All posts tagged: Baroque

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

Published by Sam Flores

Add Us Summary Gilles Deleuze redefines the Baroque as a philosophical condition of continuous variation rather than merely an art style. Deleuze frames Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as the ultimate Baroque thinker who replaced Cartesian dualism with living force. The Baroque House allegory connects lower material pleats to the upper windowless soul via pre-established harmony. The concept of the Fold serves as the core operation, bridging physical matter and spiritual perception. Baroque thought acts as an antidote to reductive rationality, favoring continuous, infinite complexity over rigid binaries. Show more   Beyond its traditional definition as an extravagant style, the Baroque is reframed by Gilles Deleuze as a unique philosophical condition of thought. Drawing on the metaphysics of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the Fold replaces Cartesian dualism with a universe of absolute connectivity, vital force, and continuous variation. Through the allegory of the Baroque House and the mathematical genius Leibniz, Deleuze demonstrates how reality operates as an unbroken, shifting fabric. This perspective provides an alternative genealogy of modernity that effectively challenges contemporary reductive, mechanistic rationality.   For Deleuze, …

A Late Baroque Master’s Lost Marble Turns Up in a U.K. Salvage Yard

A Late Baroque Master’s Lost Marble Turns Up in a U.K. Salvage Yard

Published by Jenni Sidey

Spotted at a Wiltshire reclamation yard and purchased for £300 ($395), a marble sculpture by Late Baroque master Pietro Bracci (1700–1773) is expected to bring between £ 5,000 and £10,000 ($6,600–$13,200) at auction. Research undertaken by a specialist at U.K. auction house Woolley & Wallis has identified the roughly two-foot-tall marble as the only surviving maquette for Bracci’s 1736 bronze statue of Pope Clement XII. The life-sized bronze once stood in the Great Hall of the Palazzo Nuovo, one of the Capitoline Museums opened to the public by Clement (1652–1740) in 1736. It was subsequently melted down during the brief, French-imposed Roman Republic (1798–1799). Until the discovery of Bracci’s model for the sculpture, the only known representation of the completed work was an engraving by 18th-century artist brothers Stefano and Rocco Pozzi. Related Articles Bracci was born in Rome and trained under Roman sculptor Camillo Rusconi, himself influenced by High Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. A successful artist in his day, Bracci is best known for carving the colossal figure of Oceanus in Rome’s Trevi …

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Performed on Original Baroque Instruments

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Performed on Original Baroque Instruments

Published by José Betancourt

Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons reigns as one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry pieces, thanks to its fre­quent appear­ances in films and tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials. Upon its debut in 1725, The Four Sea­sons stunned lis­ten­ers by telling a sto­ry with­out the help of a human voice. Vival­di drew on four exist­ing son­nets (pos­si­bly of his own prove­nance), using strings to paint a nar­ra­tive filled with spring thun­der­storms, summer’s swel­ter, autum­nal hunts and har­vests, and the icy winds of win­ter. The com­pos­er stud­ded his score with pre­cise­ly placed lines from the son­nets, to con­vey his expec­ta­tions that the musi­cians would use their instru­ments to son­i­cal­ly embody the expe­ri­ences being described. For two hun­dred years, musi­cians cleaved close­ly to Vivaldi’s orig­i­nal orches­tra­tion. The last hun­dred years, how­ev­er, have seen a wide range of instru­ments and inter­pre­ta­tions. Drums, synths, an elec­tric gui­tar, a Chi­nese pipa, an Indi­an saran­gi, a pair of Inu­it throat singers, a Japan­ese a cap­pel­la women’s cho­rus, a Theremin and a musi­cal saw are among those to have tak­en a stab at The Four Sea­sons’ drows­ing goatherd, bark­ing dog, and twit­ter­ing birdies. Remem­ber­ing that Vival­di him­self …