There are two kinds of
pearls: regular and irregular.Every regular pearl is perfectly
spherical and they may differ in size and in luster and "orient
"-but each is identical in shape. Now,irregular pearls are
almost beyond number in their variety.One distinct group among them
gave a name to a very significant style in art: baroque pearls.
baroque pearls from South Sea
Baroque like Renaissance is
ahistorical,extending its distinct stylistic tendency across many
cultural epochs.They both reflect an important
opposition in viewing the world and art.
Egyptian sculpture has
been always restrained,balanced in symmetry and therefore expressing
what five and a half millennia later was called “renaissance”spirit.
Archaic Greek sculpture expresses the same stylistic preference,while
Hellenistic epoch is pure “baroque”.
Renaissance art is
Apollonian while Baroque is Dionysian. The Sun,the Light of
Apollonian approach is illuminating visible world in such a
measured,unveiling way that the visibility offers everything for
examination,acquaintance,apprehension. Because objects are presented
with such clarity,the light itself is not felt as intense presence :
forms instead are.
San Giorgio Maggiore by Andrea Palladio
If Baroque can be
understood as expression of “Dionysian” view of life,than it
would have to be avoiding in its description chaos,often mentioned in
characterizing Dionysian spirit. There is simply never chaos in
Baroque art. There is strife,agitation,drama and great imbalance
without chaos. Somehow chaos apparently exists outside artistic
formal arrangements.
Renaissance is proposing
a view that is a completed task and presents a state of completion.
The state of things as they found their fitting places and can show
them with finality,clarity and just balance.
Chiostro by Andrea Palladio
If Renaissance is made of
lighted forms,the Baroque believes that the correct view is one of
all-encompassing Darkness,out of which ,here and there some
protruding promontories emerge , found by searching lights. As much
as Renaissance seems mostly static and languorous,the Baroque is
striving,reaching or conflicted,overtaken by some dramatic struggle.
Even something as sitting would be shown as escaping the chair's
confines,rejecting the chair invitation to placidity,being pulled
away by some invisible force.
Baroque art describes the
world by chiaroscuro while Renaissance by shaping forms. Artists of
Renaissance were pursuing Idealism in everything: ideal forms,ideal
proportions,noble line and golden balance. Baroque,at least in
painting found a new,fascinating and vast world,unknown to art up
till 1590th-realism.
In Renaissance painting
objects are shown fully and appear separate. Baroque presents
forcefully the experience of unity in which many parts
participate,rarely or never shown on their own. Flux,change,struggle
and conflicting forces tear at the whole universe. Banks of clouds
are engaged in some meteorological agony,the landscape suffers
calamitous convulsions while waters overflow,cascade .Everything has
a dramatic role in Baroque Opera Mundi .
Column of Baldacchimo at St.Peter by Bernini
Just like Renaissance
cannot be build out of Gothic elements- the Baroque arouse out of its
own parts,without Renaissance. Continuing and adding more passion to
ever thinner elements of Gothic Flamboyant would never lead toward
Renaissance. That means there was no gradual replacement of forms of
old style and taking in new ones. There was some evolution,or at
least intensifications within the period of each style but not
graduated transitions from one style to the next.
A church is a machine
loaded with people's yearning and put into motion,a kind of swirl
intending to produce communal experience of the Divine.
A church is a devotional
carousel for festive rides around circular pillar of Yearning for the
Divine that are attempting to move God into appearing for the
supplicants.
Baldacchimo by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Even though God is so
intensely,so completely everywhere people reject this most
fundamental fact about Being and wish for something else: building a
focal lens for the concentrated divine presence in form of a stone
circle,a temple ,a church,a launch pad for lift off to meet the
Divine.
Renaissance church is laid
out as reflection of perfection and therefore its plan has centrality
,circle and square governing it. There is an overwhelming sense of
fulfillment and static completion.
Baroque reflects
embodiment of a very different feeling. Instead of a square and
centrality it builds on longitudinal plan and where in Renaissance
would be perfect circle Baroque would use an ellipse and an oblong.
Baroque expresses an intense agitation,gathering of forces,reaching
out.
Baroque state of the
spirit is filled with passions transgressing all moderation. Relation
with the Divine is so endowed with extreme emotions,so much intensity
animates the faithful that nothing can stay unrelated outside of its
ardent plea for salvation.
The division between
renaissance approach and baroque is present throughout time and every
creation belongs to either style.
