BAROQUE: EROTIC OR NOT?

Baroque is a period of expression. In contrary to the previous Renaissance era, which is all about perfection.

I personally find Baroque art and architecture erotic. It contains the elements of expressiveness and exuberance. It is its “pleasure if excess” that correlates with the idea of eroticism, which is a stimulation of feelings and emotions; never fixed, uncontrollable and most of the time overwhelms our logical thought. So Baroque architecture is erotic, evidently in Bernini’s left transept of Santa Maria della Vittoria, where the painting of clouds spills over the corner onto the sculptures expressing the uncontrollable nature of clouds. Moreover, the blending of the two is also erotic in a way that it demonstrate a certain ambiguity because it cannot be defined as solely a painting or purely a sculpture, it is where painting becomes sculpture and the sculpture becomes part of the painting. One other element that is both Baroque and erotic is the layering of things, which occurs mainly on the pediments, its repetitiveness shows an emphasis and an excess of an components which makes the architecture much more dramatic and unconfined. Another ingredient of illicitness is the use of oval plan, as it exceeds the boundaries of perfection defined in the Renaissance period by using a deformed circle that has a directional quality to it. Likewise, the curvature that is nature to Baroque architecture also contributes to bringing out an erotic effect as a breakout from the norm of straight and confined outlines to a morphing and free form that is again expressive and affective. Especially in Sant Andrea al Quirinale where there is a use of layering and curving in the pediment, and a curving cut that breaks the convention of a triangular pediment completely, so it explored curvature, illicitness, repetition, excessive, all in which corresponds with the ideal of eroticism.

Painting in the left transept of Santa Maria della Vittoria - Bernini

Sant Andrea al Quirinale - Bernini

Early Renaissance

The Renaissance is the rebirth of the Classical, the Roman and the Greek elements and the derivation of Gothic style, a period of faith and strong belief in God. Concurrently is the emergence of many intellectuals, along with the establishment of the first university. Interestingly, I think it can be said that it is a period where people begin to gain more confidence in themselves even though it follows the style which express a lot of reliance on God, since the arrival of ancient texts from the east and the successful trades result from the Crusades, and influence of the bourgeoisie of strong secular thoughts in art and architecture. Hence, the belief of “humanism” initiated. This is the belief in the potentials and capabilities of humans, thus the gain of confidence of one’s individuality. Consequently, this confidence is expressed in their ideologies; the idea of “anthropomorphism”, referring to humans as perfect and thus derived from the human figure is a perfect geometry, shown in the drawing of the Vitruvius man. Which then creates the sacred cut – the overlapping of two squares, one rotated to 45 degrees that is applied to many architecture like the Renaissance City Plan.

The Vitruvius Man - Leonardo Da Vinci

The Renaissance City Plan

“Perfect” was the adjective of the period. Even though there is a lot of reference from Roman ruins, they use the theory of perfect proportions to conduct the design of the building. For example, the Pazzi Chapel at Santa Croce with its façade inspired by the Roman Triumphal Arch, perfected to geometrical proportions of squares and circles, squares within circles and circles with squares – balanced and symmetrical.

The Renaissance could mark the transition from European medieval era to the early modern age. This is evident in the approach to anthropomorphism of Le Corbusier’s modular man and the ideas of pure geometry and forms of order, balance, and symmetry. On the other hand, there are elements which appeal to Post modernists like Robert Venturi, for example the application of classical Greek orders on the façade as ornamentation rather than columns, which can be interpret as an idea of a decorated shed.

Post-Fordism

Is modernism as truthful as it claims to be? Is it accurate to say that an object has only one meaning? Meaning is unstable, because there is no ‘one’ truth; everyone sees things differently, and that realization sparks the era of specialization, uniqueness and differentiation. Post-fordism opened up new ways of interpreting mass production and consumption. The prominent ideologies of standardization and regulations were replaced by increasing individualists systems. No two person are exactly the same, even twins, everyone is engraved with different DNAs, we look different, we act differently, and we obviously think differently. Therefore everyone has his or her own individual characteristic, and even though we are bind with rules and restraints there’s always the need to express that distinction, which is much of what is seen in today’s society. For example, even students contained within the same regulations, under the same school uniforms are able to articulate their own individual personality by customization. The idea of differentiation is evidently seen in parametric designs of fluid forms. Those animated forms represents a ‘process’, captured in time, the ‘in between’ of two (beginning and end), emphasizing the idea of multiple truths. Hence, the form changes and morphs every step of the way, calculated by computer, the adaptation in reaction to different stimuli. So even though it is seemingly spontaneous and flexible, simultaneously it is very controlled, as seen in Zaha Hadid’s urban carpet that merges the wall and sidewalk floor into one surface, so it looks like the city flows into the building, using the environment to design.

Zaha Hadid's Urban Carpet

Not only that, the idea of structuring of ‘process’ is relevant to contemporary society more than the past. For instance, grading systems in schools are mainly evaluated from the ‘process’ rather than the final, complete work.