{Artistic Cycles (2) (Extract)}[2nd July 1990]

[Redbook7:164][19900705:2310]{Artistic Cycles (2) (Extract)}[2nd July 1990]

19900702.2310

[The ms page here starts with a photocopy of an article headed “Style in the Arts” which cannot be reproduced here for copyright reasons, but which under the heading “Cyclical theories” includes the following passage, which is highlighted in the ms:]

‘In an effort to get closer to the observed course of events, some historians have favoured, in whole or in part, a cyclical theory that pictures each major single-culture style as going through the same irreversible series of cross-cultural styles, which is usually given as archaic, classic, baroque, impressionist, and archaistic. Thus the first, or archaic, phase of the Graeco-Roman cycle is supposed to correspond with the first phase of the Gothic and of the Renaissance cycles: and one can speak of third-phase baroque Greek, third-phase baroque Gothic, and even third-phase baroque Baroque. The theory has some fascination, and occasionally it works well enough to shed light on the actual historical behaviour of styles. But often it works only because one has been careful to start the cycle in the right place, and far too often it does not work at all.’

– E[ncyclopedia] B[ritannica] 14:151

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