Baroque Art

The Characteristics of Baroque Art:

Light

• There is usually one source of light, known as tenebrism, in Baroque art. The contrasting light and dark, such as in shadows, bring drama to the works. Both have an effect on the emotions and the intensity of the piece. One illustration of this concept is "Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi. In the piece, Judith saves her people by having a banquet to intoxicate and then behead General Holofernes.

Realism and Naturalism

• Realism is an important aspect of Baroque art. Rubens embraced reality in his art. In "Saint George and the Dragon," Saint George is muscular with a suit of armor that appears as it did in everyday life. His horse is depicted as feisty and strong. Naturalism was also seen in Baroque art through the use of normal details unique to daily life. Caravaggio employed this technique in his work by showing local places such as taverns and peasants. He places the viewer in the painting through applying things as part of both the foreground and central space. Facial expressions highlight the subjects' moods or emotions. Artists would sometimes put themselves in the painting as part of the shadows. For example, Diego Velazquez is seen in the left of his painting "Las Meninas."

Lines

• Lines help to convey motion and were often featured in Baroque pieces. Foreshortening -- reducing the length of lines in drawing to give an illusion of extension in space -- contributes to the feeling of motion. Whether asymmetric, vertical or horizontal, this technique can fool the eye and give space to the piece. Works follow an "S" shape in composition. For example, in "The Conversion of Saint Paul" by Caravaggio, diagonal lines show drama. Lines also go through diffusion in Baroque art with curved figures and horizontal layers.

Time

• Many artists using the Baroque style were aware of time and used it to convey the strength of nature as well as how time was a part of life's process. An older man symbolizing time was included in a great deal of pieces to illustrate that time comes for all. The positioning of people in each work gives the feeling of time moving forwards and backwards.

  
  

  The artist confronts the interactive media. As for Botticelli, condemned to imitate a classical painting of which no examples survived, there are no models --  save the idea of art itself, and that is a concept in crisis. Much of what is made builds deliberately not on the past but on the future: a future-directed art which derives its imagery from utopian or dystopian science-fiction, and which, in sealing the image of the future, seeks to control it in the name of the present. And what else does the future contain? Death. Though decked in the archaisms which Freud associates with regression, the sci-fi game that dominates the interactive media is built in the  denial of mortality. The crisis of interactive arts concerns the difficulty of making a shift from a future for the self to a future for others -- a future over which, by definition, we now can have no control.

  An art of surrender, and a chaotic art. It seems then no accident that so many artists derive such inspiration from the Baroque, an art of sublime submission and creative dementia. If it is true that the arts of forgetting condemn us to the repetition of history, still, in this instance, we could wish to believe that it was the first Baroque that lived out its crisis of signification as tragedy, and the new Baroque of the digital media that has a chance to work through, with hope, the dialectics of submission and futurity.

  The Baroque is legible as the expression of an absolute state confronted with the crisis of its own mode of signification. As John Beverley observes, the Spanish baroque was, like postmodernism today, at once a technique of power of a dominant class in a period of reaction and a figuration of the limits of that power (Beverley 1993:64). In that configuration, the arts add layer on layer to the web of allegorical significances, and simultaneously discover the vortex of instability at the heart of allegory itself. Humanism sought to recover; the Baroque to discover, but the arts of discovery bring on crises of overproduction (the economic disaster created by flooding European markets with American gold), which in turn generate vertiginous inwardnesses revealing more of the Devils bargain than those contracted wished to see (in Spain the emergence of narratives of the conquistadors brutality and retreat of the emergent mercantile bourgeoisie into pseudo-aristocracy as a result [cf Nerlich 1987]). From the troubled triumph of the absolutist state to the troubling security of the administered society, the Baroque recurs in the heart of both the 17th and the 20th centuries, their churches, our communications, as the rage to control. This rage is not angry but viral: replicating its order as excrescence and ornament on the body of its host, but in doing so breaking open the integrity of the host -- a crisis of permeability

  
  

  Baroque art and architecture – extravagant in concept, exuberant in spirit, elaborate in detail – flourished in the 17ths’ century Europe and through the ages has continued to stir us with its vitality and dynamism, its mood of barely suppressed passion. In the architecture of St. Peters in Rome, St. Paul’s in London and Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, in the works of Michelangelo, Bernini and Rubens, the Baroque spirit still lives today to inspire us. The Baroque style is still used today as inspiration when it comes to decorating a home in a rich manner. This style is well known for being dramatic and opulent, characteristics which can transform a simple home into something flamboyant. Many people choose to decorate their living space with a baroque style, and there are a variety of ideas that you can incorporate; ideas like using baroque style patterns to enrich cushion covers, linen, upholstery, curtaining and much more! The interior design business wasn’t the only one inspired by the Baroque movement. Now graphic artists can add Baroque flair to almost any design project with elements like lush florals, rosettes as a repeating motif in a frieze and many more ornaments with a clear Baroque influence. Baroque designs can be used by artists to enhance various items, because the ornaments specific to this style have the great capacity of making an art work look richer.It’s not an unknown fact that often in modern graphic design the inspiration comes from art styles from the past. If you have the right skills, you can combine past and present design and create amazing modern art work. The Baroque Style is represented by beautiful and rich decorations that can perfectly combine with the styles designers who love to ornate their work with flowers and swirls.