Contained Liquidity

Abstract

Liquidity and solidity are not only physical states of matter, but also common epistemological metaphors. In the seventeenth century, philosophical and scientific debates often included such images; Blaise Pascal is a prominent example of a thinker seeking to destabilise received patterns of thinking through the power of what Jeff Wall later named “liquid intelligence”. In painting, the emergence of fluid aesthetics can be interpreted as a rejection of the Renaissance ideals of firmness, stability and measurability. Claude Lorrain’s port scenes are a case in point: in a truly dialectical way, Claude repeatedly depicts the sea as a liquid entity seemingly contained in – and contained by – a frame of sumptuous, rock-solid architecture, while subtly subverting the hierarchy of values such compositions might be understood to validate. Through this reading, Claude’s paintings gain an unsuspected theoretical depth as a pictorial critique of human hubris and of the rigid, pretentious structures of humanist knowledge.

Keywords

• Claude Lorrain
• Port scenes
• Liquid and solid
• Liquid intelligence
• Blaise Pascal
• Tower of Babel