Word: barcelona
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Monet, sparkling with drifts of blue and green mosaic. Nor should one miss the iron dragon gate of the Finca Guell, or the crypt of the Colonia Guell -- the chapel of an industrial community for weavers at Santa Coloma de Cervello, half an hour's drive from Barcelona -- or the Parc Guell, with its ravishing Hansel-and-Gretel pavilions and its undulating benches covered in their mosaic of broken tiles; or, of course, the Sagrada Familia...
...Sagrada Familia (which is not a cathedral but an "expiatory temple" dedicated to the cult of the Holy Family) is Gaudi's best-known building, the logo of Barcelona as the Statue of Liberty is of New York City. Unfortunately, because most of its designs were lost in the Spanish Civil War, nobody knows how Gaudi would have finished it, and the newly completed sections look dead compared with the parts Gaudi supervised. The facade sculptures by Josep Subirachs are particularly inert and vulgar. They seem to epitomize the moment when the religious art of Catholic Europe died for want...
Puig, a brilliant eclectic, produced some of the signature buildings of Barcelona. One is the Casa Amatller, next to Gaudi's Casa Batllo, a fecund parody of a Dutch burgher's housefront, with mock-medieval sculptures by the gifted Eusebi Arnau -- including animals blowing glass and taking photos, these having been the owner's hobbies. Another is Puig's exquisitely decorated house for the Baron Quadras, now a museum of musical instruments; a third, the Venetian-Gothic Casa Marti, housed the center of Barcelona's artistic bohemia, the Four Cats cafe, where established artists like Ramon Casas hobnobbed with younger...
...gets a gradual sense of the aspirations of the Catalan Renaixenca by walking the streets of Barcelona, noticing things, but the grid of the Eixample is vast and hard on the feet. Here in Domenech's choral theater, it is baptism by total immersion. The "new Barcelona" may not, in the end, produce any buildings that rival those of the late 19th century. But the fact of bringing the old ones back to civic life, in all their splendor, would be achievement enough for any city administration, Games or no Games...
...odds firmly stacked against them. And for every Ben Johnson, there are a hundred others who are neither competitive nor affluent enough to boost their chances with illicit drugs. The Olympics, in fact, are a festival of underdogs: at least 130 of the nations that will compete in Barcelona will have the luxury of being in a can't-lose position -- expectations for them are so low that any achievement will be a triumph. And perhaps 90% of all the athletes can do no more than remind themselves that David beat Goliath in the Slingshot Event. Even the former Soviet...