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Barcelona – The city of great minds
#travel #inspiration #experience #antonigaudi #barcelona
Nothing is art if it does not come from nature.
I’ll be honest with you – the main monument I wanted to see in Barcelona was Salvador Dali’s Museum. (Un)Fortunately, it was closed for the public at the time of my visit. Ever since high school (and luckily, my art classes did not suck, like the ones in geography classroom), I’ve been obsessed with Salvador’s work. The biggest fan of Gothic and Baroque – completely and utterly inside and out of my own mind with melting clocks and dispersed space-time continuum. Not that today I am still not that (for I very much am), but I remembered that I forgot about the biggest player in art history of Earth – Antoni Gaudi. Pablo (Picasso) was there, as well, and although I truly respect all he has done for humanity, I’m simply not a fan of his work – no hard feelings, it is mutually exclusive with my sense taste in art.
Now, you know about me hating to name people after their last names. If we’re not great friends, and my nickname for you is not your last name, then I’d insult you by using it in a vocative form. My opinion, and I stand by it strictly. If you see me talking about Antoni, Pablo or Salvador, you’ll know whom I’m referring to. But what marvels me more than any other finding is one fact – I did not realize that my favorite visual artist of all times is not Salvador Dali, until I came to visit HIS city…
So, I decided to see the most famous church in the world, Sagrada Familia, the two Casas – Mila and Batllo (don’t try to pronounce it!)– as well as Park Guell. (Pardons for butchering the names, due to the lack of diacritics in a normal, viewable font.) What do these monuments have in common? Why, the creator, of course. Antoni Gaudi, inspired by nature and the order of things, designed them, to represent the art of life. You must have heard a saying such as “Art imitates life” or “Life imitates art” or a similar one. Antoni’s work really puts it to the test, confirming it 100% in the process, especially with the final results. Am I now going to tell you about these monuments one by one? Absolutely not! Go see them, or find a boring blog to read about them. I’ll express in words, what my friend Antoni was able to express visually.
Forms. Shapes. Everything in its place, its space, and everything taking the form of exactly what it represents. Yet, nothing is a copy, and the style in which it was built is visibly only inspired by the nature. Again, as a huge fan of Gothic, I love seeing grotesque gargoyles atop church entrances. (Guess three times what my new favorite cartoon from the 90’s is – in the comments, please.) And as such, I was struck speechless with the simplest invention of Antoni – the door knob. It is not squared, cubed, rounded, ellipsoid-shaped, or standard by any means. Imagine a piece of plaster in your hand, being gripped to shape the closed inside of the palm of your hand. And this is exactly how Antoni designed the knob – as the most natural form that a door knob can take. Now imagine everything else! Imagine the more complex and perpetual forms, stretching into new dimensions that our human minds cannot yet comprehend! Everything is love, everything is nature, and this lovely nature extends beyond the reach of our minds. (Take me back!)
The two Casas are made in an “organic” form. Now, imagine this Gothic soul not only being appalled, but also soothed and calmed in that whole mess. But it is no mess, for a fact. It is the most naturally organized order of the most strangely fluid elements, flowing into a unique and complete unity. The Casas are not just pieces of stone, plaster and glass. The Casas are the world! Everything inside and surrounding them stands together and stands one with the rest of our planet! Antoni’s main inspiration was water. (Whether it’s got anything to do with the actual truth) We had to google him out and confirm our suspicion that Antoni was a Cancer (10 points for us, what else do you think such a water soul would be). Living houses, breathing, colored so that the upper floors are shaded from the inside, while the bottom part is reached by more sunlight, glittering in and outside. What the water gave me by Florence + the Machine playing smoothly in the background. If I’d be building a house now (granted Antoni were still alive, of course), I’d know exactly whom to pay to design it.
Sagrada Familia, a church-museum, looks exactly like a combination of a magical forest and an ice-cream sundae. The art of it is so complex and avantgarde, that it is still in the process of raising. And who knows for how long further will the building of the church prevail. On one side, you can see the most majestic, baroque-esque façade, while on the other, the crudeness of secession hits hard. Yet, as if distilled in water, the two opposing styles flow into one another, as the most magical sea washes the sand of the Barcelonian beach, uniting with its land into a symphony of salt sea and ice-cream-capped churches. The water of the sea, the sand and stone of the city, the salty air and the fire of the most expressive sunrises and sunsets all combine into the picturesque city of Barcelona – The city of great minds!
Let’s not forget the odd one out. Why would anyone need to design a park? What makes Park Guell so special? (Go and see for yourself is the obvious response.) The chocolate and ice-cream buildings? The dessert scenery as if in an otherworldly movie? The view towards any end of the city? The mosaic lizards waving goodbye at the visitors? The splendor of the new and vivacious spirit of today, freezing everyone in time and forcing them to enjoy the present day, for the present is but a gift? All of it! Remember when I spoke about the spirit of Barcelona, or my friend Johnny talking about Barcelona as an omnipresent entity? Ta-duh! The entity obviously lives outside, greeting anyone who decides to pay a visit to the enclosed wonders of its minds’ creations. I truly cannot give a more concrete and precise answer to anyone’s question “What’s so special about Barcelona and it’s monuments?”, other than “Go and see!” – nor should I.
But all in all, I am surprised, shocked, appalled and disgusted by one thing solely. Has the world learnt nothing from Antoni Gaudi?! Is it possible that the only artist, in the history of humanity, who actually taught how to represent nature as nature, has not left enough trace in this world?! Is it possible that there are no architects living nowadays, who can design organic houses, with palm-plastered door knobs? Is there no effect of this genius onto the rest of the world only several decades later? Was Antoni so much ahead of his time, that he will still be avantgarde in the next century? Humanity?! Wake up! What we are used to is disastrous, for it does not imitate nature or life in any view. Can we not make our lives more natural and our environment, even in cities – nature? Read that again. Slowly. Out loud.
Some people were disgusted with the fact that I am now Barcelonian. Some people just bit their tongue, when about to call me a traitor, who sold his heritage out. Some laughed at the idea of being Barcelonian, when it is not the place where I first saw the light of day. But what if it really was? What if I’d been living in the darkness my whole life, waiting to finally open my eyes in this majestic city of nature? What if my mind coincides much deeper with the ones of Antoni, Pablo and Salvador, than the ones of the above-mentioned categories of people? What if it is the brightness of the mind and the beauty in the eye of the beholder that makes me an even Barcelonian with my artistic friends? A topic to think of? No, the haters will not think, and I have already said my yes.
In the end, do all great minds think alike? What does it take for someone to claim their mind to truly be great. Can everyone say it, granted that certain conditions have been met? Is a genius born, or is it created by exposition? When will humanity start to appreciate Antoni Gaudi as one of the biggest visionaries in contemporary history? When will organic houses become a hit? Can we incorporate Gothic gargoyles into modern-day churches? Can we all simply be what we decide to be, without the oppression of those who believe should be running our lives? Can we achieve our full humanly potential and become our best selves for real? I don’t know the exact and proper responses to these questions. But I know that they lie somewhere in Barcelona – The city of great minds.
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