Word: gaudi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...picture of themselves with Magic Johnson; with shaved heads or ruptured tendons. Barcelona has long been famous as a city of artists and laborers, a "city of marvels" where discipline and flight converge. Now, to the famous roll call of its industrious dreamers -- Casals and Picasso, Miro and Lorca, Gaudi and Garcia Marquez -- can be added some new names: Joyner-Kersee and Jordan, Scherbo and Laumann. Besides, Barcelona now has something to remember Thimbu by, and even in television-less Thimbu there is a rumor of a place called Barcelona...
From the Roman walls built 20 centuries ago to the weird and wonderful creations of Gaudi, Hughes spends much of the book recounting the history in order to explain the architecture--examining the roots in order to look more closely at the tree, as he might put it. Much of the most penetrating commentary--as well as some of the funniest apercus--is in the second half of the book...
...sheer force of the narrative that Hughes crafts from the most basis elements of the city--its buildings--arrives in the sensual pleasure of the writing. He takes on the architecture of the Eixample (the enlargement of the city which occurred in the ninteenth century--like Domenech and Gaudi--are never separated from the cultural context of Catalan modernisme and the anarchists' movements...
Tradition -- and tourism -- insists the Sagrada Familia is Gaudi's masterpiece. It is not. The Casa Mila and the crypt of the Colonia Guell, among others, are superior. But in any case, not all the best modernista building and decor are by Gaudi. Other and hardly lesser Catalan architects await discovery by the visitor. Two names in particular stand out: Lluis Domenech i Montaner (1850-1923) and Josep Puig i Cadafalch...
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...