{Byzantine Art [continued (6):] Byzantine Agitated Style}[21st February 1991]

[Redbook8:281][19910221:1142i]{Byzantine Art [continued (6):] Byzantine Agitated Style}[21st February 1991]

19910221.1142

[continued]

‘There is a distinctive style found throughout the Byzantine world (and in the West) which is so consciously artificial as to suggest that its popularity was due to public appreciation, rather than its expressiveness. This late-12th-century* development is one particularly conspicuous to modern scholarship, in which it is variously described as “the Monreale style”, the Dynamic style”, “the Agitated style”, “the Storm style”, or even as “Byzantine rococo”.** At its best, as, for example, in the Monreale mosaics of the 1180s, this stylistic mode was effective as a means of expression. The perceptions of the observer were stimulated not only by the garments of the figures drawn with convoluted, fluttering folds, but by the integration of figure groups into a complex mass of overlapping bodies, often placed in a setting in depth suggested by landscape or architecture, though the elements are never aligned from a single viewpoint. Furthermore, the scenes are not always composed as a series of single units, but, when possible, a whole wall was laid out with the various compositions set in harmony or counterpoint.’

***

*2048J~1280CE

**{cf [[Redbook8:312][19910306:0930s]{Romanesque Art [continued (15)}[6th March 1991],] 312 (Romanesque);

IX: [] 298 (Baroque)}

***– ibid [Encylopaedia of Visual Art 3:] 386

[continued]

[PostedBlogger12092023]