"Golden paralysis . . . frothy batter"

I picked up the book Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars (2012) by Camille Paglia at the thrift store for Marz, who is interested.

I never cared for Paglia writing on writing--but I have enjoyed (without always agreeing with) some of her outrageous political statements. I'd never read her on art.

This book is so fun!
Here, on French rococo:

"The empty white background of rococo paneling is a willed blankness, a blocking out of unpleasant realities. French rococo interiors have clarity,  they are suspended, elusive, unresolved.
So much pretty motion, and yet so much golden paralysis."

Re the Princess's Oval Salon, by architect Germain Boffrand (1667-1754), 1737. Hotel de Soubise, Paris.

And, of Bernini's Chair of St. Peter, the Vatican:

"Embryonic cupids form like bubbles out of a maelstrom of fertility.
Divine light (whose beam impregnated Mary) seems to be churning and congealing like a frothy batter of scrambled eggs and whipped cream."