Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci

Any work of art, besides it numerous other roles, is an expression and even an actuation of the relationship between man and space. This same space is an integral form within the existence of man himself. In other words, man and space are unified. One cannot conceptualise existence without considering the inextricable link to one's surroundings.

Furthermore, mankind possesses the ability to articulate, explain, describe and discuss the space which he himself creates. Despite the fact that I am one who places the animal kingdom on the same plane as that of humans, and even though I am of the understanding that mankind also forms part of the animal world, I am not too certain whether there are other animals besides humans who are capable of articulating their relationship with space, with their environment.

The manner in which man explains this relationship depends on how he sees/feels/experiences this space. Specifically, the manner in which man perceives space is akin to the way he articulates and defines this space. This is the framework for thought, and the whole history of human thought. This history reveals that man always chose one of two definitions of his surroundings: either a chaotic space or a strictly ordered one.

This dichotomy of chaos and order gripped the mind of man from the genesis of existence: Zeno-Parmenides against Heraclitus, the Apollonian concept against the Dionysian, the Aristotelian against the Hegelian, Newton and Einstein, and all this is reflected in art: the Cubist ordered rationality against Futurist and Dadaist chaos, the rationality of the Renaissance in opposition to the anarchic exuberance of the Baroque.

In fact it is art which asserts the way by which man defines his position with space. Space, as I am trying to elucidate, is not distant from man, it is not an entity which is 'there', outside of man, but it is the form of man's existence in itself. Space and I are homogeneous. With my eyes, I am myself sculpting the reality of space, space is my being. This aspect is the definition (If I may endeavour to state) of art, in other words, art manifests the way in which I sculpt with my own eyes.

Here begins the problem I am elucidating in today's article. Many scholars believe that Baroque is in fact the testament of the decline of classical art (Jakob Burckhardt). In fact, the philosopher Nietzsche believed that the Baroque is born because of the artistic deficiency of a particular period. I will not enter into this argument in this article; however I included these points to initiate some thought on the subject at hand.

The thing which most interests me at present is the illusion that in which we believe that we are able to appreciate, understand and view works from past historic periods in the same manner as we view works from the present. Can we see and conceptualise Michelangelo's Piéta as those from the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries would have? Are we witnessing the same colour, the same volume and the same composition? Has the evolution of man affected the way one looks and sees in different periods?

These questions were and remain central to my own artistic concerns, both in terms of research and to my artistic practice. In fact, these questions are so important that the Warburg Institute (University of London) accepted my proposal to organise an international conference which focused on this theme. The central theme was Maltese Baroque. It was a highly successful conference which included the participation of many international scholars, held in March 2014.

These questions gave birth to a labyrinth of problems. One of these debated the implications of when artistic principles of the past appear as living cadavers in periods which embrace other and conflicting artistic principles. Contemporary history shows us various examples of such an occurrence:

The first example is that in which Baroque principles are inherited from artistic movements from other eras in a direct manner.  There is Picasso's work Massacre in Korea (1951) and its relationship to Goya's Third of May 1808 (1814). Parallel, there is Frank Portelli's work Silent Church (1956). Other examples which aid the discussion of this first point are the Decapitation Series (1927) of Picasso and Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John (1608). The Baroque of centuries ago is here infiltrating the modern. Other excellent examples of how the Baroque got tangled up in the Modern may be clearly witnessed in the works of Emvin Cremona.

This Maltese artist succeeded in combining Baroque exuberance and monumentality with decorative modernism. Vincent Apap with his Triton Fountain managed to fortuitously fuse Baroque principles with a 20^th century sculptural idiom, even a modernist one.

The second manner through which the Baroque permeated into the Modernist and Post-Modernist society of today is in the transformation of Baroque principles into a particular presence, a situation which presents certain intellectual difficulties. The principles remain Baroque, however they are inconspicuous. Most would disagree with the argument that Hollywood films are in fact Baroque. The same could be transposed in relation to the incredible adaptations of Shakespeare's works by the Japanese Kurosawa. The original Baroque principles are here "stolen" or "appropriated" and fused artistically to create completely new and modern work.

The third way in which the Baroque remains alive in modern societies is in traditional festivities. The Maltese Baroque challenges the Modernist world. It is fighting a fatal wrestling match.

The fourth and final manner in which antique and dead principles manifest themselves in the living violence of contemporary society is through what I term as Fossilized Baroque. The Artistic Fossilization which Clement Greenberg defines as Kitsch. In this case, no principles are inherited, neither appropriated, not transformed. Baroque-Kitsch presents itself as tracing paper, copied and imitated. In other words, a work from the past is crudely imported from another historic period and propelled into a modern one. That which Baxandall defines as the 'Period Eye' assists in the study of such historic processes (however, I will elaborate on this thesis another time).

With this aforementioned type of living Baroque, formal copying becomes the central and predominant artistic methodology. This Imitative-Baroque acquires only the form and style of the Classic Baroque, nothing more. The nascent spirit of Classic Baroque is not, and cannot, be inherited. Only the formal materiality is seized. The facade of the Baroque style is its sole purpose. The enigmatic and mysterious illusion intrinsic to the Baroque is rendered innocuously as a decorative and derivative element.  The original dramatic mystery becomes one of high charade, to be understood in its academic sense.  I would dare to quote Foucault who stated that the agitation of the Baroque is in this situation brutally incarcerated within silence.

The works by Camilleri Cauchi and even those of Chris Ebejer, amongst others, are examples of a living-dead Baroque. Such theoretical-historical points instigated an interesting discussion during the Warburg Institute conference.

Article edited and translated by Nikki Petroni