American Baroque History

In the context of European history, the period from 1585 to 1700-1730 is often called the Baroque era. The word “baroque”, as Erwin Panofsky says in his book Three Essays on style, signifies everything wildly abstruse, obscure, fanciful, and useless. The other derivation of the term from Latin verruca and Spanish barueca meaning a wart and by extension an irregular shaped pearl. Eighteenth century critics were the first to apply the term to the art of the 17th century. It was not a term of praise. To the eyes of these critics, who favored the restraint and order of Neoclassicism, the works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona appeared bizarre, absurd, and even diseased like an imperfect pearl. The participation …show more content…
This view gave power to Italy in art. Counter-reform, absolutism and baroque were together. The Baroque culture emerged not from influences or characters, but from historical situations: there was a general crisis that affected the whole of Europe. Spain was the country that played a negative role in this context because of the particular seriousness of the economic situation and the social crisis that was affecting it. As John Beverley observes, “the Spanish baroque was, for example, 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). Economic and social crises are not always happening at the same time, but they are produced in relation of reciprocal dependency. Although there was an economic, social and governmental crisis in 17th century Europe, in art there was no crisis; art was the medium that reflected it in portraying the emotions, the feelings and facts that were …show more content…
Second, it could be attributed not only to the visual arts, but also to poetry, music, and even mathematics. Baroque differs a lot from Renaissance art that has the characteristic to be calm and beautiful. “The beauty that Reinassance offers has a liberating vibe and has a uniform vitality”, said Heinrich Wölfflin in his book the "Distinctions between Renaissance and Baroque”. Baroque, on the other side has a different effect. It gives an immediate impact that is strong and overwhelming. It does not give us enhanced vitality, but excitement and intoxication. The feeling is not long lasting like it could be Renaissance art, but it is only momentary. Just like the crisis that Europe was going thought that was intoxicating leaders, nobility and peasants. Baroque means absurd and grotesque and it was used by men who thought that the forms of a classical building should have been constructed in the way Greek and Roman people used to do. To change and disregard the very strict rules of ancient architecture seemed offensive to critics and this is the reason why they labeled the style