Roofs, Towers and Balconies in Gaudi's Barcelona

The rich and fertile imagination of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) is seen all over the city of Barcelona.  Gaudí was a part of Modernista in Barcelona, a Romantic design movement related to Art Nouveau    His curved lines and organic shapes were probably inspirations to the Surrealist painters from Catalonia, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.



Two homes at the entry to Parc Güell are sometimes described as Hansel and Gretl Houses

       

                  Gaudí designed a expansive public park in Barcelona, Parc Güell, originally to be like English gardens and to include a housing development which did not sell.  His curves and points are a delight to explore, as I did in a visit several years ago.  The colorful lizard tiles adorning a huge staircase doubles as a fountain.   There are several pavilions, gates, curving walls and benches.   The Gaudí House Museum, where the architect once lived,
is also in this park. 

       Gaudí worked consistently on La Sagrada Familia from 1883 until his death, even living in a room within the building.  It has been taking more than 130 years to build and is expected to be completed by  by 2026--a hundred years after his death.  When I was there 7 years ago, much of the exterior shell was done.  In the end, it will have 18 towers and will rise 568 feet (170 meters) high. Its style combines the Gothic style with curvilinear Art Nouveau forms.

Gaudí was not only a great sculptural designer, but he was a genius of mathematical calculations.  He designed pointed arches for the Sagrada Familia, as in the Gothic style, but he figured out how to do it without the need for buttresses.   A modern computer program was able to determine that Gaudí arches are in the shape of parabolas.   

Gaudi's apartment buildings are fascinating for their shapes.  The Casa Milà, above, is said to imitate the waves of the sea, but locals have nicknamed it "La Pedrera,"  (the quarry).  Nature is the major inspiration.   

There is no better place to explore the fertile imagination of Antonio Gaudí then by looking from the rooftops. Whimsical biomorphic shapes at Casa Milà actually hide the building's utilities (pipes and ductwork) sculptural and cast iron designs.  The rooftop of Casa Milà becomes like a sculptured landscape to climb up, down, around and explore. Torre Agbar, the city's newest architectural icon by Jean Nouvel, is visible in the distance from inside an arch on top of that roof.

Whimsical faces, left, are vent covers pointing into the sky from the roof Casa Milà in Barcelona, perhaps Gaudí's most famous apartment building, left.

Gaudi's animation continues in another apartment building, Casa Batlló, below, where the balconies form masks........Casa Batlló has a rich surface of tiles, multicolored on the facade, but shaped like the scales of a dragon on the roof. Next door is Casa Amatller, by modernista architect Puig i Cadafalch.

            When lit at night, Casa Batlló's roof forms the body of a dragon, while a cross-shaped tower suggests the triumph of St. George over the dragon, or a victory of the cross over death and sin.

Cross-Culturalism: Symbols of Mt. Fuji and the Eiffel Tower

Some of Henri Riviere's "36 Views of the Eiffel Tower." are in the Phillips' exhibition, Snapshot: Paintings and Photography, from Bonnard to Vuillard.  Five Metro stops away, the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery is hosting an exhibition of Katsushika Hokusai's "36 Views of Mt. Fuji."   The Cherry Blossom Festival just celebrated the100th anniversary of Japan's gift of cherry trees  to Washington, DC, a capital city based on French urban design patterns. These exhibitions coincided with that event.

The top of the Eiffel Tower seen beyond the leaves is from Henri Riviere's 36 Views of the Eiffel Tower, its Frontispiece,

                           published in 1902.  Hokusai's 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, 1830-1832, inspired him.  The scene below, Mt. Fuji 

                                                     from Goten-yama has Spring cherry blossoms opening to a distant view of the peak.

The Sackler exhibition has selected the most vivid images available of Hokusai's woodblock prints and the colors are vibrant.  Blues predominate, but most  prints have at least 4 other hues.  Riviere's images are printed as color lithographs with more neutral color harmonies.  French artists admired Japanese woodblock prints and Riviere owned at least 800 of them. The Phillips' exhibition--definitely worth the visit--also has small paintings and many photographs by Post-Impressionist artists such as Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, George Hendrik Breitner, Henri Evenepoel and Felix Valloton.

Both artists create different atmospheric effects, including the effects of wind, snow and various cloud formations. In many prints by each artist, the subjects, Mt. Fuji or the Eiffel Tower, are subordinated to other scenery.  Yet, Riviere used Hokusai's examples as inspiration rather than imitation.

Through rooftops and chimneys of Paris' many buildings we vaguely see the Eiffel Tower. A cat pokes through the diagonal zigzag of lines in the foreground as a dog runs away. Their silhouettes remind me
that Riviere did shadow plays for
 Le Chat Noir (the Black Cat).

Warehouses line a canal to form diagonal lines which lead  first, to Edo Castle, then to  Mt. Fuji, on the upper left corner,  (No 31 - Nihonbashi at Edo)

A large Mt. Fuji dominates the upper left, as a strong wind blows.  In this Autumn view, the people look

small compared to the force of the wind  (No. 18 - Sunshū Ejiri, in Suruga Province). Both
Hokusai and Riviere take the viewers through a yearly cycle of changing
weather conditions.  Hokusai's work dates to 1830-32.

Riviere also creates the sensation of Autumn wind surrounding a lonely man on a park bench. The

 Eiffel Tower stands directly above him.

Riviere spent a year watching the building of the Eiffel Tower.  During that time, he was able to go up into the construction and take photographs from the inside out.  Twelve of these photos are in the Phillips' 
exhibition, along with the lithograph above based on one of those pictures

The Phillips' exhibition compares these prints to photographs Riviere shot of workers constructing the Eiffel Tower. Riviere's primary profession was as a theatre set designer for Le Chat Noir, where he created shadow plays. As an artist, he is less well-known than Hokusai, although there is something magical about his style, perhaps a reflection of his work with silhouettes in the theatre and with photography. His prints were published in 1902 several years after he had taken the pictures of the Eiffel Tower. 

Hokusai is one of Japan's greatest artists.  There are two more exhibitions of paintings and screens by Hokusai in the Freer Gallery of Asian Art, which holds the world's largest collection of Hokusai and is attached to the Sackler Gallery. The rarely-seen Boy Viewing Mt. Fuji, ink on silk, is in a medium too fragile for continuous display, but it is included with the Hokusai paintings. 

It is an interesting to see that Hokusai, as an eastern artist, identifies with the power of pure nature, a volcanic mountain which dominates the Japanese landscape, while the western artist's symbol is a man-made construction, built for the World's Fair of 1889 and still a dominant symbol of Paris today.  

Hokusai's Boy Viewing Mt. Fuji, 1846, is a peaceful painting which expresses the grandeur of Mt. Fuji in color and ink on silk.  It is part of the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Asian art and will be on view until June 24, 2012 .