For a Baroque Aesthetic, A study of the Films of David Lynch

INTRODUCTION

History of the Baroque

From its long and convoluted development, the baroque has taken many forms; it is an adjective, a style in the history of art and an aesthetical concept. It derives from the Portuguese word barocco, which was used by the goldsmiths of the 16^th century to describe irregular pearls. During the 17^th century it was used to mean «strange» or «shocking» and toward the end of the 18^th century, the art theoreticians supporting classicism, qualified as baroque everything that was regarded as capricious and extravagant in the art of the Italian seicento and the further development of its forms.^1(*)

The term retained its negative connotations and remained vaguely associated with the art of the 17^th century and everything that was not classic until the end of the 19th century. By this time the germane historiography reinvestigated the art of the period and with Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) the baroque becomes the dominant style of the 17^th century art. For Burckhardt, `The baroque speaks the same language as the Renaissance, but like a wild dialect.'^2(*) While he integrated the baroque in an historical perspective, he still considered it an art of decadence. It is one of his disciples, Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who will affirm the baroque as a specific style in Renaissance and Baroque in 1888.

Wölfflin elaborated on the main characteristics of the baroque from the formal study of the art that was established in Rome at the beginning of the 17^th century before spreading over Europe. He tried to articulate a definition to unify an art which had taken many different forms, whether it was in Italy, Spain, Germany or the Netherlands. Wölfflin developed a series of general principles in Principles of Art History (1915) around the contrasting relationship between Renaissance and baroque art.

Wölfflin also opened the way to future baroque studies in considering the baroque as a phase in the development of styles in art history. For him, styles evolve from a primitive period, during which new means of representation are experimented with, to a classic period where these means are brought to a harmonious expression before entering a baroque period where the matured artistic forms are set in movement. Wölfflin invented the «trans-historical baroque».^3(*)

This concept will be taken further by Eugenio D'Ors (1882-1954), who introduces the notion of a transcendental baroque in his Lo Barroco in 1935. He elevates the baroque as a metaphysical principle which he opposed to classicism; the baroque is a life principle in perpetual conflict with the barren reign of classic reason. If his work is generally held to be somewhat excessive and a little fantasist, it nevertheless brought the baroque into the realm of concepts.^4(*)

Each of these dimensions of the baroque - adjective, style and concept - are layered with different meanings, which has led to a wide and varied use to the term baroque. This study will start from the baroque as the artistic form of the 17^th century as defined by Wölfflin and then open up onto the aesthetical concept grown out of these forms.

* ¹ Victor, Lucien Tapié, `Baroque', Encyclopaedia Universalis, Vol. II, Paris, 1978, p. 1090.

* ² Frédéric Dassas, `Présentation', in D'Ors, Eugenio, Du Baroque, Paris: Gallimard, 2000, p. V, my translation: `Le baroque parle le même langage que la Renaissance, mais à la façon d'un dialecte sauvage'.

* ³ Ibid. p. VII.

* ⁴ Ibid. p. X.