Horror

People today choose the plain over the overcharged—spaces, gadgets, content, clothes, and that infinite list of products and services. Luxury now seems to speak through less, even though that silent conversation is really more than less. Yet there seems to be confusion between sobriety as an accent of elegance and a vacuum concept that fools and mesmerizes the gaze and the mind.

Now, is it possible that more can be an expression of synthesis? As usual, I don’t have an answer—only an intuition, and the reflection around it.

“Pala d’Oro” (Retablo de Oro). Basílica de San Marcos. 976-1345.

When I let Baroque art—without distinction—enter my space, whether I’m in it or it is inside me, all that saturation of elements that can be overwhelming slowly, but surely, starts to make sense. The ornamental turns into a single light, then the awe: more becomes not less, but a shining simplicity, almost as if all the musical notes, brushstrokes, words, lines, chants, constructions, and the rest of the arts transmute into a golden, silky, soft breeze. That doesn’t mean that the excesses and the arrogance of the ostentocracy of monarchical regimes weren’t opprobrious. Even when art and politics are linked, here they are not.

Nonetheless, long before the Baroque, there was something that obeyed a different, compelling itchiness: the horror vacui. It was more like a sickness of the gaze than a demonstration of opulence. Personally, I think it inoculated the Baroque period without the atrocity of leaving any oxygen to breathe.

So ask yourself: is today’s luxury—that twisted idea of “minimalism”—more, or less?