35 FORMAL INNOVATION
GROUND-BREAKING ARTWORKS CAN CHANGE THE WHOLE GAME
From time to time, an artwork is produced that radically changes the formal means by which art may be made. Such changes usually signal not only a change in style and technical possibilities, but also broader cultural shifts. For example, development of fully rendered perspectival space in fifteenth-century Italy was not only an extraordinary formal innovation, it also heralded a broader intellectual and scientific movement, evidenced by humanistic ideals, new discoveries in mathematics, and a fresh spirit of intellectual enquiry.
Not all formal innovations are quite so radical, but they are always important. Caravaggio’s development of a highly theatrical presentation of ...
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