How Forms in Art Work by Simon Abrahams tyle, the traditional method of classifying art, is rarely mentioned on our website because it has little effect on interpretation. Mark Roskill has written: ‘discussion[s] of style provide measures of constancy in artistic language...which reach beyond the individual to the group, and beyond that potentially to some larger cultural entity. They also serve as ways of....grouping under a single descriptive heading particular, identifiable ways of doing things. But while all of this makes style an apt and adaptable tool for classificatory purposes, it is not clear if, so understood, it either has or is left with any kind of a role for interpretative purposes’ 1 Style may influence individual taste but is unlikely to effect universal judgment. It is one of those aspects of art that is truly cultural and is of no help to the emerging master of another time. What they look for in developing their method are those aspects of the canon that are inherited and which can be seen evolving from one variety to another down through the ages. Great artists share a common understanding of human perception, a deep communion with nature and common ideas that express basic truths. Much of this is communicated through use of similar forms which evolve with modifications from artist to artist. Though some scholars use form to mean style, when we use it form always means shape. 2 No-one argues that words are meaningless but many writers on art think forms are and scorn anyone investigating their etymology. It used to be common to identify sources and there was much prestige to be had in academic circles when a scholar could show that one artist had borrowed a figure from another. The word ‘source’ used to appear frequently in the titles of scholarly articles, as in “A New