Kehinde Wiley's Santos-Dumont -- The Father of Aviation II from "The World Stage: Brazil" series (2009) is a work of Baroque art in the sense that it expresses a dramatic scene that invites the viewer to participate in it. The eyes of the central subjects, for instance, gaze out at the viewer as though the viewer were the actual subject of the painting rather than the two dead black men whose eyes are fixed at the public. In this sense, the painting is a throwback to works like those of Rembrandt, the Dutch Baroque painter, who often included characters in his paintings whose eyes were turned towards the viewer as though the viewer were interrupting some important action by approaching the canvas. Baroque art grew out of the Catholic Church's response to the rise of Protestantism and wanted to emphasize a naturalistic and realistic point in realistic arts (Johnson 178). It also wanted to showcase dramatic works that emphasized the actual nature of mankind -- that it was fallen rather than born without the stain of Original Sin. Thus Baroque works typically highlighted the human rather than the ideal and the dramatic interplay through light or action...
This interplay is evident in Kehinde Wiley's painting, which depicts the effects of war on the black race -- an effect often overlooked in the social consciousness, which is more typically elitist.
Again, the piece does not shirk on color, spreading the artwork to give Marie de Medici a glorious entrance. The dark golds and the light blues, and even the deep red carpet on the plank give this painting vivid movement. Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes moves on to the violent once again, though unlike the Rape of the Sabine Women, the colors are much darker, the action even more dramatic and
Baroque Period Annotated Bibliography Chaffee, Kevin. "Baroque sights, sounds at the gallery." The Washington Times, The National Gallery of Art set up a spectacular exhibit of the Baroque period that included scale models of baroque-era churches, palaces, military forts and grand public buildings. They had problems getting nearly 300 guests through the enormous exhibit. The huge exhibit took up the length of two entire corridors on the main and ground floors of the
Imagery and metaphor were extremely important in Baroque works, and sometimes metaphors became their own metaphors yet again. This poem's images are strong, such as "the iron gates of life," and they create an elaborate and memorable work that is truly Baroque in style. Included are many natural elements common in life, like birds, gardens, and even the sun, which are also elements that point to a Baroque, romantic
In this regard it should also be noted that the architect faced a number of obvious constraints in his design of the Square. These constraints were from existing structures such as the Vatican Palace as well as the granite fountain. To incorporate these constraints into his design " Bernini made the fountain appear to be one of the foci of the ovato tondo embraced by his colonnades and eventually matched
Baroque vs. Classical Music Although music from the 17th, 18th, and 19th century is all often grouped under the designation of 'classical' music today, the Baroque and the Classical periods have distinctive features and stylization that are immediately apparent when listening to the great composers of both eras. When listening to a Baroque work, the contrast between different 'movements' is quite notable. The celebratory Baroque work Handel's Water Music, for example,
Baroque vs. Rococo The Baroque style in art dates its earliest manifestations to the later years of the 16th century, when the Catholic Church launched the Counter-Reformation. Faced with the growing wave of simple, unsophisticated art style promoted by Protestantism and the Reform, the Catholic Church opposed an opulent style, full of richness and grandeur. In architecture, for example, the constructions dating from the Baroque period are richly decorated, statues, sculptures,
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