Art Nouveau Paris: A tour of Auteuil

Man, oh man. I’m just all over the place with this blog. A few weeks ago I started on the subject of Gothic architecture and promised to describe its history and development. Then the weather heated up and that topic seemed way too heavy for the dog days of August. Instead I gave you a taste of Bordeaux’s Classical architecture with the promise of more to come.

Since that last post we’ve been to Paris, and now I’m going to change the subject yet again. But I promise, I will get back to Gothic churches and Classical Bordeaux.   In the meantime we spent a day trekking around Auteuil, a well-heeled suburb in the southeastern part of the city that was a laboratory for the development of 20^th century architecture. Today I’d like to show you some spectacular Art Nouveau buildings and in the next post I’ll go back to the earlier topics. And I’ll try not to get sidetracked this time, although I have to admit that I'm really anxious to write about the fortified mills of the Entre-deux-Mers region.

Gaudi's Gaudy Barcelona

 

It's rained every day since early December and Bruce and I were both fed up. So I booked a cheap flight to Barcelona, hoping for a week of sunshine. Which we got…along with some good food, a local festival, a couple of parades and lots of crazy architecture by Antoni Gaudi. 

Now for those who don’t know, Gaudi is the patron saint of Barcelona architecture.  He began his career designing mansions for the captains of industry. But by the time he died in 1926, (hit by a tram, he was so dirty and shabbily dressed that they didn’t recognize him at the local hospital and refused to treat him.) he had become so pious that he’s actually being considered for real sainthood.  But I didn’t have the courage to warn Bruce about Gaudi, because I knew he’d hate the man’s architecture, and I really wanted to get out of the rain.

To be fair, Gaudi isn’t for the faint hearted. When he finished architecture school, the dean noted wryly that they had just graduated either a madman or a genius. Everything about his work, and that of his Moderniste contemporaries, is OVER THE TOP. Walls are curved; columns are contorted; ceilings ripple and swirl; simple exhaust vents look like exotic warriors. To top it off, every surface is covered with ceramic tile and dripping with ornament.

View from Park Guell

Detail of Gaudi's benches at Park Guell