Juan José Lahuerta

A critical re-examination of the Catalan master.

Architecture, Ideology, and Politics

Antoni Gaudi, 1852-1926

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

«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. "

Juan José Lahuerta

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