Art Nouveau Cities of the New Century Episode 2 Barcelona Antoni Gaudi

The thing that Gaudi has is that he's so diverse. But it's different here, isn't it, in Barcelona? There's glass, ceramics, old traditions and old crafts that were being recovered at the same time. The Art Nouveau cities across Europe, they all have a lot in common and they're all different. Well, in a sense, you could say that it is still alive. They're all widely different. Because Barcelona has the only building, the only Art Nouveau building that is still being built. Barcelona, how did Art Nouveau unfold here and why did it happen in the way it did here? Well, there's several ingredients that were in a confluence at the end of the 19th century here. One, very important one, was a spectacular growth of the economic activity, especially with industrialisation. Very much copied from England and maybe Belgium a bit. The other one was a growth of a Catalan nationalist or regionalist sentiment and trying to recover Catalan traditions, the language, literature, etc., which had been very strong in the medieval times. And at the same time, and this is very important for Catalan architecture, and that's where Gaudi and Domènech i Montaner, Josep Puig i Garafalc, etc., etc., all the great architects of the Catalan Art Nouveau movement studied. And when they came out of the university, they were young, they were full of big ideas. Their great inspiration, of course, was Violet Leduc and, of course, the English arts and crafts movement and the surge of going on in most of Europe. So all of that came together and these architects and artists, they wanted to recover these Catalan traditions. Catalan architecture had been very strong in Gothic and Romanesque. And so all this came together. They had rich patrons. The industrialists were earning obscene amounts of money and they wanted to make their houses as goods of ostentation. They wanted to show how rich they had become with industrialisation. So the architects were at their service. And they not only built huge, beautiful houses, but also very symbolic houses, houses that communicated this idea of Catalonia coming back, as it were, in the 19th century, after the medieval period and the era of decadence before that, and, very important, they wanted to be modern. That's why we call it Modernisme. That's why Art Nouveau is called Modernisme here, this ambition to be modern. So coming together of industrialisation, technology, urbanism with the Catalan traditions. Do you think that embodies Gaudi in some sense? Yeah, not really. The very special thing about Gaudi is he was not from the bourgeoisie. All the other architects were members of bourgeois families and most of the artists, too. Gaudi was not. Gaudi came from a family of potmakers, coppersmiths from Reus, which wasn't exactly the capital Barcelona. It was an important city then, but not as big. So he was more earthy, we could say. He was more nearer to nature, nearer to the Catalan working class. So he had a different spirit. And that's one of the things that makes him unique. He wasn't part of the academia or even the bourgeoisie, the upper middle classes which dominate in the panorama in Barcelona. There's a special ingredient here, which is the war in Cuba and the fact that Spain lost its colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, etc. And all the, should we say, rich entrepreneurs who were actually making a lot of money in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, had to come back to Spain and they brought the wealth with them and the normal apparition of new rich, high upper middle classes in all of Europe. We build a character with Gaudi that's very particular, that somehow when we see his architecture, it partly explains his character as well and vice versa. He was tremendously eccentric, yes. Very, very much so. Very strong-willed. He wanted things done his way. It is said that Eliezer Agin, the director of the Barcelona School of Architects, when he gave the title to Gaudi, he muttered to his colleague who was beside him, he said, are we giving this title to a genius or to a madman? And his colleague answered, well, time will tell. And I guess time told. He was both. He was a genius and a madman in the sense that he was never doing what was expected. Reports from the early building of the Sagrada Familia, for example, some of them mention how Gaudi was very, very demanding to his workers to the point that he put them at risk, at serious risk of injury or even death. And he really pressed them to work hard, to work a lot. And... But at the same time, when lunchtime came, he would sit down with the workers and he had a lot of character. I mean, for example, there's a story of an architect who visited the Sagrada Familia and said that the four columns at the entrance were not exactly apart. And he got really angry and he said, well, you should know yourself that the columns in the Parthenon are not all exactly the same distance apart. And that's because architecture is an art. It's not an exact science. And maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong, but the fact is he was very angry, of being criticised. He couldn't take it. As we go around the city looking at these buildings, one thing that we are struck by powerfully is the skill at work. Gaudi clearly valued that. He did, and he surrounded himself with very, very good artisans and artists. Do you have thoughts on how his national identity, how his Catalonian spirit was expressed? Gaudi loved the country to the extent that he thought that just the nature itself, the organic nature of the country, would show through. I mean, for instance, here we are in a church which looks very much like a forest. The columns are not all exactly the same. They're all twisted and turned round and very much like trees in a forest. And so he thought the country and patriotism would show through nature, rather than with sayings, flags and stuff like that. And also the type of architecture he did was very much inspired in traditional Catalan architecture. For example, he used a brick. Brick is very traditional in Catalan architecture, which comes, of course, from the Roman tradition. But he used brick consciously and on purpose because it was a very, let's say, Catalan or Mediterranean, if you want, architectural expression. It was his way of communicating his patriotism, as you say, rather than with propaganda. So, Luis, we pick up this idea you're suggesting of organic form, natural form of the forest and so forth, but you can't help noticing walking around the city that it's also full of animals in ceramic and metal and every material you can conceive of. Is that a special thing for Gaudí? There's plenty of animals in Sagrada Familia, but then Sagrada Familia is supposed to be a great basilica of Christianity devoted to God and all his creation. So animals are part of that creation, as are plants. But as far as animals, perhaps the most profuse animal is the dragon. And, of course, the dragon ties in with Catalan tradition and mythology because of the legend of Saint George. Saint George, as I said, is a patron saint of Catalonia. And the story goes that he killed the dragon to save the damsel. And when the dragon bled on the ground, out of the ground, sprouted roses, which again is another symbol of Catalan Art Nouveau, which is everywhere. Clearly, it's a culture of spectacular ornament and decoration, and that's one of the great, tremendous things we find everywhere in the city. But actually, at the same time, it occurs to us that the buildings function, that their usages come through. What's your thoughts on that in relation to Gaudí? Was he concerned that his buildings worked in practical terms? I'd say he was, and very much, very much. And perhaps the paradigm, his masterpiece, as far as this is concerned, is Casa Milà, La Pedrera. You have all the new technologies of the moment applied. So La Pedrera was the first house built in Barcelona without support walls. They were all columns. The whole of the eight stories are supported only by columns. You could take out the façade and all the walls, all the parting walls, and the building would still stand. It's also got running water, tap water, right since the beginning, electricity, gas. It's even got lifts, electric lifts. The first underground parking in Barcelona. Every single room has windows to the exterior, so it has natural light and ventilation. That was very important for him. All the kitchens and bathrooms are tiled. We're basically the same as the bathrooms we have nowadays. That was not just Gaudí, of course, that was general in Europe. But at the same time, Gaudí was a staunch traditionalist, as we have seen before, in the recovery of materials, the recovery of, for example, stone in La Pedrera is absolutely everywhere. The whole façade is made of stone, but there's also a lot of ironwork done in the traditional old wrought iron style. There's glass, ceramics. All of these were old traditions and old crafts that were being recovered at the same time as he mixed them with new technologies. So it seems contradictory, but it's one of the magical things of Barcelona modernism and I would say Art Nouveau in general across Europe. It's this mingling together of traditional crafts and new technology and new materials and old materials all mixed up. There's a great sense of international belonging, of globality, we could say even, we would say nowadays. But at the same time, a very strong regional or even national sentiment. And it's the genius of the Art Nouveau artists and architects, I would say, is their capacity to actually blend all these contradictions together to form this new art. In that bigger sense, the Art Nouveau cities across Europe, they all have a lot in common and they're all different. It's necessarily different because they were all trying to recover their national or regional spirit and their national or regional crafts, so that would give them a difference. And all their national legends and history, they wanted to express that through art and architecture, so that would necessarily give them a difference. But at the same time, they were very open to the world and very open to new technologies, new materials, all the advancements of industrialisation. As we know, Art Nouveau trickles to a close in most areas of Europe and becomes and hatches into other aspects of modern architecture and design and so forth. But it's different here, isn't it, in Barcelona, in the sense that, is it still alive? Is it still living? Well, in a sense, you could say that it is still alive because Barcelona has the only Art Nouveau building that is still being built, which is, of course, La Sagrada Familia, the great basilica. And in that sense, you could say Art Nouveau is still alive in Barcelona. But there was clearly a moment when the Art Nouveau movement lost its strength, and that was between 1909 and 1914, when there were several ingredients. One of them was the discovery of the ruins of Ampúries, which was a Greek colony, pre-Roman, a Greek commercial colony in the north of Barcelona. And they discovered a lot of statues and a lot of classical Greek art. And so a lot of Catalan artists and thinkers thought, you know, we must go back to our classical roots, Greco-Roman art, and stop all this modernity, all this inventing new things. No new art is necessary. We have the good art, which is the classical art. At the same time, in those same years, there was huge workers' revolts and anarchist riots, which brought about quite a lot of trouble to the city. There were dead, a lot of dead people in 1909 in one of the revolts. And the bourgeoisie became afraid and very quickly found its conservative spirit. And they thought Art Nouveau, or at least all this modernity, all this new art thing, was inspiring the workers to want to change all the situation, even politically, economically. And we can't have that, can we? Art Nouveau is very good and nice, but we want our money and we want our safety as bourgeoisie. An age of optimism and modernity came to a... It faltered, as it did for different reasons across Europe. Yeah, but in Europe, especially the First World War in 1914, it necessarily stopped because everyone was killing each other. But the Sagrada Familia continued on and continues on. The Catholic Church is not really your regular bourgeois patron. It has another idea of things. And I don't know. Personally, I'm quite glad that the Church has decided not to change the style of Sagrada Familia so much, but rather modernise it. So you have the newest façade on the other side of Gaudi's façade. It's different, it's more modern, but I think it preserves the spirit. It really still has the spirit that Gaudi would have given it. And the finished inside, which was finished very recently, maybe ten years ago. When you go into the Sagrada Familia, I think you really capture the intention that Gaudi had of being inside the forest of God's creation, so to say. So, Luis, for you, is there a building that epitomises what Gaudi is? I wouldn't risk to summarise him or to analyse him so much as to identify him with a single building. I think one of the great things that Gaudi has is that he's so diverse. He creates buildings that are completely different. If you compare Palau Güell, for example, which looks very much like a Gothic castle, doesn't it? Compare it with Casablanca, which is like a festival of light and colour. And again, compare it to La Pedrera or to this church we're in right now. They're all wildly different, really. At least in their aesthetically, they're wildly different. So there is no typical Gaudi? I would say a typical Gaudi is all of Gaudi.