Painting: Fenyu
7 World Class Cultural Heritage Sites
17 Spanish National Monuments
To understand Spanish art, you have to go to Barcelona
To understand the Barcelona of art, it is necessary to understand Gaudí
The rare biography of "Da Vinci of architecture" approaches Gaudí's enigmatic life
New book recommendations
Gaudí: Untamed
By Hayes van Hensbergen
Xu Guoqiang, Li Jingtao, et al., translated by Li Hui
ISBN 978-7-80768-473-2 定价：68.00元
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Joint Bookstore Life Bookstore Publishing Co., Ltd
Editor's Choice
Have you ever imagined that one day you would travel to a thousand-year-old city, check in a circle of famous attractions, and then be told that they were all made by the same architect?
Barcelona, Spain, is one such city, and the architect who has arranged Barcelona's popular attractions is Antoni Gaudí.
Gaudí, one of the top ten architects in the world. He is a crazy creative, a lonely genius, a child who longs for nature, and a mentor. Dalí, the master of surrealist art, idolized him and called him "the last great architectural genius" and "the architect of God".
He is also "a weirdo who indulges in the act of architecture"; His architectural works are branded as the art of "Spanish tapas" and are regarded as "drunken art", "heresy of architecture", "a misguided......
As long as Gaudí's contribution to the history of architecture is discussed, it will be controversial.
Even more dazzling than Gaudí's architectural design work is his personality.
It is extremely complicated to write a biography of such an enigmatic figure. He didn't like to write, and even the letters that could be passed down to the world were destroyed. Despite his professed reticency, many friends and aides remember him as a talker. However, many of Gaudí's most famous quotations do not seem to be true, but like aphorisms that have been edited and processed, profound and sharp, in order to be passed on to future generations. In order to find the real Gaudí, this book allows Gaudí's key character traits to emerge from the shadow of myth through rigorous inquiry.
Introduction
Gaudí's architecture is like an open book. However, as the lone "aesthetic priest" of Barcelona, his personal image has never been known and remains a mystery. Gaudí's peculiar mannerisms and creativity had an almost insane magic, both during his life and after his death, and today Gaudí is a legend in the history of art.
This book is a biography of the world-renowned Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), placing Gaudí in a specific cultural context, capturing Gaudí's life and career, and reflecting the unusual national culture of Catalonia, so that the real Gaudí can be brought to life.
About the Author
海斯•范亨斯贝根(Gijs van Hensbergen)
Dutch architectural historian, art historian and writer specializing in Spain and the United States. He is the author of "Decorative Style", "Gaudí", "Sagrada Familia", "Guernica", "Castille Gastronomy", etc. He studied languages at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and art history at the Courtauld School of Art in the UK. He has worked as a curator and critic in the UK, USA and Spain, and is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives in Dorset, England.
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preface
Introduction
"People who belong to space and environment"
Voices in the wilderness
City of Wonders
Architectural apprenticeship
A scene of heaven and the interior of the East
Holy Fathers
Build a new Jerusalem
Immerse yourself in paradise
Skeleton shop
Besieged castle
Shelter the caves
The storm has changed dramatically
Tragedy Week
Abandoned pebbles
"A symbol of dense forest"
The Cathedral of the Poor
Thanks
Postscript
preface
preface
Few artists have influenced our perception of a city as thoroughly as Gaudí. Few architects can be proven to be iconic figures of the culture to which they belong. For Gaudí, Barcelona and Catalonia, however, the three are forever intertwined. So it was, and it still is.
Gaudí has become famous, arguably the most famous architect in the world. Whether in Japan and South Korea, or in Germany and Latin America, Gaudí's architectural legacy is celebrated. One Japanese admirer described his awe-inspiring feeling as follows: In Japan, Gaudí's work is only kept in museums, while in Barcelona it blends into the fabric of the city. Perhaps Gaudí's true charm lies in the sheer sense of intimacy in his work. Some of his works are imbued with a Disney-esque worldly flavor, but in the most positive way, they are sensory and profoundly rustic. It is a generous and humane idea that art should be accessible to everyone. Today, Gaudí's architectural art is once again fashionable.
Gaudí was a figure with an extreme focus on the contemporary: he was a holist, spiritual, and possessed astonishing creativity. He is also an environmentalist: he recycles broken porcelain pieces, old pottery, children's toys, old needles from textile mills, metal straps for packing cotton cloth, bed springs, and waste liners from industrial boilers for architectural design.
Gaudí is like the 20th century Leonardo da Vinci, the perfect embodiment of the artist and inventor. His imagination is extraordinarily rich, and he can scorch through the trite sample textbooks. He is endowed with an amazing ability to imagine a building and bring it to life. In this way, he pioneered a completely new typology of architecture.
Some find Gaudí's work incomprehensible and do not acknowledge the richness and vastness of Gaudí's style. For these people, Gaudí's towers were a sign of collapse, but Gaudí always attracted a variety of different types of audiences. His keen eye for detail is distinctly Japanese, and his deep religious sensibilities are distinctly Catholic—yet his design of the white attic room is striking in its architecture and authentically Calvinist.
To this day, Gaudí's construction continues – beyond his grave. God was his most important patron. In Gaudí's words, there is no need to rush for this patron at all. God has been waiting for centuries for the completion of Chartres and Seville Cathedral, and by such standards, the Sagrada Familia would not be too much to build for another 150 years.
This is destined to change. If the current steady inflow of donations does not dry up, the Sagrada Familia is expected to be completed around 2030.
Gaudí's architecture is like an open book. However, as the lonely "aesthetic priest" of Barcelona, his personal image has never been well known. He remains an enigma, the last great of modern art to escape the gaze of a biographer.
Many previous studies of Gaudí have not placed him in a specific cultural context, preferring to depict him as walking alone on the Catalan stage, or focusing on his elaborate architectural forms. However, many of the key events in Gaudí's life, those that were the touchstone and the trigger for the architect and his close circle, have been ignored one by one. For example, the loss of Spain's imperial status in 1898 and the burning down of many convents and churches in 1909 had a strong influence on Gaudí and his friends and their patrons, and completely changed the way he worked.
The political situation in Catalonia is complex, and conflict is on the verge of breaking out. The unstable alliance between Catalonia and Spain (Castilian dynasty) was one of the reasons for the extremely tense situation. That's why, whenever possible, I quote Spanish and Catalan writers and let them express themselves.
Before the Spanish Civil War, some Spanish intellectuals and politicians were aware of the dangers, but the tragedy was that they were powerless to stop the looming crisis. Few have ever conducted such a harsh self-analysis as Gaudí's generation. Few people are willing to be in such a painful process of self-exploration. Most of their criticisms, which seemed sharp and sharp at the time, are still pertinent today. The social and political tension between reform and reactionary currents forms the subtext and internal hidden structure of Gaudí's work.
It is extremely complicated to write a biography of such an enigmatic figure. In addition to research methods, there are various other issues. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Gaudí's personal and work files were destroyed. On July 20, 1936, the Sagrada Familia's crypt was broken into, and over the next two days, Gaudí's drawings, records and models were burned or shattered. That same month, Gaudí's friend Gil Parés, a parish priest of the Sagrada Familia, was assassinated in a nearby quarry. However, about the last fifteen years of Gaudí's life, we know almost what he did every moment of every day. Gaudí was a man with a very regular routine, and you can check the time of his pocket watch through his daily routine: Mass, morning prayer, Angelus, evening stroll to church for confession. We know what time he bought the evening newspaper and from which newsstand. But in the empty silence of the confessional room, his soul surge was gone forever.
The Asociación Pro Beatificación de Antoni Gaudí lobbied for many years and pushed the Holy See to celebrate Gaudí by selling pamphlets and prayer cards. They're finally getting closer. In the summer of 1998, the process was officially launched by the Archbishop of Barcelona, Ricard Maria Carles, who declared Gaudí the patron saint of the construction industry. This is subject to the approval of the Vatican. According to the archbishop, he was an architect and had completed a mysterious work that can only be compared to John the Cross's masterpiece Cántico Espiritual. As John Ruskin writes of Fra Angelico, he was far more than just an artist, but a "inspired saint."
Book excerpts
Those eyes transformed Barcelona's skyline
(Excerpt from the section "Scenes of Heaven and the Interior of the East", title added by the editor, notes omitted)
Gaudí looks at us from that famous photograph of a reliable and respectable bourgeois all over his body. A worsted tweed coat with a large lapel gives him a certain substance and defines his most important characteristic: trustworthiness. He rejects hard lapels, white ties and gold bracelets, the refined dress of the Catalan gentleman – he presents himself with a dignified countenance, with a conspicuous gray beard that accentuates his image of being older than his age.
At this time, he was less than thirty years old, showing a strong and thick bone appearance. His hair was brushed sideways, revealing a high forehead and a prominent bulge above his brow bone. This is the only photograph of Gaudí consciously posing. However, his apparent fear of the camera does not represent a complete rejection of the photographic technique itself. The camera became an important design tool for him, and he used it to quickly understand the progress of the project. More importantly, however, Gaudí also used various photographic techniques to manipulate, extend and fold space, and even adjust and experiment with various perspective methods.
In Spanish visual culture, the depiction of the eye plays a symbolic role that goes beyond the visual and into the realm of spirituality, magic, and faith. The transcendent gaze of the Counter-Reformation saints depicted by painters such as Murillo, Vincenzo Carducho, Alonso Cano, Zurbaran, El Greco, and others is clearly reflected in their gaze beyond the earthly realm: their gaze transports us to another dimension. In Spanish popular culture, vision has a more mundane magic. It can embody the presence of sexuality. Picasso knew the power of this gaze, which could make a woman's body stiff and unable to move. However, Gaudí was a sane Catalans. His ginger hair, fair skin, and piercing blue eyes stand out among the dark-skinned Spaniards. His eyes, in particular, make almost everyone who has seen him involuntarily associate with him. Gaudí's first biographer and assistant, La Falls, recalled: "His eyes seemed to be able to express as much as words, and those striking eyes of a prophet seemed to condemn our faults and flaws with a serious look." ”
But if Gaudí really had the eyes of a prophet, he was also well aware of their limitations. "Our Mediterranean eyes are not adapted to perceive ethereal spirits, but are accustomed only to concrete images; We're more imaginative than fantastic, so we're more gifted in the visual arts. Gaudí once said to Martinel.
Others, such as Josep Pla, also noted Gaudí's unusual ability to observe and analyze. He saw in Gaudí a special sense of nobility and a remarkable concentration to match.
Gaudí's eyes! There was hardly any sign of tension in his blue eyes, yet their stillness showed a peculiar tension; This is not a state of trance, a pure and flawless peace, but a peace of power, passion, and life...... He seems to be communicating things and people with his eyes.
Gaudí's hypnotic fascination was at the heart of one of the most bizarre periods of his life. This experience will give Barcelona's city skyline a complete makeover.
This article is an excerpt from Gaudí: Untamed
By Hayes van Hensbergen
Xu Guoqiang, Li Jingtao, et al., translated by Li Hui
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Joint Bookstore Life Bookstore Publishing Co., Ltd
New book recommendations
Gaudí: Untamed
[荷] 海斯•范亨斯贝根(Gijs Van Hensbergen) 著
Xu Guoqiang, Li Jingtao, et al., translated by Li Hui
ISBN：978-7-80768-473-2 定价：68.00元
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Joint Bookstore Life Bookstore Publishing Co., Ltd
Gaudí's architecture is like an open book. However, as the lone "aesthetic priest" of Barcelona, his personal image has never been known and remains a mystery. Gaudí's peculiar mannerisms and creativity had an almost insane magic, both during his life and after his death, and today Gaudí is a legend in the history of art.
This book is a biography of the world-renowned Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), placing Gaudí in a specific cultural context, capturing Gaudí's life and career, and reflecting the unusual national culture of Catalonia, so that the real Gaudí can be brought to life.
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