the process of time, as the poet wrote with his style or pen, and the designer sketched with his style or pencil, the name of the instrument was familiarly used to express the genius and productions of the writer and the artist" [Holt 1966 Holt , Elizabeth G. , ed. 1966 From the Classicists to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century . Garden City , NY : Doubleday . [Google Scholar]: 26–27]. Others, among many writing on style, include: Margaret W. Conkey and Christine A. Hastorp [1990 Conkey , Margaret W. , and Christine A. Hastorp , eds. 1990 The Uses of Style in Archaeology . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [Google Scholar]]; D. M. Parker and J. B. Deregowski [1990 Parker , D. M. , and J. B. Deregowski 1990 Perception and Artistic Style . New York : Elsevier Science . [Google Scholar]]; Berel Lang [1979 Lang , Berel , ed. 1979 The Concept of Style . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . [Google Scholar]]; Jean Duvignaud [1993 Duvignaud , Jean 1993 Styles et modes de création. In Histoire des Mœurs , 2. Jean Poirier , ed. Pp. 1308–96. Paris : Gallimard. [Google Scholar]]. David Alan Brown [1999 Brown , David Alan 1999 Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius . New Haven : Yale University Press . [Google Scholar]] discussed the "collaborative" nature of Leonardo's style and claimed to subvert the conventional understanding of style as "the man himself." "Collaborative" style is not, however, all that innovative; archaeologists have generally used the term in this sense. Rudolf Arnheim [1986 Arnheim , Rudolf 1986 Style as a Gestalt Problem . In his Essays on the Psychology of Art . Pp. 261 – 73 . Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 261–73] defined style as a concept derived from myriad perceptual observations; he saw it as a "force field" and maintained that Gestalt theory predicted the constants of and changes in its structure. Howard Gardner [1982 Gardner , Howard 1982 Art, Mind, and Brain . New York : Basic Books . [Google Scholar]: 324–27] theorized that style perception was localized in the right hemisphere of the brain. Giorgio Vasari had of course used maniera ("style," "manner") to refer to the style of an artist or school. His term fine style referred to the "artist who achieves the highest perfection of style by copying the most beautiful things in nature and combining the most perfect members, hands, head, torso, and legs, to produce the finest possible figure as a model for use in all his works" [1987: 1; preface to part 3, 249–50]. One might summarize the variety of opinions about style thus: either "le style est l'homme même" [Buffon, Discours sur le style] or it is not. S. Pinker [1997 Pinker , Steven 1997 How the Mind Works . New York : W. W. Norton . [Google Scholar]: 126–29, 306–13]. Lakoff [1995 Lakoff , George 1995 The Neurocognitive Self: Conceptual System Research in the Twenty-first Century and the Rethinking of What a Person Is . In The Science of Mind: 2001 and Beyond . Robert L. Solso and Dominic W. Massaro , eds. Pp. 221 – 43 . New York : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]] would probably classify style as a contested conceptual category, such as democracy or art, which he describes as differently defined by different people: "Our best current theory of contested concepts is that there is an uncontested, but underspecified core concept, which gets extended on the basis of ideologies or other sets of belief about more general subject matter" [223–24]. It would be interesting to locate the core concept of style from which the various extended concepts spring. Excavations at al-Hiba began in 1968 under the direction of Vaughn Crawford for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Donald P. Hansen for the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. After the death of Dr. Crawford in 1971, Professor Hansen continued to lead the excavations under the auspices of both institutions. Although some might object to calling "area" and "age" physical characteristics, they are clearly properties of the object and are not subjective or evaluative. For a meticulous evaluation of categorizing pottery styles, see Paul Hockings [1963 Hockings , Paul 1963 Ceramic Style in Prehistoric Cyprus . Man , 63 : 65 – 68 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 65–68]. Note references in Ochsenschlager to the three tabags, of steel, mud, and basketry, and to the two guffa, one a basket and one a boat in local parlance, which demonstrate the importance of shape in the villagers' view of their world. Each drawing of the 73 pots was separately represented on a sheet of paper 5 by 8 inches. Some research has produced evidence for differences between expert and novice discriminations in areas other than artistic style, such as the ability to determine the gender of chicks [Biederman and Shiffrar 1987 Biederman , I. , and M. M. Shiffrar 1987 Sexing Day-Old Chicks: A Case Study and Expert Systems Analysis of a Difficult Perceptual-Learning Task . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 12 : 640 – 45 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 640–45] and the ability to differentiate beer flavors [Peron and Allen 1988 Peron , R. M. , and G. I. Allen 1988 Attempts to Train Novices for Beer Flavor Discrimination: A Matter of Taste . Journal of General Psychology , 115 : 402 – 18 . [CSA] [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]: 402–18]. S. Zeki [1999a Zeki , Semir 1999a Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain . Oxford : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]: 60]. Some neurologists discount or redefine the localized modularity theory of human perception to take into account the fact that many portions of the brain are involved in perception. G. Lakoff [1995 Lakoff , George 1995 The Neurocognitive Self: Conceptual System Research in the Twenty-first Century and the Rethinking of What a Person Is . In The Science of Mind: 2001 and Beyond . Robert L. Solso and Dominic W. Massaro , eds. Pp. 221 – 43 . New York : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]: 226], for example, suggests that there are convergence areas "where information is brought together and 'bound' neurally…. There are neural connections from the areas where those [individual] features are computed to a higher level where there is a neural ensemble whose job it is to govern the binding of those disparate features…. The convergence zone is where the activation of disparate functions is coordinated, but not where the functions are actually carried out. Instead of being localized in a module, the computations characterizing brain functions are widely distributed throughout the brain, while being coordinated from a variety of convergence zones." It may be possible to further associate various stages of art with the various processing levels of the human visual system. In our above suggestions, we are not implying anything about the mental capacities, or lack thereof, of Paleolithic artists, nor do we think it possible at this time to explain artists' apparent reliance on unconscious aspects of the visual system. For this controversy, see Humphrey [1999]. Additional informationNotes on contributorsIsrael AbramovISRAEL ABRAMOV, Professor of Psychology and Co-director of the Applied Vision Institute at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also a Professor of Experimental Psychology and of Biopsychology at the Graduate Center of CUNY. His research deals with the visual system, using anatomical, physiological, and psychophysical techniques. He has studied color vision across the visual field; changes in visual capacities of spatio-temporal resolution, binocular vision, and motion detection; development of oculo-motor control and optics of vision in human infants; and illumination of art works in museums. E-mail:iabramov@gc.cuny.eduAnn FarkasANN FARKAS, Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, at Brooklyn College of CUNY. Her interest in Achaemenid sculpture, Russian culture, and the art of the nomads of the Eurasian steppes was capped most recently by her participation in the conception, organization, and publication of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit on "The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes." She has always been interested in what we see when we see style. E-mail:Forellen2@aol.comEdward OchsenschlagerEDWARD OCHSENSCHLAGER, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of CUNY, has excavated in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey and Yugoslavia. He was responsible for the Early Dynastic pottery at al-Hiba, as well as an ethnoarchaeology project at the same site which resulted in an article in this journal, "Viewing the Past: Ethnoarchaeology at al-Hiba" [Visual Anthropology, 11 (1–2): 103–43], in 1998; and a book Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden in 2004. Both ancient and modern projects intrigued him with the problem of the relationship of form and function and the question of how ancient and modern people classified their pottery. E-mail:eochsensch@aol.com