The Multivalence of the Image Within Baroque Painting

This research project functions as a journey into understanding the multivalence of the image through the process of experiencing the materiality of Baroque paintings and by exploring the physical reconstitution of the image through practice-based research. The project investigates the effects of the historic source on contemporary artists and how their experience informs their own practical responses. This outlines and acknowledges existing research and arts practices, in order to build a foundation of textual research that supports the practical research process. The examination of contemporary artists’ accounts of experiencing historic paintings offers points of contemplation and evidence for the suggestion of the indeterminant nature of deciphering historic images and their effects. The retrospective ambiguous and inconclusive nature of image experience may explain the importance and recurring interest of Baroque paintings, and the wider historic source, for contemporary artists. The research outlines the main principles of the Baroque and unpicks how the Baroque has been considered through insight into the discussions of 19th and 20th century art historians. Their critique is weighed up against the question of what the Baroque ultimately is and considers compositional formation, definitions, and how it has previously been perceived. To further illustrate this and understand the effects a Baroque painting has upon its viewer, the research examines what happens from an initial direct experience leading into the image’s subsequent re-formation through practical exploration. Within the thesis, artist’s recollections of experience are utilised in order to highlight possible explanations or to help describe what happens during the process of experiencing historic paintings. As such, experience itself seems to sit or fall somewhere between theories, terms and ideas rather than definitively explained. The methodological framework provides insight into what is felt through experience, developing from Baroque painting to the resulting artist response. This will be achieved by outlining the practical process, from experience of the Baroque painting’s physicality within its present-day site which is then realized through a series of 6 layered artworks. Through their (re)creation, these images manage to unveil but also interrupt, through deconstruction and reconstruction of the documented images. The project concludes by acknowledging that the multivalent image is an investigation formed from the reaction historic images create in its viewer, processed, established, and reflected through arts practice. Both practical and theoretical research critically reflect the relationship of materiality and experience through image (re)creation.