The Art of Place — Curate Your Life.
Notes from The International Museum of the Baroque
Puebla, Mexico
Words and Photos by Wayne Gafford
Edited by K.J. Wetherholt
December 15, 2023
Imagine what it is like to gain a pleasant awareness. Call it a satisfaction. More meaningful, it is something you sought out, earned, and are now enriched by from your curiosity. It lingers deep in your mind long after the initial experience. And always, you are somewhere when enlightenment occurs. You are usually in a new place.
A place is a result of a combination of influences — a momentous realization that “place” is a result of events, contributions, and sheer creativity is what I refer to as terroir. The more diverse the nuances and contributing factors to terroir, the longer lasting the impact and intrinsic transformation. You start looking around for more of the same by asking why is this here? How did it get here? Who is responsible for it? Why is it important?
This is how I felt when my wife Jeanne and I visited the The International Museum of the Baroque in Puebla, México.
First, what does Baroque have to do with México? In a nutshell, everything, almost. Second, what is Baroque? It is not simply gold-leafed “curly cue” design ornamentation, although gold curly cues do represent in part the animated and enthusiastic nature of Baroque style. This was my simplistic and embarrassing awareness of Baroque before we visited the The International Museum of the Baroque; that, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
I learned many things that day at the museum that startled me. Mostly, I was startled by my lack of awareness about the complexity of Baroque. (More on the complexity in a bit.) What actually drew us to the museum that fateful day of July 18, 2023 was not Baroque in and of itself. It was the museum architecture. Here is where and how the richness of a place builds. Here is where the art of place is more than a location, but a significant experience that involves emotional, intellectual, and spiritual resonance. It’s when the phrase I don’t know what I don’t know hits home. What else do I not know? How do I find out? When will my new awareness occur? I find you can only set the conditions in your life to maximize the probability of transforming from not knowing to knowing. Sure, we can pick up a new book and self-educate. We can open up Chat GPT and let artificial intelligence answer a long-standing curiosity, like, “what is Baroque?” But the sedentary approach never seems to have the wow factor in the way the experience of a place makes you fully realize just how grand and diverse life really is.
I remember a day during lunchtime at Bonita Vista Jr. High in San Diego. I was sitting in the quad on one of the many benches with friends. We finished eating and started walking to the basketball courts to play before the next period began. As I stood up, a flash of an idea popped in my brain that changed me forever. I had not been musing on anything like it before. Although I did have some accidental philosophical experiences about time that I briefly write about in the introduction to my book The Art of Place — Notes from Where You’ll Love. I stood up, started walking, then stopped. I stared forward as though frozen. What streamed through my head changed me. I suddenly thought, “Imagine all the places in the world you will never know. Now imagine all the people in those places you will never know or meet. Now imagine all the things those people know and do that will never occur to you. That is how big the world is.” Visiting The International Museum of the Baroque made my world bigger, because I became aware of the famed Japanese architect Toyo Itō.
Who knew that life could be enhanced by the topic of Baroque in beautiful Puebla, Mexico in a museum designed by a Japanese experimental architect? You don’t see those things coming. But when they do, it is like uncorking and savoring a renowned wine. He won the Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of Architecture, in 2013, and we were standing in his conceptual spaces learning that Baroque is not simply a design style, but an era between 1600 and 1750. It is synonymous with the Counter Reformation. It was also a tool of propaganda instituted by the Catholic Church to push back against the rising popularity of the Protestant movement, which was known as The Reformation, started in 1517 by Martin Luther.
The excommunication of Martin Luther from the Catholic Church in 1521, and King Henry VIII breaking from the Catholics to form the Church of England in 1534, heightened the Protestant appeal of simplicity and directness. It was a significant challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church, which needed a strategy to stop the hemorrhaging of the flock and Protestant growth. The answer was the Baroque period, an era that grew out of the Renaissance.
Ito’s flowing exterior design mirrors Baroque’s heightened emphasis on emotion, drama, and sensory experiences. The building is wrapped in white precast concrete panels that appear like square sails undulating in the wind. The surface is bush-hammered, a process to create a textured appearance. The overlapping panels create movement. It seems to swirl, which is emphasized in the central courtyard by a round, shallow whirlpool of water circulating around and down a central drain. The ice-blue water is a wet voice of vortical gurgles acoustically perfect in the setting. Dark, ominous, and billowing rain clouds in the distant sky vividly contrasted with sun-soaked white walls, popping bits of shadow in the pitted texture. Itō’s monumental architecture is Protestant in its simplicity, yet all Baroque in its theatrical effect. Here, we witness two opposing aesthetical styles finding harmony with one another under Itō’s will and imagination.
Inside, a sweeping staircase undulates upward unfurling to heaven. Zenithal windows pour in natural light from the sky. The architectural action doesn’t stop. Wide open galleries tell the story of how Baroque painting, music, theater, design, and sculpture heralded inspiration and awe, reminding patrons of the power and grandeur of the Catholic Church, the predominant faith in México. Its identity was revitalized as a reinforcing cultural influence that lasted 150 years. The style resonated with popular European culture, appealed to a wide audience with its elaborations and heightened drama. Shadows and light intensified the story in a painting. Sculptures of human bodies no longer stood still but fought to the death in stopped-action rage. Music was no longer a tinkling of harpsichord keys but the upbeat sound of positivity. Religious propaganda as spiritual renewal tampered social upheaval. The Counter Reformation was a come-from-behind victory for the Catholic Church led by Spain, who was conquering and colonizing faraway lands like México. It resulted in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of México’s indigenous populations. This is despite the fact that indigenous symbols such as peppers and cacao are found in what came to be known as Mexican Baroque. The Santa María Tonantzintla and San Francisco Acatepec churches just outside Puebla are fine examples of Mexican Baroque design.
Toyo Itō and the museum curators captured what I consider the epitome of the art of place. European, Méxican, and Japanese aesthetics curated an illumination within me. Epiphanies, comprehension, and appreciation make me a more well-rounded person. This kind of impact connects me ever more to the world, to history, and to a transformed sense of self. In this case, I left the building refreshed, and thought about how in high school I wanted to be an architect. I still do, but I am lousy at math. I am an enthusiastic patron of architecture instead. If not for that, I might still be thinking that Baroque design is just a bunch of gold-leafed curly cues.
