or tie into a bouquet or paint on a canvas, are species that have been bred over centuries, if not millennia, with the aim to make some desired features more salient. There are, of course, also non-bred, ‘natural’ roses, for example the rosa canina, the most common European wild rose, whose fruit is known as rose hip. Hardly anybody would think of this simple flower, though, when asked to think of a rose. Thus, when we describe the sweet smell and the appearance of a rose, we describe an artificially created aesthetic concept that has been imposed onto nature, and which is consequently reproduced by nature.
A similar development can be observed with regard to the concept of late style. Bred in art historyart history, musicologymusic and literary criticism, late style has become a critical commonplace, and consequently a rule of creative production itself (McMullan and Smiles, Introduction 3). As Gordon McMullanMcMullan, Gordon has persuasively shown, late style, as it is perceived today, originated as a critical concept based on the “biological thought of certain German romantic philosophersphilosophyromanticism” (2) and was imposed on Shakespeare’sShakespeare, William late plays in the second half of the 19th century, for instance by the Irish critic Edward DowdenDowden, Edward (16).1 As a result of the pervasive critical discourse of lateness, “at least in Anglophone culture, […] writers [would] self-consciously […] look to Shakespeare for precedents for their own late work” (5). The rose bred in theory had begun to reproduce itself independently within literature. Yet, this is not to say that late style is a natural result of the physical reality of ageing. Rather, it is a socialsocial discourse product. In other words, authors develop a late style because they know that the concept exists. They are influenced less by their own ageing than by the scholarly and popular discourses about late-life creativity.
The history of critical receptionreception has generated distinct ideas of old-age art and late-life creativity. Shakespeare’s Prospero, Monet’sMonet, Claude water-lily paintings, and Beethoven’sBeethoven, Ludwig van Great Fugue have come to stand for late style in literature, paintingpainting, and musicmusic, respectively. Theodor W. Adorno’sAdorno, Theodor W. seminal work on BeethovenBeethoven, Ludwig van around the middle of the twentieth century took the concept out of its critical niche and made it popular, and Edward SaidSaid, Edward certainly added further recognition to it half a century later. Yet, as is the case with Juliet’s rose, however much one foregrounds the sweetness of its smell and the beauty of its bloom, one cannot help noticing the thorns, too. The theory of old age art seems to be caught in restrictive and simplifying binaries: the declinedecline or culmination of the artist’s skills; the foregrounding of either deathdeath or continuitycontinuity in his or her works; the conflict between subjectivitysubjectivity and conventionconvention in their production. One could continue: art vs. reality, nature vs. historyhistory, and resignation vs. rebellionrebellion are further oppositions against which products of old age creativity can be gauged in a structuralist manner. Indeed, Linda HutcheonHutcheon, Linda and Michael HutcheonHutcheon, Michael, in their article “Late Style(s): the Ageism of the Singular,” caution against such clichés and ask: “[H]ow useful is this entire unstable concept of late stylelate style when it can be defined in such contradictory fashion […]?” (10).
Indeed, if one analyzes texts by ageing authors with these binaries in mind, Hutcheon and Hutcheon’s statement that “[c]ritics find […] what they seek to find” (9) becomes all too true. It should not be too difficult to come up with a description of a certain artist’s late phaselate phase, and, if inclined, one can draw parallels between artists and thus arrive at a set of late-style universalsuniversal late style. One might discover, for instance, that the ‘roses of late art’ are usually paler than fresh ones, that they grow longer (or more, or fewer) thorns, that their stems are thinner or thicker and their leaves of a darker or lighter green. What one does not learn, however, is why this is so. As long as one works with such binary oppositions – even if just using them as opposite poles of a cline along which to place particular works of art – one will gain little insight into the forces that shape the production of late style. From the point of view of ageing studies, particularly its philosophicalphilosophy and sociological branches, old age art is relevant mainly because it is an indicator of underlying assumptions about old age creativity, that is, the belief systems that condition late style in the first place. In other words, the late rose’s appearance is of interest because it should show us why it grew in this particular way. This is a question that has largely remained unexplored.
In 2016, Oxford University Press published a collection of essays titled Late Style and Its Discontents, which outlines the different ways in which late-style concepts in music theorymusic, art historyart history, and literary criticism have arrived at a point of paralysis. The term ‘late art’ is often used as a label but critics carry out little further investigation into the connections between old age and creativity (McMullan and Smiles, Introduction 1–2). Much of the fascination with late works, especially in literary studies, is connected to the idea that these are believed to
constitute […] the artist’s final vision, a meditation on the creative act and on human achievementachievement that frequently offers a glimpse of future developments. In short, late style is presumed to demand our attention […] because a great artist’s final statements disclose profound truthstruth. (2)
Within this definition, the term ‘late style’ is freed from its old-age factor: indeed, an artist who dies at a relatively young age may create a masterpiece that is subsequently received as his/her final, weighty statement – provided that its creator is considered “a major creative voice” (3).2 The term ‘old-age styleold-age style,’ in turn, which takes the artist’s advanced age as a condition for the work’s production, applies to stylistic changes produced in an artist’s old age independently of the work’s (or the artist’s) canonical status. In other words, whereas ‘late style’ makes a quality judgment, ‘old-age style’ is a qualitatively neutral, analytical category that foregrounds the relationship between the artists’ age and style and presupposes a causal relationship between the two. In practice, however, the two terms often overlap and are used interchangeably (Amigoni and McMullan 378), with ‘late style’ dominating the critical discourse. This is frowned upon by McMullanMcMullan, Gordon and SmilesSmiles, Sam because it “arguably obscures the specific impact of old age on creativitycreativity” (Introduction 6).
Even though one should thus consider the connection between old age and creativity a priority in studying late art, the concept of old-age styleold-age style is more problematic than McMullanMcMullan, Gordon and SmilesSmiles, Sam allow for. If one is to assert that a certain style of a composer, painter, or writer is influenced by his or her old age, one needs to be able to define what old age means. When and why does a person qualify as old? What are the factors that determine old age? A certain number of years lived? Physical frailtyfrailty? Proximity to deathdeath? Numerous investigations suggest that old age is a fuzzy category, “a cultural constructcultural discourse” (Waxman 8), and ideas about what it means have shifted over the centuries. The leading German art historianart history Willibald SauerländerSauerländer, Willibald, for instance, has shown that with the increasing secularization of the Western world, ideas about old age have developed from the concept of a passive phase of waiting for death in expectation of the afterlife (i.e. God’s decision to take one’s life) to the current focus on consumption, entertainment, and active ageing.3 Moreover, as soon as we take the definition beyond chronological old age (i.e. the period of life after sixty, or seventy, depending on life expectancy), we will have to focus on subjective ageing, which is greatly influenced by a person’s individual situation and his/her cultural environment, for instance healthhealth, or, rather, illness and pain (cf. de Medeiros and Black), as well as social and economic circumstances (cf. Twigg and Martin, “Identities”). Regional distinctions, as, for example, rural versus urban life (cf. Edmondson and Scharf) and, more importantly, racerace, classclass and gendergender differences (cf. Calasanti and King) add to the complexity and make it almost impossible to safely determine to what extent and in which ways old age influences a particular artist’s creative production.
From this, it follows that there are only two valid methods to approach old-age style: either there is enough testimony by the artists themselves about what ageing meant or means for them and for their artistic activity,4 or critics will have to rely on general cultural concepts of ageing