Gaudy Gaudi
Well, here we are in Barcelona and the sites are amazing. Everywhere we go, we encounter beautiful art as if the beauty of creation is more important than the functionality.
The grandmaster of this movement was and remains Antoni Gaudi and it is no mistake that spell check wants to change his name to gaudy.
Traveling along Avenue Diagonal, I am reminded of the broad avenues and boulevards of Vienna with classic stone buildings and expensive shops. But the real attractions are the works of the genius considered to be mad, devoting his life to observing the beauty and function of God's creation and literally turn it upside down.
Forty years of his life was devoted to the unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, a basillica that remains under construction to this day as architects struggle to complete the vision of a mind so far ahead of its time, they may not be able to solve the puzzle in time to mark the hundredth anniversary of Gaudi's death in 2023.
Ironically, all the master completed before his tragic death when he was run over by a tram in 1923, was the Eastern facade, the one that tells the story of Jesus' life. The left to be completed facades detail the death and resurrection.
While he left models and plans, much was destroyed during the war for independence so in the 1980s work was begun in earnest with a team of 30 architects and hundreds of workers.
What I find truly inspiring is the devotion of this man to Christ and with that, hos amazing gift of discovery. In order to build the towers of the structure, he needed an archway that would support so much weight, it would require buttresses around the building. But by studying the way gravity created perfect loops in chains, he constructed models with wei and inverted the entire model, revealing columns that branched like trees.
The result is a building that looks and feels alive. His work is worship in stone and a must see for anyone who doubts the ability to combine one's gifts and one's faith in his or her life work.
More to come...
