Baroque Time Out

Too much marking. I had a seriously flat battery this morning. I could hardly focus on my Open University scripts even though the last few look like the best in terms of opening narrative hooks at least. So after firing off a few urgent emails I gave up and took the Piccadilly Line to South Ken. I had a vague idea of looking at the V & A shop before sitting in Brompton Oratory for a while but found myself buying ticket and audio guide to the Baroque exhibition and was in there hours.

Fascinating things - I didn't even know that the term 'baroque' was originally applied to a misshapen pearl (I thought that nomenclature came later). As a force of unification - monarchy or church - designed to impress and in a way subdue, it's not the most fashionable of politcal motives for an artistic/ cultural movement. But some of the quirkiest exhibits were the best. The little pumpkin coach at Versailles for children of royalty to be driven around in by sheep - sounds like something out of fantasy literature or Mervyn Peake even.

I also liked the religious art which was mainly a mixture of fine painting - the Tiepolos - and the out-and-out kitchy. Resting between the two poles was a painting of Bernini's scultpure of St Teresa in Ecstasy, that complete sculptural/theatrical portrayal of the pioneering Counter Reformation nun being speared by an angel, thus experiencing God's love. Michel Foucault had a field day with this. But I've been to the Roman church in question and think the chapel itself goes beyond any simple sublimation of eroticism. It's a concetto - a 'total experience' according to the best aims of the Baroque project.

Curiously there was also video footage of the Seville Holy Week processions, complete with great carnival-style 'floats' of Marian worship, and those sinister looking masked penitents. I recognised La Macarena at once, as we had a holiday in Seville last year (not during Holy Week though) and visited her shrine in the distinctly non-pretty parts of the town. She is supposed to have been carved in the seventeenth century by sculptress Luisa Roldan. She has tears of crystal and an indefinable expression, something between a smile and sadness.

When I returned from Seville I did a bit of research on La Macarena; I was rather drawn to her. I came across the work of artist Audrey Flack who works in the photorealist school (hyperrealistic painting, as though competing with the focus and detail of a photograph); she painted feminine subjects from Marilyn Monroe through to the Macarena herself, claiming that in some sense they are all self portraits, or 'self-conscious' portraits. Baroque too in a way, though subversive, self-reflective, questioning rather than imposing a dominant ideology.

Back to the exhibition. Some gaudy secular stuff in there too. An ostrich egg, turned into a bizarre kind of ornament. Rhino horn goblet - this substance having erotic overtones then as now (well, depending on what circles one moves in). It was supposed to detect poison in one's beverage too which might have come in handy - still might. And then the silverware, the endless lady's dressing table accoutrements with those tremendously expensive mirrors. Nothing compared to the Galleries Des Glaces in Versailles, which of course the exhibition could only really talk about and provide weak image echoes. A different sort of self-reflection there, fit for a king.

With a certain amount of unintentional irony I only bought an eraser from the giftshop. I need it to rub out my provisional marks on the OU grading papers. And back home I went - but not until I'd visited Brompton Oratory next door, a certain amount of restrained Baroque splendour still in spiritual use. Unfortunately there was a lot of loud vacuum cleaning going on, as I suppose there must be from time to time. From the sublime to the mundane. One needs both, and in future I'll try not to neglect the former.