Faculty of Arts & Science

Visual and Critical Studies

Ella Gray

The Spectacle of Alluring Affliction: Enduring Baroque Self-Idealizing Aesthetic in Visual Culture

In this thesis I explore how the Baroque has never vanished for those who truly understand its quality of existence. As religious power faiths a crowd to succession of what they want to believe; enduring control in overwhelming spectacle parallels life within our contemporary society. Everyday, everywhere, consciously (or not), we operate under overwhelming chaos that is cascaded aside for individual pleasures, which are all in a meticulous facade to distract. I aim to compare representations of 15th-Century idyllic art; re-positioned in advertisements, fashion, and media; coupled with the frescos of Baroque architecture, so detailed, are revived as an endless scroll of content. The consuming gaze of the spectacular is always reworked and utilized by businesses for coerced domination; in this age of social media, one finds reasonings for these forces of control; as the movement of Baroque art stays enhanced by its nature to invite and persuade, such stays the same for our current society as it strives for known pleasures: a spectacle for the suffering.