barcelona signos

an assortment of signage spotted around my barcelona wonderland::

barcelona arriba

from a lacy bridge that stretches unexpectedly between two buildings above a hidden back street, so whimsically evocative of amorous prowling in the deep dark night...

to the exposed patchwork of interior walls looming over the demolition site now being excavated for its Roman foundations...

 "Not palaces, an era's crown

Where the mind dwells, intrigues, rests;

Architectural gold-leaved flower

From people ordered like a single mind,

I build.  This only what I tell:

It is too late for rare accumulation,
For family pride, for beauty's filtered dusts;...

 ...Leave your gardens, your singing feasts,

Your dreams of suns circling before our sun,

Of heaven after our world.

 Instead, watch images of flashing glass

That strike the outward sense, the polished will,

Flag of our purpose which the wind engraves."*

[*selected verses are from "Not Palaces, an Era's Crown" by Stephen SPENDER, 1909-95]

casa malaparte

 Casa Malaparte

oil and acrylic on canvas;

40 x 50 cm

for well over 20 years now I have been enamored with this ran aground "ship" on the rocks of Capri -
[a slight diversion from Espana for this painting post!]
the Casa Malaparte [completed in 1942] is often noted as one of the most provocative houses of the 20th century built by the enigmatic and iconoclastic writer Curzio Malaparte [1898-1957]
his "casa come me" ["house like me"] may appear as a block of minimalist sculpture implanted on some craggy plinth a whole era ago, but to this day it continues to throb like an inflamed sacrificial heart on that primitive altar still arousing the most primal metaphysical responses...

"Odysseus-like, he commits her to the epical voyage across the Bay of Naples to the isle of Capri,

where they are hailed at the heroic Casa Malaparte...

Stranded on a rocky spur, the dramatic "casa come me" had been presented by the daring writer, invoking the muses and olympian gods to descend upon his roof theatre playing to the sky and sea."*

[*lines from "Come to my Casa..." [by g. verster, 2004] - a light homage to Curzio Malaparte, who had this formidable casa built; to Jean-Luc Godard, who made the movie "Le Mépris" so brilliantly filmed on location here; to Alberto Moravia, who wrote the novel that inspired the movie; and to Brigitte Bardot, who oh so gloriously imbued them all - house, movie, men, books - with her much too easy sexiness...]

barcelona ventana

sifting through my compulsive shots of windows, I have super-edited and serialized them into vagariously contrasting pairs::
such as the obsessively glass-louvered surround of the Torre Agbar with the paranoiac bricked-up and metal-grilled lock-down of the above ex-window...

***

the most basic wood-framed square window under a roof long gone!... with this, one of the most ornately iced neo-gothic-moorish window of a modernista concoction designed for a chocolatier no less! [the Casa Amatller by Josep Puig i Cadafalch is located beside the Casa Batllo on the Illa de la Discordia of the Passeig de Gracia]

***

the simple grace of sinuous art nouveau arches [even if the curtains behind them are a bit tattered!] with the classical span of disheveled domesticity and its inelegant wash-day hangings...

***

casements from on high in elevated airiness; portholes for fathoms below in submerged darkness...

the "eyes" of structural entities come blinded, shielded, wide open... reflecting and absorbing some light, but still mysteriously unrevealing within their shaded chambers...and yet ever come hither to my focused eyeful!

barcelona proxima

constantly upspotting when we walk, I am always rewarded with architectural features and ornamental details and unexpected elements such as this finely carved tree canopy that continues down to the realistically rendered trunk pilaster of a storefront...

the high-design globular light standards that must emit enchanting pixie beams into the soft night...

a pair of charmingly unobtrusive brackets and grille on a crumbling hilltop casa...

the sexy cruciform steel post that barely nudges smooth painted skin in the Pavilion Mies van der Rohe...

and of course, the fantastical iron creatures that fly out of gothic gloom into the lightness of our catalonian reveries...

barcelona momenta

stepping lightly over an intricately detailed sidewalk placa...

flitting by a dark graffitied doorway with very cool aldabon...

catching a glimpse of "amor de arte" high up on a corner wall...

 

passing by an ornate closed-up taquilla on La Rambla...

 

spotting a multi-dotted tile-edged alféizar at Parc Guell...

 

riding along randomly patterned hand-laid losas...

casa batllo

certain houses have captivated me deeply over the years, particularly ones where the architects have had carte blanche over most aspects of their designs - Casa Malaparte, Maison de Verre, Villa Savoye, and my father's house, of course! - and now in Barcelona, the Casa Batllo has been seducing me ever so softly with its undulating lightness, its whimsical elegance, and all the visionary eccentricities of its ebullient creator...Antoni Gaudi

  

 light flows in parabolic waves down the attic hallway...

 

light floats the glass cells of the protozoa skylights...

  

light curves in through the openings to the roof caprices...

  

light billows ephemeral laciness in the laundry room...

 

light, hushed and holy, infuses opalescent panes up on high...

[Casa Batllo, Antoni Gaudi, 1906

Passeig de Gracia, 43, Barcelona]

numeroso numeros

a collection of numerable moments during our journey through catalonia, the basque country and espana...

 barcelona-estacio de frança 9-8

  

 zaragoza 5-7

  

 pamplona 8

 donostia/san sebastian 129-130

 

madrid 13

mies barcelona chair

 

steel legs on black plush,

the marble surround...

  

white leather aligns,

silent forms upon a cold set...

  

teutonic order reiterates,

a chair dares speak its name...

  

from barcelona issue,

the form is not so silent yet...

  

 ["O Chair shape! Fair attitude! with brand

of leather mend and metal overwrought,

with steel branches upon the trodden rug;

You, silent form, tease us out of thought

as will eternity: Cold Design World!

When old age shall this generation waste,

You will remain, in midst of other woe

than ours, a friend to man, to whom you say,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all

you know on earth, and all you need to know."]*

*With profuse apologies to John Keats for mauling his lovely last verse from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" for my momentary lapse of indulgence over an unravished, unwearied chair... may you live long and true, la Cadira Barcelona!