This is something that's been in the back of my mind for awhile now, and though there was a similar thread about the Barqoue on this before, I don't think it really touched on what I'm thinking.
I think most of us have a reasonably good understanding of the Baroque period, which was more of the focus of the other thread, but I hear it used a lot in referencing contemporary architecture that is certainly not in the Baroque style. In fact, it's used much more as an adjective, describing something as baroque, but I get the impression that the word means something slightly different to many different people.
So I'm wondering, in terms of contemporary architecture, what does baroque mean to you?
Baroque to me, in terms of built things, means ornate. In terms of opera, it would mean flourished, well, thats the same a ornate. Nevermind. Baroque means ornament.
more than ornate, baroque is grotesque or almost perverse; something that intentionally breaks the rules of design. venturi's exploration of the baroque in complexity and contradiction is a good place to start for contemporary usage. i think of late though the term is being used more as simply "ornate" as others have mentioned; venturi's postmodern exploration is more and more being forgotten or ignored.
baroque is more than ornate, right? its exuberant spaces & masses that follow human emotion, even in disregard for structure... Gehry's work is baroque, the Aalto vases are baroque (i think), but without much traditional ornament... it can be grotesque and perverse, of course, but is it necessarily?
it can be grotesque and perverse, of course, but is it necessarily?
that's what i mean when i write the contemporary definition of the word is changing. venturi was attempting to draw a parallel between the transition from the renaissance to the baroque as modernism was shifting towards postmodernism. to venturi, the grotesque and the perverse was an integral part of his definition of postmodernism.
i do tend to agree with citizen though that the contemporary scene is more rococo than it is baroque.
I think Deleuze's treatment of the Baroque in "The Fold" is pretty good. Basically, Baroque architecture is a "destabilized" architecture that can't be fully apprehended from a fixed, stable viewpoint. Essentially, it's an architecture of ceaseless motion. Actually a very modern notion.
I really like that definition. I was fortunate enough to go to Europe for a semester last year, and before going I wasn't crazy about Baoque architecture, but after seeing it in person and experiencing it, I can't stop thinking about it. It's certianly not something I'd advocated continuing stylistically, but I think your notion of the idea of the movement, of constant motion, is something very interesting to consider in a modern sense. I've also been interested by its blatant embrace of the fabricated or fake, of plaster walls painted to look like doorways or stone or panelling, etc--I think it's interesting to consider in a contemporary way that same question of what is real.
Aug 22, 08 2:08 pm ·
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Of course, the Baroque style continued beyond Bernini--I believe even the double porticos of St. Peter's Square were done after the above performance. All the same, Bernini's theatrical performance manifests the Baroque's consummate ending. Within his double theater Bernini capsulized the beginning of Western culture's new bifurcation of the real and the illusory, introduced mirroring as a henceforth dominant (post) Baroque (stylistic) theme, and, at base (or should I say at the ultimate end), inverted reality into a reenactment of its own illusory mirror (--is this perhaps also the genesis of historiography?).
Essentially, beyond the Baroque (and still often in our own modern times), architecture at its best is very sophisticated theater, keeping in mind that theater is one of the earliest forms of (man made) reenactment. Lauf
pvbeeber: I've never read Deleuze (Well, not true. I've read some of 1,000 Plateaus and understood pretty much only the nouns, and not in relation to each other or any of the verbs. In other words I understood about 3% of what was going on), but I'm confused by your statement that an architecture of ceaseless motion is very "modern".
Do you mean modern or Modern? I think of Modern architecture - let's say, Mies' Tugendhat House - being static structure through which space flows ceaselessly. The viewer - the body - is irrelevant to the space, because the structure can be intellectualized without moving through it, and the space itself flows regardless.
In Loos' Villa Muller, on the other hand, the architecture unfolds due to the viewer's movement through it, but the space doesn't flow so much as gather around the certain moments of emphasis (ugh, how do I say this?). That to me is more baroque. There *has* to be movement through to comprehend, and the role of the architecture is to thwart the comprehension..
I'm only speaking of the interior space, and in either case, of course, the architecture itself is stable. But I think the baroque building is trying to make the viewer feel destabilized - in churches, to feel the ecstasy that vado posted. I don't think that was ever a goal of Modern (capital M) architecture.
FLMike: ; I've also been interested by its blatant embrace of the fabricated or fake, of plaster walls painted to look like doorways or stone or panelling, etc--I think it's interesting to consider in a contemporary way that same question of what is real.;
makes me think if Meies' decorative I-beams on his Chicago towers and the Mondrian-inspired Reitveld's Schroeder house, the whole sliding-planes-in-space thing, a Modernist effort to create an illusion... even the use of plate glass as if it wasn't dividing space at all.... is there baroque in midcentury Modernism?
ooo. I really like the comparison of Loos and Baroque churches. I think you're right, LB, in that it's not the architecture that is actually mobile (which can also be interesting, though I think is prone to being gimmicky), but the sense that it cannot be fully understood statically. In this way, I think it can be like a lot of Le Corbusier's projects or even early Mies projects that were inspired by Cubism. Though the form is in fact static, the experience of it and of the space it creates is actually quite dynamic, so the understanding of the form and space is always evolving.
liberty, I was thinking modern (with a lower-case m) in the sense that it involves the same kind of "alienation" that came to define the modern era (alienation of the worker from the products of his labor in Marx, alienation of the observer from physical phenomena in physics, alienation of the conscious mind from subconscious motivations in Freud, alienation embodied by the flaneur in Benjamin, etc.). Of course the Baroque predated the modern era by centuries, but still seems diametrically opposed to "classical" thought involving a static and reliable subject and a stable, self-contained, self-consistent, "whole" object. The Vitruvian Man would not feel very comfortable in a Baroque building. I think Modernism (with a capital M) was part of this greater transition, but it was the greater transition that I had in mind.
was the slashing of constanza buonarelli a baroque act???
Aug 22, 08 11:25 pm ·
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Perhaps the sordid love quadrilateral between Constanza (the art collector and dealer), her husband, Bernini, and Bernini's brother was something of an inspiration for the Due Teatri
Portrait of Constanza Bonarelli, 1637.
Due Teatri, 1637.
pvbeeber, do you think that a lot of Modernism, at least and especially the latter Miesian strain, follows the same sort of regularity and order of classicism, however? I think you could at least make an argument for this, and that at least in theoretical terms, postmodernism and destructivist theory is more destablizing. It sounds like you have a better handle on this than I do, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts more on it.
Aug 25, 08 12:47 pm ·
·
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If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.
This is something that's been in the back of my mind for awhile now, and though there was a similar thread about the Barqoue on this before, I don't think it really touched on what I'm thinking.
I think most of us have a reasonably good understanding of the Baroque period, which was more of the focus of the other thread, but I hear it used a lot in referencing contemporary architecture that is certainly not in the Baroque style. In fact, it's used much more as an adjective, describing something as baroque, but I get the impression that the word means something slightly different to many different people.
So I'm wondering, in terms of contemporary architecture, what does baroque mean to you?
Exuberant, in a word.
I can write more words later, but I have to get some work done right now.
I thought this was another political thread...
Baroque to me, in terms of built things, means ornate. In terms of opera, it would mean flourished, well, thats the same a ornate. Nevermind. Baroque means ornament.
aking, that would be "If it ain't Barack, don't fix it."
greatest thread name ever.
In this context, "Baroque" = unnessecarily elaborate in ornamentation.
And to go one better, "forget Baroque, that's fricking Rococo."
good one, sh.
more than ornate, baroque is grotesque or almost perverse; something that intentionally breaks the rules of design. venturi's exploration of the baroque in complexity and contradiction is a good place to start for contemporary usage. i think of late though the term is being used more as simply "ornate" as others have mentioned; venturi's postmodern exploration is more and more being forgotten or ignored.
baroque is more than ornate, right? its exuberant spaces & masses that follow human emotion, even in disregard for structure... Gehry's work is baroque, the Aalto vases are baroque (i think), but without much traditional ornament... it can be grotesque and perverse, of course, but is it necessarily?
that's what i mean when i write the contemporary definition of the word is changing. venturi was attempting to draw a parallel between the transition from the renaissance to the baroque as modernism was shifting towards postmodernism. to venturi, the grotesque and the perverse was an integral part of his definition of postmodernism.
i do tend to agree with citizen though that the contemporary scene is more rococo than it is baroque.
reconfiguration
the baroque is an invitation to participate...
I think Deleuze's treatment of the Baroque in "The Fold" is pretty good. Basically, Baroque architecture is a "destabilized" architecture that can't be fully apprehended from a fixed, stable viewpoint. Essentially, it's an architecture of ceaseless motion. Actually a very modern notion.
pvbeeber-
I really like that definition. I was fortunate enough to go to Europe for a semester last year, and before going I wasn't crazy about Baoque architecture, but after seeing it in person and experiencing it, I can't stop thinking about it. It's certianly not something I'd advocated continuing stylistically, but I think your notion of the idea of the movement, of constant motion, is something very interesting to consider in a modern sense. I've also been interested by its blatant embrace of the fabricated or fake, of plaster walls painted to look like doorways or stone or panelling, etc--I think it's interesting to consider in a contemporary way that same question of what is real.
Of course, the Baroque style continued beyond Bernini--I believe even the double porticos of St. Peter's Square were done after the above performance. All the same, Bernini's theatrical performance manifests the Baroque's consummate ending. Within his double theater Bernini capsulized the beginning of Western culture's new bifurcation of the real and the illusory, introduced mirroring as a henceforth dominant (post) Baroque (stylistic) theme, and, at base (or should I say at the ultimate end), inverted reality into a reenactment of its own illusory mirror (--is this perhaps also the genesis of historiography?).
Essentially, beyond the Baroque (and still often in our own modern times), architecture at its best is very sophisticated theater, keeping in mind that theater is one of the earliest forms of (man made) reenactment.
Lauf
pvbeeber: I've never read Deleuze (Well, not true. I've read some of 1,000 Plateaus and understood pretty much only the nouns, and not in relation to each other or any of the verbs. In other words I understood about 3% of what was going on), but I'm confused by your statement that an architecture of ceaseless motion is very "modern".
Do you mean modern or Modern? I think of Modern architecture - let's say, Mies' Tugendhat House - being static structure through which space flows ceaselessly. The viewer - the body - is irrelevant to the space, because the structure can be intellectualized without moving through it, and the space itself flows regardless.
In Loos' Villa Muller, on the other hand, the architecture unfolds due to the viewer's movement through it, but the space doesn't flow so much as gather around the certain moments of emphasis (ugh, how do I say this?). That to me is more baroque. There *has* to be movement through to comprehend, and the role of the architecture is to thwart the comprehension..
I'm only speaking of the interior space, and in either case, of course, the architecture itself is stable. But I think the baroque building is trying to make the viewer feel destabilized - in churches, to feel the ecstasy that vado posted. I don't think that was ever a goal of Modern (capital M) architecture.
FLMike: ; I've also been interested by its blatant embrace of the fabricated or fake, of plaster walls painted to look like doorways or stone or panelling, etc--I think it's interesting to consider in a contemporary way that same question of what is real.;
makes me think if Meies' decorative I-beams on his Chicago towers and the Mondrian-inspired Reitveld's Schroeder house, the whole sliding-planes-in-space thing, a Modernist effort to create an illusion... even the use of plate glass as if it wasn't dividing space at all.... is there baroque in midcentury Modernism?
, SagaCity
ooo. I really like the comparison of Loos and Baroque churches. I think you're right, LB, in that it's not the architecture that is actually mobile (which can also be interesting, though I think is prone to being gimmicky), but the sense that it cannot be fully understood statically. In this way, I think it can be like a lot of Le Corbusier's projects or even early Mies projects that were inspired by Cubism. Though the form is in fact static, the experience of it and of the space it creates is actually quite dynamic, so the understanding of the form and space is always evolving.
so how do you fix it if it is baroque sprinkle a little 'jesus' in?
everything i know about the baroque i learned from Wolfflin and Borromini...
"If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it."
But if Euripedes, Eumenides.
^^^^^ Deleuze! I loved that book. I named a room in my thesis after it!
liberty, I was thinking modern (with a lower-case m) in the sense that it involves the same kind of "alienation" that came to define the modern era (alienation of the worker from the products of his labor in Marx, alienation of the observer from physical phenomena in physics, alienation of the conscious mind from subconscious motivations in Freud, alienation embodied by the flaneur in Benjamin, etc.). Of course the Baroque predated the modern era by centuries, but still seems diametrically opposed to "classical" thought involving a static and reliable subject and a stable, self-contained, self-consistent, "whole" object. The Vitruvian Man would not feel very comfortable in a Baroque building. I think Modernism (with a capital M) was part of this greater transition, but it was the greater transition that I had in mind.
was the slashing of constanza buonarelli a baroque act???
Perhaps the sordid love quadrilateral between Constanza (the art collector and dealer), her husband, Bernini, and Bernini's brother was something of an inspiration for the Due Teatri
Portrait of Constanza Bonarelli, 1637.
Due Teatri, 1637.
pvbeeber, do you think that a lot of Modernism, at least and especially the latter Miesian strain, follows the same sort of regularity and order of classicism, however? I think you could at least make an argument for this, and that at least in theoretical terms, postmodernism and destructivist theory is more destablizing. It sounds like you have a better handle on this than I do, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts more on it.
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