Juan José Lahuerta

When the Corbusian International Modern style, with its contempt for ornament, imposed itself on architecture, figures like Gaudi (1852-1926) were relegated to the sidelines. In this volume, Lahuerta situates Gaudi in his context and vindicates his fin-de-siecle bohemian modernity. Embodied in such powerful images as the equation of the spires of the Sagrada Familia with the flames rising from burning churches during the Tragic Week (1909), the story takes us to the Barcelona of the early twentieth century, when class struggle threatened to topple the prevailing capitalist model. Drawing on valuable first-hand documents collected over several decades, the author shows that Gaudi was not an isolated eccentric but an architect who was keenly aware of the major theories and outstanding works of his time and the creator of revolutionary technical innovations. His analyses of Gaudi's writings reveals a pioneer in the use of industrial processes to produce ornamental details that may seem handmade today. Equally novel was the way that Gaudi made use of his fame as a public figure, a 'media personality', thanks to the cartoons of the architect and his buildings in the popular press. His influence on avant-garde artists like Dali, who admired the edible appearance of the Casa Mila, or Picasso, fascinated by the eroticism of the Casa Batllo attest to the importance of his contribution to culture. This entertaining volume is part of Columns of Smoke, a series of publications in which Professor Lahuerta turns his perceptive eye on the official narrative of modernity and its protagonists and the relationship between architecture, decoration and the print media.

Ornament, Fire and Ashes

Antoni Gaudí

Salvador Dalí

Emily Braun

Juan Eduardo Cirlot

Lourdes Cirlot

Antoni Tàpies

Giulio Carlo Argan

Giangiorgio Pasqualotto

Perejaume

Javier Melloni

Eduard Cairol

Daniel R. Esparza

Martine Heredia

Enrique Granell

Alfonso Alegre Heitzmann

Jordi Garcés

To mark the centenary of the birth of Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona 1923-2012), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Fundació Tàpies in Barcelona organised a conference entitled ‘Art and Spirituality’. This is the same title as the lecture that Tàpies gave at the UPF when he was awarded an honorary degree in 1988. It is with that lecture that we open the issue of Engramma that we present here, which bears the same title as this monograph dedicated to the Catalan artist. The issue contains contributions by Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Giulio Carlo Argan, Salvador Dalí - published in the years between 1955 and 1962 when Tàpies introduced Informal Art in Barcelona. We also publish some of the papers given at the 2012 conference: Emily Braun, Alfonso Alegre Heitzmann, Javier Melloni, Martine Heredia, Jordi Garcés). In addition, other significant contributions by Giorgio Pasqualotto, Daniel Esparza, Eduard Cairol, Enrique Granell, Juan José Lahuerta and Lourdes Cirlot. A section of the issue is reserved for the Sala de Reflexió at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, conceived by Tàpies as a space for meditation (as stated in the text by Tàpies himself that we republish here). The images of the Sala Tàpies that we publish in this issue are accompanied by texts by Jordi Garcés and Javier Melloni. Finally, two contributions by the Catalan artist Perejaume, who installed his work Fer voltejar una creu in the Sala de Reflexió during the 2012 conference. As a "Homage to Antoni Tàpies" we publish here the verses that Jean-Luc Nancy dedicated to Antoni Tàpies in his contribution to the conference at the Tàpies Foundation in 2012.

La Rivista di Engramma 212, maggio 2024

Arte e spiritualità. Omaggio a Antoni Tàpies

A critical re-examination of the Catalan master.

Architecture, Ideology, and Politics

Antoni Gaudi, 1852-1926

«El fenómeno del éxtasis» es el título de un collage fotográfico y de un breve texto que Salvador Dalí publicó en el número 3-4 de la revista Minotaure (1933). Ambos marcan un momento determinante en la carrera del artista. Ante todo suponen la culminación de su actividad en el grupo surrealista ortodoxo que dirigía André Breton, pero salen a la luz justo cuando la posición de Dalí dentro del grupo entra en crisis. Este libro analiza con gran agudeza y calidad literaria este importantísimo instante de inflexión, esencial para comprender tanto los caminos que seguirá la carrera de Dalí como el propio destino del surrealismo. Y lo hace planteando «El fenómeno del éxtasis» y el resto de las colaboraciones de Dalí en Minotaure como la expresión más clara del enfrentamiento entre dos formas distintas de entender el surrealismo, es decir, entre el idealismo de Breton y el materialismo de Dalí.

Dalí ca. 1933

El fenómeno del éxtasis

La muestra analiza, en el centenario de la fundación de la Residencia de Estudiantes, la relación entre estos dos creadores cuando ambos coincidieron en ella entre los años 1922 y 1929. Su objetivo es reconstruir la vinculación intelectual que se estableció entre ambos genios en el marco internacional de las vanguardias que ambos tomaban como horizonte cultural.

Dalí, Lorca y la Residencia de Estudiantes

Universo Gaudí

"On Loos, Ornament and Crime"is the most controversial of the essays in the series entitled "Columns of Smoke," in which Professor Juan Jose Lahuerta undertakes an acute and thoroughly documented rereading of modernity, linking the ideas of architecture and ornamentation and exploring the ways these have been treated in print. In the previous volume of this series Lahuerta exploded cliches with his penetrating analysis of Loos's relationship with photography, and here he examines in fine detail the architect's written work, and in particular the texts that engage with architectural and artistic theory and continue the classical tradition of Schinkel, Semper and Riegl an allegiance readily apparent in Loos's architecture. Lahuerta also discusses other articles in which Loos confronted his fellow architects over issuesfar removed from their shared profession, and shows us with tellingly insightful examples how 'Ornament and Crime', the founding essay of modernity that established "disornamentation" as the signal feature of twentieth-century architecture and culture, belongs to this second category. The "ornament" that Loos criminalizes, in language charged with the vocabulary of criminal anthropology and bioevolutionism of Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso, has less to do with the decoration of buildings than with the tattoos, beads and feathers of 'primitives' and "degenerates" women, Papuans, artists and criminals. Lahuerta traces Loos's adoption of pseudo-scientific beliefs that shaped the culture of the early twentieth century, and in so doing dismantles the historical value accorded to his famous text, which in this reading takes on a deeply disturbing significance. "

On Loos, Ornament and Crime

Juan José Lahuerta

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