“Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s challenge”, on Arte: an edifying basilica – Le Monde

Ceiling of the nave of the Sagrada Familia, by Gaudi, in Barcelona. GEDEON PROGRAMS ARTE – SATURDAY APRIL 16 AT 8:50 PM – DOCUMENTARY Barcelona’s emblematic basilica, the Sagrada Familia is entering its 140th year of construction. Even if it is not a record (York Minster, across the Channel, was built in more than two and a half centuries), the duration impresses as much as the building. A vertical accumulation of columns bristling with cranes, the exterior does not suggest the interior luminosity of its successive naves, nor the forest of fine buttressed columns, nor the modernity of its floral decorations. For more than a century, generations of visitors, historians and professionals have wondered about the structure of the building, at the limit of the rules of architecture and good taste, erected by Antoni Gaudi ( 1852-1926) – which resumed, in 1883, the project imagined, then abandoned, by Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano (1828-1901). While the exhibition that the Musée d’Orsay is devoting to the Catalan artist opened on April 12 in Paris until July 17, director Marc Jampolsky provides some answers. Because, this time, it’s promised: the Sagrada Familia is almost finished. Not as expected in 2026, the year of the centenary of the death of its creator – the confinements having caused delays – but “soon”. On December 8, 2021, the 9th tower (out of 18), known as the Virgin Mary, was inaugurated. The installation of its twelve-pointed glass star opens the film, designed in the image of the symbolic structure: centered on what Gaudi called “the Temple”, but allowing for various developments, before returning to its central subject. Common vision Societal development, on the common vision that united the industrialist Eusebi Güell (1846-1918) and Antoni Gaudí, and on the achievements it inspired them, such as Colonia Güell, Güell Palace and Güell Park. Mineral development, during a pleasant walk in the inspiring site of the monastery and the natural park of Montserrat, 50 km from Barcelona. Historical developments also, with, in particular, the evocation of the revolt of 1909, which will definitively convince the pious Gaudi that the Sagrada Familia must be the expiatory temple of a violent Barcelona. To give flesh to his reflections, subtitled fictional scenes in their original version were shot in the modeled setting of Gaudí’s studio, which burned down in 1936. It is here reconstructed in 3D using a photogrammetry process, too detailed during a sequence. However, the most exciting remains purely architectural with the explanation, using models and albums published from 1917, of the principle of columns inclined in the axis of force, arranged in catenary arches and made self-supporting. The force is with Gaudi. But not always with his successors, who will stumble fifteen years on this nave which culminates at 65 meters without external buttresses, before formalizing the three principles used: the hyperboloid revolution of a sheet, the hyperbolic paraboloid and the triangular plan. Architecture students will appreciate it. Passionate successors, such as the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo, employed since 1978 to make three doors and six statues, and who converted to Catholicism to immerse himself in his subject and complete, in 2015, the facade of the Nativity. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Antoni Gaudí, behind the eccentricities, a counter-revolutionary architect Next stage, the six central towers in the completion phase, and whose financing is largely provided by the tickets of the 5 million visitors annual (before the Covid-19 crisis). And, insidiously, the desire for a weekend in the Catalan capital creeps in… Sagrada Família, Gaudí’s challenge, by Marc Jampolsky (Fr., 2022, 90 min). Catherine Pacary