The Misshapen Pearl: A Baroque Manifesto

The Baroque is a misshapen pearl: shining and attractive but somehow flawed. It is interested in systemization – mathematical understanding of space and development of perspective as a rational tool to systemize space. The systemization is not about the homogeneity but about relational heterogeneity bounded within a seemingly homogeneous field. That objects are qualitatively different even though they are composed of rather homogeneous elements, in the sense that it is rather the relationship is being examined rather than the objects as placeholders. The homogeneity of geometric space is reflected through the notion that all the points are mere determinations of position, they are purely relational rather than substantial reality, and there is no independent content of their own outside of this relation. It is liberation from the view of individuality to a web of relationships, a systemized singularity.

As a beautiful pearl of systemization, the misshapen aspect of the Baroque is embedded in its emanating quality and generating forces – the transformation from linear to painterly, from planar to diagonal recession, and from closed form to open form. It is about the tactile, plastic, loose, making shadow and light integral and superseding to contours as fixed boundaries; the diagonal, scenographic deployment of two or three point perspective, which engages the spectators in the spatial relationships and oblique views; architecture as an open system of relationships which involves the fabric of the city and the landscape.

The fact that Baroque is a synthesis of dynamism and the systemization concludes that it is a not a representation of a simple decoration system but rather a system that adopts multiple references: its nature as eclecticism. Baroque architecture is embedded in the tradition, and extends the tradition. Baroque finds multiple connectivity to different ornamentation/structure, spatial, typological references to infinity. It is a machine of making connections of all sorts: connectivity in addition to multiplicity and variation. It combines abstraction with realism, in an allegorized fashion; it connects corporeal realm to the spiritual/heaven realm. The visualization of such connectivity and synthesis would be the membrane that begins to stretch and almost folds back to itself – creating distortions to create different connections. The fold, multiplying the membrane to reach beyond the simple imagination plane is the generator to produce knowledge. The Baroque as misshapen pearl is a representation for itself as a fetish of complexity and contradictions, a marriage of systems and dynamism, and an allegory of seemingly objectivity in relation to the boundless infinity.