The aesthetic qualities of an artistic “style” seem to have become a critical and identifying facet of an artist’s body of work and identity. While historic shifts through art history have pushed artists into new visual approaches, in a digital age where the canon has been thoroughly examined and established has style become equally a commercial and hollow factor?

Esthetics influence a critical reading of art through a formalist lens, leading one to consider choices from the fundamentals of art such as composition or light to deeper analysis into the sublime of beauty. Where esthetics can provide a rich visual signifier to an artists’ catalogue, it can also place around them a box.

In Esthetics Ctl + C, the artist pulls back, removing themselves from the equation and allowing the esthetics to take the spotlight. Beginning with the old master works of Rembrandt and leading to the contemporary work of Herst, the artist appropriates the styles of artists throughout the canon. Stripping the work's aesthetic choices from the context and figures long associated— rather, placing icons and people from within their own life—the artist forces us to consider the importance of “style”. When “style” and esthetics take such precedent and importance in a contemporary and commercialized viewing of art, does it matter who the artist is?

Allysa Barnaba

December 2025