For Collectors of the Baroque, a Philosopher Argues the Style Is a Way of Thinking

Most people know the Baroque as a style of excess: gilt, swirling ornament, rooms that seem built to overwhelm. A new essay looks at the period through the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who treated it as something closer to a mode of thought than a look. His reading leans on the metaphysics of Gottfried Leibniz, the German thinker whose ideas Deleuze used to explain what the Baroque was doing beneath its surface. For anyone who lives with a Baroque frame, a carved console or a painted ceiling, the argument offers another reason to look twice at what they already own.

With reporting from The Collector.