It is possible to have a macroscopic view -formal, poetic, and distant- simultaneously with a social and cultural one. Wölfflin uses the former denigrating the latter by his interest in "esthetics". Yet to see social implications and relationships is not necessarily to be enslaved by them. The relationships between the Hellenic period and the Baroque (and late capitalism?) are as much (more) esthetic as (than) anything else.

Feb 27 1991