Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:43 am
I wonder, hectorm - was it their personal style they were busy with, or were they mostly consumed, like all of us, with how to dress? - what cloth, what cut, what tailor, how to mix, what looks good, what doesn't. The craft is consuming - to acquire, to practise.
The apprentice doesn't look for the ultimate expression of his individuality or some ideal in his first (tens of) canvases - he is merely trying out his hand, understanding how to mix colours, how to hold the brush, what stroke to use. He may admire great masters and the mysterious quality that emanates from some of their paintings, but he will focus on technique. With time, as the craft is transcended, he will hopefully stop emulating, and accidentally discover himself. Armed with the mastery of his means, he will imbue his canvases with his own mysterious quality - substantially the same, yet different in expression from that of the masters whom he admired.
Focusing directly on style is counterproductive: it won't obey your command. It is as elusive as magnetism: the only way to keep it going is to make sure there is electricity running through the coil. It's indirect in nature. We cannot will ourselves into style, as we cannot will ourselves into love. What we can (and should) do, however, is to get the craft right. All those you mention, hectorm, were masters at the craft of dress: they knew what kind of tailoring suited them, how to choose a tie, what shoes to wear to a tweed jacket.
There are some very competent dressers with no style whatsoever. Particularly those keen on having a personal style end up in a spasmodic contraction to display relaxed sprezzatura or some other sartorial value held in high esteem, which effectively dissipates any aura of style that might otherwise shine through. They know the rules, the grammar and vocabulary (in Luca's terms), but the craft is just "too small" for them from the outset, they insist on showing "personality", on being "individual", on appearing "unique"; they already ARE all these things, so how could they possibly fail to manifest them? Simple: by counterfeiting them, out of insecurity.