Suchergebnisse

This paper is a consideration of problems encountered in attempting an art historical analysis of the complex baroque forms of architecture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Naples, specifically when confronted on the one hand by the rather bald, roughly contemporaneous accounts thereof and, on the other and more especially, by the thrilling experience of entering these buildings today -- experiences that leave one overwhelmed and at a loss, at a loss for words sufficient to them and at a loss in their regard. To look at these buildings today in terms of their affective material productivity, even if they can only be articulated incompletely, is to ask historians to undertake the kind of visual work that they are seldom accustomed to. It means staying the customary hastiness that sees architecture as mere instantiation of idea, and instead – while resisting the temptation to interpret architecture as merely the sum of its parts -- requires a willingness to inquire into the materiality of aspects of architecture and objects which yield 'nothing' to see (such as dark areas within sculpture, non-figurative passages within architecture, the shine of silver, illegible letters of unknowable alphabets). Simultaneously we need also to widen our usual scope of vision to restore to architecture its affective elements that make it work. This is to require the mobility of architecture's affect to engage us fully and temporally, rather than to dissect architecture into a "document"of a "social," "political," "cultural," or "material" history, supposedly capable of embracing it fully, but to which it is, in fact, subordinated.

This paper analyses in their political context the festival decorations created by Paolo Amato, architect to the Senate of Palermo, in 1686 for the festival of the patron saint of that city. One of these decorations, that of the main altar in the cathedral, is of particular interest in that it represents a map of the city itself. An analysis of this map in relation to other seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps of Palermo reveals its political and social aim and biases, but also shows that it was unusually up to date and accurate as a representation of the city at that date. Such a representation not only marks a striking cul-de-sac in the history of the development of cartography, but sheds light on the relationship between forging politically acceptable identities for a city and their representation in the early modern period. The map in particular, but all the decorations, or apparati, in general are interpreted in the context of the weakened Spanish empire (to which Sicily belonged) and of the internal politics of the island and of Palermo.

Between exoticism and marginalization : new approaches to Naples / Melissa Calaresu and Helen Hills -- Myths of modernity and the myth of the city : when the historiography of pre-modern Italy goes south / John Marino -- Through a glass darkly : material holiness and the treasury Chapel of San gennaro in Naples / Helen Hills -- Contaminating bodies : print and the 1656 plague in Naples / Rose Marie San Juan -- Topographies of poetry : mapping early modern Naples / Harald Hendrix -- The collection and dissemination of Neapolitan music, c.1600-c.1790 / Dinko Fabris -- Landed identity and the bourbon Neapolitan state : Claude-Joseph Vernet and the politics of the "siti reali" / Helena Hammond -- The architecture of knowledge : science, collecting, and display in 18th-century Naples / Paola Bertucci -- Collecting neapolitans : the representation of street-life in late eighteenth-century Naples / Melissa Calaresu -- "Missed opportunities" in the history of Naples / Anna Maria Rao

Baroque needs to be thought across chronological and geographical divides to connect architecture and dance, painting and natural science, philosophy, sculpture and music (and not in the sense of representations of music) and, above all, in relation to encounters with difference – heavenly, earthly, social, political, religious, geographical. What possibilities in baroque are open now in relation to present dilemmas in art history and world events? Baroque enables – arguably, it demands – a radical rethinking of historical time – and a rethinking of familiar history. It permits a liberation from periodization and linear time, as well as from historicism. While the scholars below acknowledge that baroque is often equated with style or historical period, it is most productively thought beyond them. Mieke Bal has argued that baroque epistemology permits an "hallucinatory quality" of relation between past and present that also allows a release from a supposed academic objectivity, while insisting that the engagement with the past should remain discomfiting and profoundly disturbing.1 Instead of repressing the past and time, creative retrospection allows its implications to emerge. In its materiality and bodiliness, baroque undermines resolution, gropes towards fragmentation, overgrows, and exceeds. Baroque architecture may be seen as overflowing, an excess of ornamental exteriority and evasive proliferation. This brings to the fore the question of surface. Andrew Benjamin's approach to surface as neither merely structural nor merely decoration in architecture is important here. Baroque time and form impinge on each other – that is, not simply the time that it takes to process point of view into form, but of form into point of view.2 Thus the pursuit is for a baroque vision of vision, a baroque audition of hearing, and a multitemporality. The question of materiality (not mere matter, materials, or technique) must also come into play. ; Fil: Farago, Claire. State University of Colorado at Boulder; Estados Unidos ; Fil: Hills, Helen. University of York; Reino Unido ; Fil: Kaup, Monika. University of Washington; Estados Unidos ; Fil: Siracusano, Gabriela Silvana. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Instituto de Investigaciones en Arte y Cultura "Dr. Norberto Griffa"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina ; Fil: Baumgarten, Jens. Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo.; Brasil ; Fil: Jacoviello, Stefano. Università degli Studi di Siena; Italia