The Sagrada Familia: The Astonishing Story of Antoni Gaudí's Unfinished Masterpiece

177 Pages·2016·1.56 MB·English

by  Gijs van Hensbergen

THE SAGRADA FAMÍLIA
For Deborah Chambers, ‘La Catalana’,
whose kindness and support has meant so much
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Antoni Gaudí
Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-century Icon

CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Index
A Note on the Author
PROLOGUE
BEHIND THE FAÇADE
Gaudí, possibly more than any other architect in history, has been totally
misunderstood. Many people take Gaudí’s buildings at face value. They wonder
wide-eyed at the audacity, the orgy of colour, the engineering brilliance and
outrageous daring, the sensuous surfaces that invite a touch, the wild and
wonderful subject matter of dragons and skulls and the gingerbread-style houses
made as if copied straight from the nightmare pages of Grimm’s Hansel and
Gretel. What they often fail to do is look behind the seductive, sometimes
frightening, façade.
Of all of Gaudí’s buildings, the Sagrada Família – a true life’s work – is by
far the most puzzling and the most quixotic. Its ambition seemingly knows no
bounds, and its complex narrative is as mystifying as the visions that Saint John
recorded on Patmos, which were later transformed into the Book of Revelation.
For the reader expecting a standard guidebook with an easy route to follow,
and some simple observations followed by the odd suggestion for what else to
see, this is not for you. The Sagrada Família is already so well publicised, so
often visited, so often photographed that as the icon for Barcelona, it appears to
need no introduction. That is, of course, a wholly simplistic approach to Gaudí’s
fantastically complex ‘cathedral’. For more than a century, the ‘real’ Sagrada
Família has somehow managed to successfully hide itself behind the blinding
glare of the spotlight out there in full public view.
If Gaudí’s buildings were misunderstood, so was he. Gaudí as a man was a
fascinating catalogue of contradictions: he was both revolutionary and deeply
conservative; massively ambitious yet also humble; at the cutting edge yet
deliberately medieval; pig-headed and irritable, yet also patient and kind; he was
almost the epitome of the Franciscan – happiest when meditating and
communing with nature; yet he was also a passionate Catalan nationalist but,
paradoxically, at the same time always reaching out towards the universal in his
aspirations and ideals. Catalan identity is often described as representing the
complex fusion of the two creative extremes embodied in the dialectically
opposed concepts of seny and rauxa – cold common sense, versus sometimes
explosive outbursts. Gaudí was all of this and more.
Part of the reason for dismissing Gaudí so easily as a mere theatrical
showman is partly his own fault, or rather the fault of his sheer approachability.
For many years, Gaudí was deemed far too popular and lightweight for
architectural historians – outside of Catalonia – to take him seriously. He was
also seen as far too eccentric, too bizarre and, in Catalonia, the land of Salvador
Dalí, almost too obviously surrealist and actually downright strange.
Gaudí is a total one-off. But Dalí’s obsessive interest in Gaudí did the
architect no favours. In 1933 in the surrealist magazine Minotaure, in an article
entitled ‘The Terrifying and Edible Beauty of Art Nouveau Architecture’, Dalí
eulogised, rhapsodised then sacrificed Gaudí’s architecture on the altar of his
own perverse ego. As always, Dalí was far cleverer than he gave himself credit
for. Gaudí’s architecture was sensual, soft, erotic, inviting touch. It was like an
ornamental ‘confectioner’s table’, Dalí said, and he was right – it does have the
faint echo of those great pièces montées of chocolate, icing and spun sugar
constructed by the legendary Antonin Carême for the banquets of tsars, kings
and emperors. It was Carême – the first superstar chef – who, puffed up with the
pride of his profession, made the rather silly claim that ‘architecture was the
most noble of the arts and that pastry was the highest form of architecture’.
However, even today Christian Escriba, Catalan’s celebrated chocolatier, is
known to construct and carefully mould the odd version of a Gaudí house in
chocolate in direct homage to his two masters, the two Antonis, Carême and
Gaudí.
It’s no secret that Ferran Adrià, the world’s most famous chef, has also
frequently looked to Gaudí for inspiration.
But Adrià’s adulation goes right to the crux of the Gaudí problem. Seduced
by the surface, we are less likely to look behind the scenes. And this is where
Ferran Adrià can help us out. Because what we see in Adrià’s extraordinary
culinary creations is a search for the science and the hidden structures in the
nature of food. And by digging even deeper, Adrià, like Gaudí, is hell-bent on
the labyrinthine search for the source of creativity itself.
Dalí’s support for what he saw as the ‘delirious’ architecture of Gaudí
certainly touched a raw nerve. Gaudí is popular, massively so. He gives joy – fa
goig, as he would say in Catalan. But the joy that Gaudí gives comes at the cost
of his suffering, of rigorous self-discipline, of painstaking research, and also by
the grace of his engineering genius. Finally, of course, right at the centre of his
work sits his profound Catholic faith like a hard kernel, inviolate and
unbreakable. The Sagrada Família is so unique, and so closely associated with
Barcelona, that it is often forgotten that it grew out of a pan-European Catholic
revival.
In an age when we are so often told that religion is dying, except, of course,
when it manifests itself as a good reason for going to war, it is perhaps strange
that a building project on the scale of the Sagrada Família still continues to forge
ahead.
The Sagrada Família is a unique project that is slowly reaching its long-
awaited end. If all goes to plan, the gigantic dome, which will double the
existing building’s height, will be topped out in 2026 to celebrate the centenary
of Gaudí’s death. Like the construction of all churches, it is really in the end that
we find the beginning. And the Sagrada Família will be no exception.
What I hope to offer the reader is an insight into the creative genius that is
Gaudí: to trace the development of the Sagrada Família’s evolution from
expiatory temple to basilica, and open a window onto its complex Christian
narrative. It is a fascinating story that started with the dreams of an eccentric
Barcelona bookseller in the mid-nineteenth century to find a way of celebrating
the life of the holy family. Today we witness the near completion of this
extraordinary high-tech build. From beginning to end there have been planning
battles, misunderstandings, and an alleged attempt to blow it up, and, of course,
the tragic death of Gaudí – run over by a tram en route to the ritual of his daily
confession at Saint Felipe Neri, down in the old Gothic quarter of Barcelona.
Finally, the Sagrada Família’s special status has now been fully acknowledged