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If I could ask the question a little differently:
Does style in any way alter the compositional choices that one might make?
I tend to think that style has little or no effect on composition, at least in the mainstream. When thinking about style the sand can get soft very quickly if you don't set some kind of boundaries. If you compared styles of the far left to those of the far right you might begin to infringe on some design choice, or alter some perceptions, I'm not sure. You can't be too absolute in your thinking.
As I ponder in my mind's eye the styles which we most contemplate here I don't see that style has much impact on design choices. We still have the same basket of can's, don'ts and should's to deal with, whether we are very realistic or highly impressionistic.
Since we view composition mainly with a blurred eye a lot of the "style" tends to get lost anyway, and what we are left with are pretty much the same shapes and masses.
Anyway, when a person that practices a particular style begins a project they would only be thinking and seeing, in terms of composition, with there own stylized eyes, and not thinking -- well if I painted in this style I would have made that choice, or if I painted like that I would do it like this. And so as we view the finished work we must accept the style that's offered and judge it as we will.
The more I think about it I don't know if my question offers any practical benefit in it's answer, or even if I've answered it necessarily. It's easy to stray when thinking about composition, it's hard to grab hold of something which offers so little absolute Truth, or absolutely False.
"When sitting for a painter you should absolutely never turn your back to him/her such that your back would be painted more than your front." This seems perfectly reasonable on it's face, and yet that would exclude one pretty nice painting back up the road a piece. We tend to lean toward things that offer a handy yes or no.
Here's a handy "yes" for me. I like this painting by Juaquin Sorolla y Bastida called: "Cabeza de Italiana" 23x16. The composition is fairly straightforward, but it's the style that keeps me hangin' on.
When I see Sorolla I also see Nicolai Fechin.
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Mike McCarty
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