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Baroque

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Baroque ramblings upon the concept Baroque

Stephensonia

A definitive statement of what Baroque signifies in painting is provided by the series of paintings executed by Peter Paul Rubens for Marie de Medici at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris (now at the Louvre) [1], in which a Catholic painter satisfied a Catholic patron: Baroque-era conceptions of monarchy, Baroque iconography, Baroque handling of paint, and Baroque compositions and depiction of space.

Mariecouncil.jpg
The Council of the Gods — 1622-1625
One of the least understood of the paintings that make up the cycle. It is meant to represent the conduct of the Queen and the great care with which she oversees her Kingdom during her Regency. Thus, how she overcomes the rebellions and the disorders of the State. However, it is difficult to make out the subject matter of the work, as the scene is packed with a variety of mythological figures. These include Apollo and Pallas, who combat and overcome vices such as Discord, Hate, Fury, and Envy on the ground and Neptune, Pluto, Saturn, Hermes, Pan, Flora, Hebe, Pomono, Venus, Mars, Zeus, Hera, Cupid, and Diana above.

*In the end, Rubens accomplished quite an amazing feat. He completed a total of twenty-four enormous paintings in only three short years. He, unfortunately, did not look back on the experience as a positive one.

"In retrospect, in his own country, Rubens was calmer but hardly less bitter, 'when I consider the trips I have made to Paris, and the time I have spent there, without any special recompense, I find that the work for the queen mother has been very unprofitable to me'".

Marie de' Medici, however, was overjoyed at the final product. But then again, who wouldn't be? "Rubens was so kind to the queen, and adorned her with so many imaginary graces, that Marie de Medici was beside herself with delight. That, of course, is the way in which the great ones of this world want history to be written"*

  • Then there are those who confuse the author's POV with that of a character's.

Authored entries

Jorge Luis Borges' Definition of Baroque: (Njihia Mbitiru)

The following definition is taken from the 1954 edition of Jorge Luis Borges' short fiction volume 'Ficciones':

"I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. In vain did Andrew Lang attempt [...] to imitate Alexander Pope's Odyssey; it was already a parody, and so defeat the parodist's attempt to exaggerate its tautness. "Baroco" was a term used for one of the modes of syllogistic reasoning; the Eighteenth century applied it to certain abuses in Seventeenth century architecture and painting. I would venture to say that the baroque is the final stage in all art, where art flaunts and squanders its resources. The baroque is intellectual, and George Bernhard Shaw has said that all intellectual labor is inherently humorous. This humor is intentional in the works of Baltasar Gracian but intentional (as, it can be said, is also the case in Quicksilver ), even indulged (again, a Quicksilver trope), in the works of John Donne."

Community Entry: Baroque

Borges' is a marvellous and useful definition. One is reminded of Borges as cited by Michel Foucault - a figure who could be called a Baroque revivalist in many ways.

A contrary definition might refer mostly to literature, and refer to a list of notable Baroque figures. Given the unreliability of much history and biography of the time, or at least lingering doubts, it makes sense to list historical and non-historical figures like literary ones on the same list. Many people believed outrageous lies about real people, like George Psalamanazar, and there remain doubts about people like William Shakespeare, and whether they did what people say they did.

In this view Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) who lived 1547 - 1616) is a good starting figure for the Baroque period. He is clearly post-Renaissance and pre-Enlightenment. Signs and similitudes have been replaced by analogy, reason, identity, difference in elite professions, but not in the emotional culture, nor in the Church, nor the power relations of the nobles... dissonance that alienates Quixote in the novel.

Johannes Kepler certainly can fit in there too.

That period could be said to end with Jonathan Swift (as Lemuel Gulliver in 1726) and George Berkeley (and his attacks on Isaac Newton's optics, etc.) who were the last gasps of resistance to the God's eye view that developed with the Empire, gunpowder, mob rule and the popular vote - and rules to this very day.

The death of Johann Sebastian Bach has also been used to mark the end of the Baroque Age, although it should be noted that he was already out of fashion well before his demise.

Another view, expressed well in Baroque (Wikipedia) is more linguistic and focused on power structure and subject-object problems arising from the Reformation and Counter-Reformation:

"Baroque was directly an opposed language and represented the evidence of the crisis of Renaissance neoclassical schemes." This makes it quite relevant to today, since today the neoclassical philosophy expressed in neoclassical economics is dominating and giving us a market theology of globalization. As Michel Foucault did in the 20th century, there were mounting challenges to the idea of "Man" as such:

"The psychological pain of Man, disbanded after the Copernican and the Lutheran revolutions, in search of solid anchors, in search of a proof of an ultimate human power, was in Baroque art as well as in its architecture. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Roman Catholic Church was the main "customer".

It doesn't take much to extend the idea of "customer" to today's free trade ideologies. Nor to see why renewed interest in the Baroque could be seen as a Bourgeois affectation which holds off the day of the Worker's revolution or Islamic revolution or Green ethic or whatever we're in for next.

Applying Baroque to Science

The word "Baroque", like most period or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is a French translation of the Italian word "Barocco"; some authors believe it comes from the Portuguese "Barroco" (irregular pearl, or false jewel - notably, an ancient similar word, "Barlocco" or "Brillocco", is used in Roman dialect for the same meaning), or from a now obsolete Italian "Baroco" (that in logical Scholastica was used to indicate a syllogism with weak content). A common definition, before the term Barocco was used, called this genre simply the style of The Flying Forms.

The term "Baroque" was initially used with a derogatory meaning, to underline the excess of its emphasis, of its redundancy, its noisy abundance of details, as opposed to the clearer and sober rationality of the century of Enlightenment. It was finally rehabilitated in 1888 by the German art historian Heinrich Woelfflin (1864-1945), who identified Baroque as antithetic to Renaissance and as a different kind of art (thus, not a "non-art").

The Art

But Enoch refers to Empirism as the Art. He's grown past Alchemy as he tells young Ben that “T‘was all rubbish” agreeing with Godfrey. Something's up.

Baroque literature and philosophy

Baroque actually expressed new values, that often are summarised in the use of metaphor and allegory, which widely invaded Baroque literature, and in the research for the "maraviglia" (wonder, astonishment - as in Marinism), the use of artifices. If Mannerism was a first breach with Renaissance, Baroque was directly an opposed language and represented the evidence of the crisis of Renaissance neoclassical schemes. The psychological pain of Man, disbanded after the Copernican and the Lutheran revolutions, in search of solid anchors, in search of a proof of an ultimate human power, was in Baroque art as well as in its architecture. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Roman Church was the main "customer".

Virtuosity was researched by artists (and the Virtuoso became a common figure in any art), together with realism and care for details (some talk of a typical "intricacy").

Not without a certain correctness, it is said that the privilege given to external forms had to compensate and balance the lack of contents that has been observed in many Baroque works: the same Marino's "Maraviglia" is practically made of the pure, mere form. Fantasy and imagination should be evoked in the spectator, in the reader, in the listener. All was focused around the individual Man, as a straight relationship between the artist, or directly the art and its user, its client. Art is then less distant from user, more directly approaching him, solving the cultural gap that used to keep art and user reciprocally far, by Maraviglia. But the increased attention to the individual, also created in these schemes some important genres like the Romanzo (novel) and let popular or local forms of art, especially dialectal literature, to be put into evidence. In Italy this movement toward the single individual (that some define a "cultural descent", while others indicate it was a possible cause for the classical opposition to Baroque) caused Latin to be definitely replaced by Italian.

In English literature, the metaphysical poets represent a closely related movement; their poetry likewise sought unusual metaphors, which they then examined in often extensive detail. Their verse also manifests a taste for paradox, and deliberately inventive and unusual turns of phrase.

Meaning

WordNet

Pronunciation: bu'rowk, Matching Terms: baroqueness WordNet Dictionary Definition: [n] elaborate an extensive ornamentation in decorative art and architecture that flourished in Europe in the 17th century [adj] having elaborate symmetrical ornamentation; "the building...frantically baroque"-William Dean Howells Synonyms: baroqueness, churrigueresco, churrigueresque, fancy Also: artistic style, idiom

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

\Ba*roque"\, a. [F.; cf. It. barocco.] (Arch.): In bad taste; grotesque; odd.

\Ba*roque"\, a. — Irregular in form; -- said esp. of a pearl.

Computing Dictionary

An early logic programming language written by Boyer and Moore in 1972. ["Computational Logic: Structure Sharing and Proof of program Properties", J. Moore, DCL Memo 67, U Edinburgh 1974].

Jargon File

Feature-encrusted; complex; gaudy; verging on excessive. Said of hardware or (especially) software designs, this has many of the connotations of elephantine or monstrosity but is less extreme and not pejorative in itself. "Metafont even has features to introduce random variations to its letterform output. Now that is baroque!" See also rococo - Baroque in the extreme. Used to imply that a program has become so encrusted with the software equivalent of gold leaf and curlicues that they have completely swamped the underlying design. Called after the later and more extreme forms of Baroque architecture and decoration prevalent during the mid-1700s in Europe. Alan Perlis said: "Every program eventually becomes rococo, and then rubble."

Compare with critical mass

Thesaurus Terms

Related Terms: arabesque, bizarre, brain-born, busy, chichi, deformed, dream-built, elaborate, elegant, embellished, extravagant, fanciful, fancy, fancy-born, fancy-built, fancy-woven, fantasque, fantastic, fine, flamboyant, florid, flowery, freak, freakish, frilly, fussy, gilt, Gothic, grotesque, high-wrought, labored, luscious, luxuriant, luxurious, maggoty, malformed, misbegotten, misshapen, monstrous, moresque, notional, ornamented, ornate, ostentatious, outlandish, overelaborate, overelegant, overlabored, overworked, overwrought, picturesque, preposterous, pretty-pretty, rich, rococo, scrolled, teratogenic, teratoid, whimsical, wild.

John Milton's Paradise Lost is an excellent example of Baroque poetry.

Examples of typical Baroque Music

  • Johann Sebastian Bach, ( The Art of the Fugue, 1685 to 1750)
  • Antonio Vivaldi, ( L'Estro Armonico, 1678 to 1741)
  • Domenico Scarlatti, (Sonatas for Cembalo or Harpsichord 1685 to 1757)
  • George Frideric Handel (Water Music Suite for Orchestra 1685 to1759)

Reference Material

  • Roger Avermaete, Rubens and his times. Cranbury, New Jersey: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1968.
  • Frans Baudouin, Pietro Pauolo Rubens. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1977.
  • Anthony Bertram, The Life of Sir Peter-Paul Rubens. London: Peter Davies, Ltd., 1928.
  • Jacques Thuillier, Rubens' Life of Marie de' Medici. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1967.
  • Christopher White, Rubens and his world. London: Thames and Hudson, 1968.

References