A Walk With Antoni Gaudi
October 1995
As a child Antoni Gaudi i Cornet had incurred a type of rheumatism that never left him. To combat this weakness, he adopted a pattern of behavior that involved, among other rituals, a careful vegetarian diet, homeopathic drugs, a variety of bathing procedures, and regular hiking. It was a pattern of behavior that was bound to set him apart. As thus, after he moved to Parc Guell in 1906, Gaudi left his new residence at the southeastern side of the park seven days a week, for 20 years, to hike 4 and a half kilometers to his work at the Sagrada Familia.
The hikes began at about 7 in the morning. Gaudi’s usual hiking partner was Lorenzo Matamala, a local sculptor and life-long friend. They would walk together in both directions, to and from the church, but during the year of 1906, despite his own fragility, Guadi found himself walking alone.
This morning, it is nearly 7:30, and I am sitting on the pathway that leads from his old house in the park to the streets of Barcelona. I will trace his path from this house to his still unfinished masterpiece, the Church of the Sagrda Familia, a path that one day lead to his death.
Walking alone did not seem to bother him. By that time he had become accustom to isolation. In fact, he was so consistent with his hikes that in the morning the owners of the small hotel, situated just across the entrance of the park, could expect to see the same baggy black suited man stroll onto Carrer de Milans from this path that lead from behind the wall of the park. He was like reliable clockwork.
From his door he would walk straight and followed his walkway to a bridge. It took a moment. From the bridge he could see the entire southern half of the park, and it was at this position above the city of Barcelona that Gaudi like to be when reflecting on life and on himself. And there was no better place for it—not only because Parc Guell was his home at the time, but also because it was a place of his own thought and design. Gaudi designed this park. It was his first mature work as an architect.
He designed it 1903. The years that lead up to his last walk were important years of consolidation for Gaudi. It was a time when he moved towards a greater expression of freedom. He was fully aware that no one would follow where he was about to go.
Originally, the park was to be a high-income housing project with a grand entrance, grand lodges, a grand plaza, and grand carriage roads. These ideas were conceived by Gaudi’s main patron, Eusebi Guell i Bacigalupi, a 19th century Catalunian mercantile knight with elaborate tastes and an elaborate reputation to assert.
Though most of the basic construction of the park had been completed by 1906, it was obvious to Gaudi that the project would never fully develop. Only 2 buyers signed up and built homes. The lost, over sixty of them, were too expensive and the site was too far away from the city for most people. Only those who wished, and could afford, to escape to a more natural setting would build at Parc Guell, and of those where were few.
Besides this, Gaudi was simply in conflict with his society. His name was known as the famous architect of the Sagrada Familia, he was out of sync with the modernisme movement of the time. And few knew his face.
For Gaudi the park was a statement about his deep belief in Catalunian nationalism, a dominant sense of existence for many Barcelonese during the first quarter of the 20th century, and it served as the background for the design of the park. But it was not this that put him out of his society, for it responded to a mass of ideals that were dear to the hearts of all Catalunians. Rather, it was the way in which the symbols and metaphors alluding to Catalunya were carried out in his work.
For example, when Gaudi left this bridge, he would follow a stone path down to the right of two entrance pavilions. Each one is an architectural reenactment of the two house in the story of Hansel und Gretel.* The left-hand house is the house of the children and the other is that of the wicked witch. Gaudi particularly liked the latter one because of the mushroom roof. “That marvelous ceramic fong,” he might have told himself while walking by, “Amanita muscaria--poisonous, hallucinogenic, and distasteful: what is a better emblem for a sorceress?”
The house of Hansel and Gretel, or Ton i Guida in senor Gaudi’s Catalunian, is crowned with a cross and ornamented with blue and white checkers, the colors of the Bavarian flag. It stands tall as a symbol of virtue.
And between the house of the good and the house of the bad stretches a gate cast in iron through which one begins one’s journey to the forest of the park. (Though in 1906, there was no forest. The land on which the park was constructed, originally two farms on a shallow hill, was still quite desolate of vegetation.)
Nevertheless, it took great courage, or just great personal belief, to deign something so ostentatious for such a serious and ambitious project.
I don’t think the failure of this park mattered much to Gaudi. Yes, it was rather ugly at the time. It’s still a little hard on the nerves now. But I think what really mattered to Gaudi was the freedom of expression given to him. He took full advantage of that opportunity. This is especially true in the use of fragments of tile.
And “what a weird sight,” one writer wrote in a 1905 satirical weekly of the construction sight of the church. “Thirty men braking tiles and still thirty more recombining the fragments again as pieces of decoration. Hanged if can understand it!”
At the time, the park was a freak place. But Gaudi was fully aware of historical situation. He was fully aware that in time his work would have positive force, just by the fact that it was in conflict with his time. Decades later, I might add, Dadaists and Cubists were also making collages.
It is important, too, to say something of Gaudi the man before he designed Parc Guell. This would help to give a clearer understanding of his increased sense of self-comfort and unity from about the year 1888 to his death in 1926, a feeling of ease with his work and his time which ironically only increased his isolation.
For this we must trace his route out of the park and long the dirt streets of an old Barcelona. Just a little further from the empty gate houses of the park on Carrer de Milans, I head west, then I turned south down Passeig Sant Jose de la Muntanya until it meets Trasvessera de Dalt. Just a block west from the corner, in a hinge of an L-shaped street called calle de las Carolinas, is one of Gaudi’s first commissions.
The Casa Vicens, I will say only briefly, is an excellent example of the younger Gaudi. It is busy with ornament and witty little touches, like the little iron dragons on its window grilles. It stands as an expression of industry, covered with floral ceramics and tile, because, after all, his patron was a tile manufacture.
And the younger Gaudi, well he was something of a dandy, or at least thought he could be. Amazingly shy, he was vain about his appearance. He loved the theater, the opera, the ballet, and he loved rich patrons. He even once wrote a letter to a patron to down an offer to design a textile factory, not because Gaudi disliked the work but because there was no money in it. Gaudi wrote to his patron in Madrid: “As you can surely appreciate I live by my work and I cannot dedicate myself to vague or experimental projects—I believe that you yourself would never give up a sure thing for an unsure one.”
In 1878, virtually fresh out of architectural school, the Casa Vicens was a sure thing. And Manuel Vicens i Montaner was a rich textile producer—that is until after he received the bill for the home he had built by Gaudi. It nearly bankrupted him, but not in a literal sense, of course. And that was the case for most of Gaudi’s patrons, especially Guell. Yet, to them the cost was always insignificant to the boldness and showiness of their new homes.
Similar work during the time—other lavish town houses and elaborate apartment complexes, all for rich dwellers—are certainly in marked contrast to the work that followed. But it should be noted that the metamorphosis of Gaudi the dandy into Gaudi the modest and humble architect of the Sagrada Familia was gradual. In the 1880’s Barcelona enjoyed an economic prosperity which allowed the development of the city. Modernisme was the prevailing fashionable style. Gaudi grew to dislike it, though it could be argued that he had a part in its creation, and then moved on.
It was around then that he began to accept second-hand work begun by his colleagues. It takes a great deal of humility, and very little pride, to finish work others felt fit to abandon.
In 1886, the economic boom collapsed, but the energy of Modernisme lasted, as far as I cam tell, until about 1905. It stood for diffusion, and everything was vague. Guadi stood for unity, staying ahead of this time. By 1883, when he accepted the task of continuing the work of building the Holy Temple of the Sagrada Familia, there seemed to have been a synthesis in Gaudi’s spiritually. He was 31 then, and he continued developing along the lines that he had been following up this point, that is ostentatiousness, but there is also that one important aspect I’ve been alluding to here.
On the 3rd of November, 1883, Gaudi had a spiritual experience which, as far as anyone seems to know, he never clearly described. The experience convinced him that a miracle of St. Joseph had brought to him the commission to complete the church of the Sagrada Familia. His religious zeal steadily grew from there, and evening in the secular Par Guell, his statement of Catalunya’s nationalism, he managed to pull religious significance into its design.
In this case, among other examples within the park, the Bavarian houses relate to Bavaria’s Richard Wagner, the composer who knew Engelbert Humperdinck and who wrote the Barcelona hit opera in 1900 titled, of course, Ton i Guida. Together these men collaborated on Parsifal, an opera which set the location of the Holy Grail in no other place than Catalunya. So, what better place and reason for Catholic Cataunians, or anyone in Gaudi’s no religious eyes, to unite?
His increased tendency towards isolation dates from the 3-year period, starting in 1900. He was still a sociable man, but nevertheless he often withdrew into silent work. For example, at this time he frequently hid himself anyway to work on the Temple of the Sagrda Familia, to which I am still walking.
From the corner on Travessera de Dalt, Gaudi would go east several blocks and then turn south, down Carrer de Sardenya. This long stretch leads directly to the temple.
A bookseller started the monumental project. Jose Maria Bocabella wanted to “bring about…the triumph of the Catholic Church” to those who were godless. Sometime around 1874, Bocabella came up with the idea of constructing the church that was to be offered as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of Barcelona. It was to be built entirely on the proceeds of alms. And, it was to be an exact copy of the Basilica at Loreto, in Italy. To complete this task, he asked for the services of Francisco del Villar.
Because of financial reasons (I think), the site for the church was changed from within the city to the outskirts. Del Villar drew up plans for the neo-Gothic church and in March of 1882 the ground breaking took place. In November of 1883, Villar quit. I have been able to find anything in my research about the conditions under which he left the job, and under want conditions, aside from a vague spiritual experience, Gaudi accepted it.
What urged Gaudi in the Sagrada Familia, it seems to me, was the freedom offered to him. From the moment the Josephines hired Gaudi to complete the temple, he had a free hand. Nobody interfered with his plans or offered any criticism of them. He more ostentatious it got, the better. Yet, for over 19 years, as the temple grew in an as yet isolated area of the city, and despite the numerous published articles at the time, Gaudi’s involvement with the temple was surprisingly anonymous.
The Sagrda Familia did not appeal to the tastes of ideas of the time. By 1906, however, the culture of the city had changed. Art Nouveau extravaganzas were being dominated by a movement towards traditional images of the Mediterranean. The temple became synonymous with Gaudi. He was a popular hero, in demand all over the city by anyone who could appreciate the work of an apparently isolated spirit.
And why not? After all, he was the genius who could unit faith and art. And the irony is interesting. Before 1906, a little know architect tried to catch the eye of the entire city. Then for 19 years he developed a sense of security within himself, abandoning materialism to build “a vessel to gather in the godless.” And by that year, when he had full command of the cities most popular and important project, and the status of a hero, he wanted little else than to be left alone, to express his intense desire for life, particularly religious life, and his structural genius.
For Gaudi, the temple was not an exercise in beauty or architecture. It was an attempt to encrust life in stone.
Since the project was to be constructed entirely from donations, as Gaudi made his walks he never stopped begging for money. All long this street, he knocked on doors and asked for any amount the poor could give. And from the rich, he expected a significant sacrifice. It is not surprising, then, that Barceloneses would quickly cross the street when they saw the old genius headed their way.
“Make a sacrifice!” he would say, with a thousand-yard stare from his blue eyes.
“With pleasure,” the donor my say, “It’s no sacrifice at all.”
“Then give enough for it to be a sacrifice! Charity that does not amount to sacrifice is not charity at all. Often, it’s merely vanity.”
And just across the street from the temple, at the corner of Carrer de Sardenya and Carrer del Provena, Gaudi would approach the site with his morning earnings and any bottles or broken pieces of tile found on the way. Except, one day in 1926, he never made it to the temple. He was fatally struck by a street car.
For three days Gaudi laid in a morgue, unidentified. The hero of his city was unknown.
In that year, Gaudi would have seen the Façade of the Nativity, just begun and not yet reached the rose window. The bud of one of the spires, though small, was still a monumental sight. The entire temple was surrounded by barren fields full of black goats.
The Sagrada Familia was Gaudi’s last project, and it was perhaps his most cared for personal struggles to finish. He knew that he would never live to see it completed, but, as with isolation, that idea did not bother him. He was comfortable; and in a sense, the Sagrada Familia remains as his last expression of the struggle to unify a society that noticed him, and his deep urgency for life, too late.
Downs © Copyright 2005
(This post is also on my Travel Journal blog, Pursuing the Esoteric.)
As a child Antoni Gaudi i Cornet had incurred a type of rheumatism that never left him. To combat this weakness, he adopted a pattern of behavior that involved, among other rituals, a careful vegetarian diet, homeopathic drugs, a variety of bathing procedures, and regular hiking. It was a pattern of behavior that was bound to set him apart. As thus, after he moved to Parc Guell in 1906, Gaudi left his new residence at the southeastern side of the park seven days a week, for 20 years, to hike 4 and a half kilometers to his work at the Sagrada Familia.The hikes began at about 7 in the morning. Gaudi’s usual hiking partner was Lorenzo Matamala, a local sculptor and life-long friend. They would walk together in both directions, to and from the church, but during the year of 1906, despite his own fragility, Guadi found himself walking alone.
This morning, it is nearly 7:30, and I am sitting on the pathway that leads from his old house in the park to the streets of Barcelona. I will trace his path from this house to his still unfinished masterpiece, the Church of the Sagrda Familia, a path that one day lead to his death.
Walking alone did not seem to bother him. By that time he had become accustom to isolation. In fact, he was so consistent with his hikes that in the morning the owners of the small hotel, situated just across the entrance of the park, could expect to see the same baggy black suited man stroll onto Carrer de Milans from this path that lead from behind the wall of the park. He was like reliable clockwork.
From his door he would walk straight and followed his walkway to a bridge. It took a moment. From the bridge he could see the entire southern half of the park, and it was at this position above the city of Barcelona that Gaudi like to be when reflecting on life and on himself. And there was no better place for it—not only because Parc Guell was his home at the time, but also because it was a place of his own thought and design. Gaudi designed this park. It was his first mature work as an architect.
He designed it 1903. The years that lead up to his last walk were important years of consolidation for Gaudi. It was a time when he moved towards a greater expression of freedom. He was fully aware that no one would follow where he was about to go.
Originally, the park was to be a high-income housing project with a grand entrance, grand lodges, a grand plaza, and grand carriage roads. These ideas were conceived by Gaudi’s main patron, Eusebi Guell i Bacigalupi, a 19th century Catalunian mercantile knight with elaborate tastes and an elaborate reputation to assert.
Though most of the basic construction of the park had been completed by 1906, it was obvious to Gaudi that the project would never fully develop. Only 2 buyers signed up and built homes. The lost, over sixty of them, were too expensive and the site was too far away from the city for most people. Only those who wished, and could afford, to escape to a more natural setting would build at Parc Guell, and of those where were few.
Besides this, Gaudi was simply in conflict with his society. His name was known as the famous architect of the Sagrada Familia, he was out of sync with the modernisme movement of the time. And few knew his face.For Gaudi the park was a statement about his deep belief in Catalunian nationalism, a dominant sense of existence for many Barcelonese during the first quarter of the 20th century, and it served as the background for the design of the park. But it was not this that put him out of his society, for it responded to a mass of ideals that were dear to the hearts of all Catalunians. Rather, it was the way in which the symbols and metaphors alluding to Catalunya were carried out in his work.
For example, when Gaudi left this bridge, he would follow a stone path down to the right of two entrance pavilions. Each one is an architectural reenactment of the two house in the story of Hansel und Gretel.* The left-hand house is the house of the children and the other is that of the wicked witch. Gaudi particularly liked the latter one because of the mushroom roof. “That marvelous ceramic fong,” he might have told himself while walking by, “Amanita muscaria--poisonous, hallucinogenic, and distasteful: what is a better emblem for a sorceress?”
The house of Hansel and Gretel, or Ton i Guida in senor Gaudi’s Catalunian, is crowned with a cross and ornamented with blue and white checkers, the colors of the Bavarian flag. It stands tall as a symbol of virtue.
And between the house of the good and the house of the bad stretches a gate cast in iron through which one begins one’s journey to the forest of the park. (Though in 1906, there was no forest. The land on which the park was constructed, originally two farms on a shallow hill, was still quite desolate of vegetation.)
Nevertheless, it took great courage, or just great personal belief, to deign something so ostentatious for such a serious and ambitious project.
I don’t think the failure of this park mattered much to Gaudi. Yes, it was rather ugly at the time. It’s still a little hard on the nerves now. But I think what really mattered to Gaudi was the freedom of expression given to him. He took full advantage of that opportunity. This is especially true in the use of fragments of tile.
And “what a weird sight,” one writer wrote in a 1905 satirical weekly of the construction sight of the church. “Thirty men braking tiles and still thirty more recombining the fragments again as pieces of decoration. Hanged if can understand it!”
At the time, the park was a freak place. But Gaudi was fully aware of historical situation. He was fully aware that in time his work would have positive force, just by the fact that it was in conflict with his time. Decades later, I might add, Dadaists and Cubists were also making collages.It is important, too, to say something of Gaudi the man before he designed Parc Guell. This would help to give a clearer understanding of his increased sense of self-comfort and unity from about the year 1888 to his death in 1926, a feeling of ease with his work and his time which ironically only increased his isolation.
For this we must trace his route out of the park and long the dirt streets of an old Barcelona. Just a little further from the empty gate houses of the park on Carrer de Milans, I head west, then I turned south down Passeig Sant Jose de la Muntanya until it meets Trasvessera de Dalt. Just a block west from the corner, in a hinge of an L-shaped street called calle de las Carolinas, is one of Gaudi’s first commissions.The Casa Vicens, I will say only briefly, is an excellent example of the younger Gaudi. It is busy with ornament and witty little touches, like the little iron dragons on its window grilles. It stands as an expression of industry, covered with floral ceramics and tile, because, after all, his patron was a tile manufacture.
And the younger Gaudi, well he was something of a dandy, or at least thought he could be. Amazingly shy, he was vain about his appearance. He loved the theater, the opera, the ballet, and he loved rich patrons. He even once wrote a letter to a patron to down an offer to design a textile factory, not because Gaudi disliked the work but because there was no money in it. Gaudi wrote to his patron in Madrid: “As you can surely appreciate I live by my work and I cannot dedicate myself to vague or experimental projects—I believe that you yourself would never give up a sure thing for an unsure one.”
In 1878, virtually fresh out of architectural school, the Casa Vicens was a sure thing. And Manuel Vicens i Montaner was a rich textile producer—that is until after he received the bill for the home he had built by Gaudi. It nearly bankrupted him, but not in a literal sense, of course. And that was the case for most of Gaudi’s patrons, especially Guell. Yet, to them the cost was always insignificant to the boldness and showiness of their new homes.
Similar work during the time—other lavish town houses and elaborate apartment complexes, all for rich dwellers—are certainly in marked contrast to the work that followed. But it should be noted that the metamorphosis of Gaudi the dandy into Gaudi the modest and humble architect of the Sagrada Familia was gradual. In the 1880’s Barcelona enjoyed an economic prosperity which allowed the development of the city. Modernisme was the prevailing fashionable style. Gaudi grew to dislike it, though it could be argued that he had a part in its creation, and then moved on.
It was around then that he began to accept second-hand work begun by his colleagues. It takes a great deal of humility, and very little pride, to finish work others felt fit to abandon.
In 1886, the economic boom collapsed, but the energy of Modernisme lasted, as far as I cam tell, until about 1905. It stood for diffusion, and everything was vague. Guadi stood for unity, staying ahead of this time. By 1883, when he accepted the task of continuing the work of building the Holy Temple of the Sagrada Familia, there seemed to have been a synthesis in Gaudi’s spiritually. He was 31 then, and he continued developing along the lines that he had been following up this point, that is ostentatiousness, but there is also that one important aspect I’ve been alluding to here.
On the 3rd of November, 1883, Gaudi had a spiritual experience which, as far as anyone seems to know, he never clearly described. The experience convinced him that a miracle of St. Joseph had brought to him the commission to complete the church of the Sagrada Familia. His religious zeal steadily grew from there, and evening in the secular Par Guell, his statement of Catalunya’s nationalism, he managed to pull religious significance into its design.
In this case, among other examples within the park, the Bavarian houses relate to Bavaria’s Richard Wagner, the composer who knew Engelbert Humperdinck and who wrote the Barcelona hit opera in 1900 titled, of course, Ton i Guida. Together these men collaborated on Parsifal, an opera which set the location of the Holy Grail in no other place than Catalunya. So, what better place and reason for Catholic Cataunians, or anyone in Gaudi’s no religious eyes, to unite?
His increased tendency towards isolation dates from the 3-year period, starting in 1900. He was still a sociable man, but nevertheless he often withdrew into silent work. For example, at this time he frequently hid himself anyway to work on the Temple of the Sagrda Familia, to which I am still walking.
From the corner on Travessera de Dalt, Gaudi would go east several blocks and then turn south, down Carrer de Sardenya. This long stretch leads directly to the temple.
A bookseller started the monumental project. Jose Maria Bocabella wanted to “bring about…the triumph of the Catholic Church” to those who were godless. Sometime around 1874, Bocabella came up with the idea of constructing the church that was to be offered as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of Barcelona. It was to be built entirely on the proceeds of alms. And, it was to be an exact copy of the Basilica at Loreto, in Italy. To complete this task, he asked for the services of Francisco del Villar.
Because of financial reasons (I think), the site for the church was changed from within the city to the outskirts. Del Villar drew up plans for the neo-Gothic church and in March of 1882 the ground breaking took place. In November of 1883, Villar quit. I have been able to find anything in my research about the conditions under which he left the job, and under want conditions, aside from a vague spiritual experience, Gaudi accepted it.
What urged Gaudi in the Sagrada Familia, it seems to me, was the freedom offered to him. From the moment the Josephines hired Gaudi to complete the temple, he had a free hand. Nobody interfered with his plans or offered any criticism of them. He more ostentatious it got, the better. Yet, for over 19 years, as the temple grew in an as yet isolated area of the city, and despite the numerous published articles at the time, Gaudi’s involvement with the temple was surprisingly anonymous.
The Sagrda Familia did not appeal to the tastes of ideas of the time. By 1906, however, the culture of the city had changed. Art Nouveau extravaganzas were being dominated by a movement towards traditional images of the Mediterranean. The temple became synonymous with Gaudi. He was a popular hero, in demand all over the city by anyone who could appreciate the work of an apparently isolated spirit.
And why not? After all, he was the genius who could unit faith and art. And the irony is interesting. Before 1906, a little know architect tried to catch the eye of the entire city. Then for 19 years he developed a sense of security within himself, abandoning materialism to build “a vessel to gather in the godless.” And by that year, when he had full command of the cities most popular and important project, and the status of a hero, he wanted little else than to be left alone, to express his intense desire for life, particularly religious life, and his structural genius.
For Gaudi, the temple was not an exercise in beauty or architecture. It was an attempt to encrust life in stone.
Since the project was to be constructed entirely from donations, as Gaudi made his walks he never stopped begging for money. All long this street, he knocked on doors and asked for any amount the poor could give. And from the rich, he expected a significant sacrifice. It is not surprising, then, that Barceloneses would quickly cross the street when they saw the old genius headed their way.
“Make a sacrifice!” he would say, with a thousand-yard stare from his blue eyes.
“With pleasure,” the donor my say, “It’s no sacrifice at all.”
“Then give enough for it to be a sacrifice! Charity that does not amount to sacrifice is not charity at all. Often, it’s merely vanity.”
And just across the street from the temple, at the corner of Carrer de Sardenya and Carrer del Provena, Gaudi would approach the site with his morning earnings and any bottles or broken pieces of tile found on the way. Except, one day in 1926, he never made it to the temple. He was fatally struck by a street car.
For three days Gaudi laid in a morgue, unidentified. The hero of his city was unknown.
In that year, Gaudi would have seen the Façade of the Nativity, just begun and not yet reached the rose window. The bud of one of the spires, though small, was still a monumental sight. The entire temple was surrounded by barren fields full of black goats.
The Sagrada Familia was Gaudi’s last project, and it was perhaps his most cared for personal struggles to finish. He knew that he would never live to see it completed, but, as with isolation, that idea did not bother him. He was comfortable; and in a sense, the Sagrada Familia remains as his last expression of the struggle to unify a society that noticed him, and his deep urgency for life, too late.
Downs © Copyright 2005
(This post is also on my Travel Journal blog, Pursuing the Esoteric.)
posted by Mr. Downs at 11:03 AM
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