Gilles Deleuze and Bernini’s Bel Composto: From Theatricality to a Living-montage

Abstract

In The Fold (1988), Gilles Deleuze argues that if the Baroque period establishes the concept of total art or the unity of the arts, then it does so in extension. Each art form extends to another art form. To this “extensive unity” – this “universal theatre” – he adds the Elements; we can say the epigene. The philosopher writes: “[t]his extensive unity of the arts forms a universal theatre that includes air and earth, and even fire and water.” According to Giovanni Careri, writing in Bernini: Flights of Love, the Art of Devotion (1995), the interiors of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's are the most complete realisation of the bel composto. In these chapels, the interiors function as complete autonomous organisms in and of themselves. A theatrical dimension is associated with this autonomous operation. Careri adds another insight. He argues that the proliferations of composition components inherent in Bernini's chapels result in a cinematographic montage. Proceeding from Bernini’s bel composto and Deleuze’s thought, this paper proposes a new reading of the Baroque that is relevant to the present-day for architecture, taking the idea of theatrical scene as an organism supported by architecture and advancing to an idea of montage (beyond Careri’s) in which the spectator, the one who observes the small world, and the small world itself turning into an autonomous organism, makes the assemblage of the whole. A living-montage – an idea of architecture that is constantly interpreted, reinterpreted and recreated by the beholder.