A Baroque Failure
Silk, "Baroque Dish I," mixed media sculpture, bones, clay, found objects, 2012.
Baroque is derived from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning a deformed pearl. The term was used pejoratively by 18th-century theorists to describe certain aspects of Western works of art from about 1600-1750. Age of Enlightenment art critics judged Baroque art as impure and irrational because of its excessive ornamentation and obscure language. In the grand narrative of Western art history, the Baroque period has always been slightly embarrassing, an aesthetic “high maintenance” cancer growth that devolves into the Rococo: a true modernist nightmare filled with pearlescent shells, glittering gold, polished silver, shiny mirrors, pastel clouds, and chubby cupids. Postmodernism’s critique of dominant culture rehabilitated the Baroque, and writers like Gilles Deleuze developed ideas that in the 1980s-90s were christened “neo-baroque.” In The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Deleuze claims that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the philosopher who helps us understand the Baroque, and that the Baroque helps us understand Leibniz. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states, “...Instead of claiming that in fact there is an a priori link between Leibniz and the Baroque, Deleuze creates a new concept, and reads both of them through it: this is the concept of the fold. In keeping with Leibniz’s theory of the monad, that the whole universe is contained within each being, like the Baroque church, Deleuze argues that the process of folding constitutes the basic unit of existence...Deleuze uses the concept of the fold to describe the nature of the human subject as the outside folded in: an immanently political, social, embedded subject.”
No elaboration on or interpretation of these ideas will be made here, but I’ve always been interested in what Deleuze’s “the fold,” and the postmodern “neo-baroque” mean. Yet, I have not pursued any in-depth research, but, instead, have let the terms fester like kitschy pop songs in the back of my mind. The tunes have driven me to create such things as deformed, clay laurel wreaths, glitterized animal bones, and strings of lumpy, handmade beads. From the bowels of my studio, I’ve unearthed all these ingredients, in all their glory, for my culinary masterpiece A Baroque Dish.
No elaboration on or interpretation of these ideas will be made here, but I’ve always been interested in what Deleuze’s “the fold,” and the postmodern “neo-baroque” mean. Yet, I have not pursued any in-depth research, but, instead, have let the terms fester like kitschy pop songs in the back of my mind. The tunes have driven me to create such things as deformed, clay laurel wreaths, glitterized animal bones, and strings of lumpy, handmade beads. From the bowels of my studio, I’ve unearthed all these ingredients, in all their glory, for my culinary masterpiece A Baroque Dish.
A Baroque Dish Recipe
Silk, "Baroque Dish II," mixed media sculpture, bones, clay, found objects, 2012.
A meal of ghosts and sun wraiths is laid bare before you; tasting its sparkling shadows, you encounter bliss.
Place the pearlescent phantasm underneath your tongue and savor its nectarous ambrosia.
Pitch the viridian leaves into the cerulean sea and sip the sugary dregs therein.
The wishbone sings a torpid love crime. You hear it once and never forget.
What dream is this? What frayed light leaks lovingly through long lashes?
Whispering moonshine, the starflint glitter circumscribes a sleeping orb.
The white, opulent fauna and pink, luminescent flora slither down your throat.
Drink deeply the draught of mystic dew and sup well the carcass of sacrificial fowl.
Fragile bird bones piled high: a skeletal, shell-like ladder to Arcadia.
Words wind seductively around sweet red wine and prenuptial puddings--the silence hangs undisturbed near your lips.
What banquet is this? No gastronomic glory here! All is tethered to decay and fakery.
A clay laureled wreath falls at your feet. Realizing the danger, you trample it to dust.
Devour the coiled crown of praise, a winner’s cake, and hear the cheering tongues unfurl.
You chew on feelings—fertile, furtive, ecstatic, encased in glass and buried for eternity.
The dawn breaks, and the memory of culinary pleasure fades.
Gold and silver, flesh and blood: all an artifice of pomp and circumstance; all signifiers of royalty dethroned.
Seared, scarlet, skulls transform into starships: you escape forever.
This ekphrastic poem was also a component for work with klooj in 2019 for Action in the Stacks
© 2019, 2012 The Author, Janet Silk.
Image credit: Silk, sculpture. Materials used were metal trays; turkey and chicken bones; gilded plastic leaves; glitterized clay beads, leaves and flowers; glitterized and gilded clay laurels, flowers; fake pearls; crystals; handmade paper by Jean. I made this piece for my students. Each student was given one line from the above poem, which was written on an 8 1/2" x 11" drawing of a laurel. Each drawing was rolled like a scroll and tied with a red string.
Place the pearlescent phantasm underneath your tongue and savor its nectarous ambrosia.
Pitch the viridian leaves into the cerulean sea and sip the sugary dregs therein.
The wishbone sings a torpid love crime. You hear it once and never forget.
What dream is this? What frayed light leaks lovingly through long lashes?
Whispering moonshine, the starflint glitter circumscribes a sleeping orb.
The white, opulent fauna and pink, luminescent flora slither down your throat.
Drink deeply the draught of mystic dew and sup well the carcass of sacrificial fowl.
Fragile bird bones piled high: a skeletal, shell-like ladder to Arcadia.
Words wind seductively around sweet red wine and prenuptial puddings--the silence hangs undisturbed near your lips.
What banquet is this? No gastronomic glory here! All is tethered to decay and fakery.
A clay laureled wreath falls at your feet. Realizing the danger, you trample it to dust.
Devour the coiled crown of praise, a winner’s cake, and hear the cheering tongues unfurl.
You chew on feelings—fertile, furtive, ecstatic, encased in glass and buried for eternity.
The dawn breaks, and the memory of culinary pleasure fades.
Gold and silver, flesh and blood: all an artifice of pomp and circumstance; all signifiers of royalty dethroned.
Seared, scarlet, skulls transform into starships: you escape forever.
This ekphrastic poem was also a component for work with klooj in 2019 for Action in the Stacks
© 2019, 2012 The Author, Janet Silk.
Image credit: Silk, sculpture. Materials used were metal trays; turkey and chicken bones; gilded plastic leaves; glitterized clay beads, leaves and flowers; glitterized and gilded clay laurels, flowers; fake pearls; crystals; handmade paper by Jean. I made this piece for my students. Each student was given one line from the above poem, which was written on an 8 1/2" x 11" drawing of a laurel. Each drawing was rolled like a scroll and tied with a red string.
