The Architect who apologized to God for the Modern World.
October 9th 2006 01:47
“Everyone has to suffer. The only ones who don’t suffer are dead. He who wants to end suffering wants to die.” Gaudi.
From whence came the idea for Darth Vader and the Death Star Warriors? It is one of the unlikely threads of history that extends from what is ostensibly of our time to Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect who built the Casa Mila, the castle of the property developer Mila after whom it was named. This extraordinary structure, pictured below, stands on Passeig de Gracia, a street in Barcelona. The residents who reside in it describe it as living in heaven on earth. Only the wealthiest of the Spanish could ever dream of owning one of these apartments, valued each at many millions of dollars.
Gaudi was the greatest of the Catalan architects in a city that has more bizarrely wonderful architectural creations than any in the Western World. Yet these creations are very strange indeed and when it is possible to know their creators, this fits without surprise.
In 1926 Gaudi was run down by a tram in the streets of Barcelona, car 30 to be precise. He was dressed in a dusty old great coat and taken at first to be one of the old beggar pensioners of the city. There was nothing in his pockets to identify him as he lay dying, and needless to say suffering to his heart’s content, in a public ward. Too late he was discerned to be of the great living artists of Spain and the entire world.
He was a religious fanatic, an ultra-royalist catholic. He believed that all of his work should be an atonement for the modern world to Christ, God and the Holy Mother. The Casa Mila would have taken this to extremes because he proposed that on its roof should be a giant statue of the Virgin Mary flanked by the angels Gabriel and Michael. Fortunately the money ran out before this happened. I mean no disrespect to those saints when I say that this really would have made Casa Mila look ridiculous.
Casa Batllo a little down the street from Mila is stranger still and represents the dragon slain by the patron saint of Barcelona St. Jordi (George). The tiles are the scales of the dragon and the white boned windows the skulls of its victims. It reminds me of words from Under Milkwood.
Gaudi spent the last days of his life literally begging for money to build his dream, the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia). He would go to the houses of the wealthy demanding, “Make this sacrifice.” He is most famous for this building but it is unfinished.
It will never be finished as Gaudi intended it because the drawings for it have long since disappeared, not that there were many because he hated drawing and was a very poor architectural student. The building is now being completed, dreamed up more accurately, by Josef Subirachs the current architect. In short we will never know what it would have been like. Japanese architectural students work on the building for free hoping to absorb some of its holy aura. I have visited it myself. It is a weird place indeed and I could not help think that they really should stop working on it. To me it seemed more like a gargantuan movie set of gargoyles and an odd assortment of religious statues. Some like the babies floating in the ether, are modeled on dead bodies. It would have been a weird place when Gaudi was working on it with those bodies in the basement.
Unless you know the history of Catholic Spain it is hard to place this man anywhere in pantheon of the world’s great artists. But, there he is right where he belongs next to Goya and all of the others touched by a land where time was made to stand still by the Inquisition and the Church.
Familiar Face?
Minion
From whence came the idea for Darth Vader and the Death Star Warriors? It is one of the unlikely threads of history that extends from what is ostensibly of our time to Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect who built the Casa Mila, the castle of the property developer Mila after whom it was named. This extraordinary structure, pictured below, stands on Passeig de Gracia, a street in Barcelona. The residents who reside in it describe it as living in heaven on earth. Only the wealthiest of the Spanish could ever dream of owning one of these apartments, valued each at many millions of dollars.
Casa Mila
Gaudi was the greatest of the Catalan architects in a city that has more bizarrely wonderful architectural creations than any in the Western World. Yet these creations are very strange indeed and when it is possible to know their creators, this fits without surprise.
In 1926 Gaudi was run down by a tram in the streets of Barcelona, car 30 to be precise. He was dressed in a dusty old great coat and taken at first to be one of the old beggar pensioners of the city. There was nothing in his pockets to identify him as he lay dying, and needless to say suffering to his heart’s content, in a public ward. Too late he was discerned to be of the great living artists of Spain and the entire world.
He was a religious fanatic, an ultra-royalist catholic. He believed that all of his work should be an atonement for the modern world to Christ, God and the Holy Mother. The Casa Mila would have taken this to extremes because he proposed that on its roof should be a giant statue of the Virgin Mary flanked by the angels Gabriel and Michael. Fortunately the money ran out before this happened. I mean no disrespect to those saints when I say that this really would have made Casa Mila look ridiculous.
Casa Battlo
Casa Batllo a little down the street from Mila is stranger still and represents the dragon slain by the patron saint of Barcelona St. Jordi (George). The tiles are the scales of the dragon and the white boned windows the skulls of its victims. It reminds me of words from Under Milkwood.
Gaudi spent the last days of his life literally begging for money to build his dream, the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia). He would go to the houses of the wealthy demanding, “Make this sacrifice.” He is most famous for this building but it is unfinished.
Sagrada Familia
It will never be finished as Gaudi intended it because the drawings for it have long since disappeared, not that there were many because he hated drawing and was a very poor architectural student. The building is now being completed, dreamed up more accurately, by Josef Subirachs the current architect. In short we will never know what it would have been like. Japanese architectural students work on the building for free hoping to absorb some of its holy aura. I have visited it myself. It is a weird place indeed and I could not help think that they really should stop working on it. To me it seemed more like a gargantuan movie set of gargoyles and an odd assortment of religious statues. Some like the babies floating in the ether, are modeled on dead bodies. It would have been a weird place when Gaudi was working on it with those bodies in the basement.
Unless you know the history of Catholic Spain it is hard to place this man anywhere in pantheon of the world’s great artists. But, there he is right where he belongs next to Goya and all of the others touched by a land where time was made to stand still by the Inquisition and the Church.
| 45 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by PokerPro
Comment by spain01
Juan Carlos
spain again
While your'e about it
Viva l'difference
Fire News Blog
Cities dying of thirst.