A week long trip to Barcelona was a lot longer than most vacations I've been on so far, so I thought I'd have plenty of time to relax, roll up my sleeves and dive into Dan Brown's latest bestselling potboiler - The Lost Symbol.
The book started out pretty much as expected, with the usual lineup of symbological potpourri (this tbook explores the mythology of the Freemasons) thrown in along with a made for Hollywood style thriller. As it progressed however, I began to get an eerie feeling of deja vu, as I found that a lot of what I was reading was actually materialising itself through the sights and sounds of Barcelona, especially when I visited the church of the Sagrada Familia.
Take Exhibit 1 - One of the many clues in the plotline relates to a "Magic Square", a grid of numbers that add up to the same number, by row, column and diagonal. The book refers to a square within a famous painting - Melancholia 1 - by Albrecht Durer, the numbers within which help to unravel on of the key clues in the plot.
As I approached the stunning Passion Facade of the Sagrada, voila, there it was- a magic square adding up to 33!
A spooky coincidence? Maybe. Conspiracy theories about Gaudi's masonic links abound, there is even a book with this as its main plot (The Gaudi Key). While the magic square at the Sagrada has actually been created by Joseph Subirachs, conspiracy theorists point to various other masonic symbols that have been embedded by Gaudi in other parts of the temple completed by him.
I was disappointed with the book though, I felt that the author prioritised writing a story that could be made into a blockbuster movie, over focussing on the more fascinating aspects of what I call the "collective consciousness" subplot. One of the key characters in the book is a Noetic Scientist, researching the apparent physical entity of a human thought, and scientifically trying to prove that man can control and harness thought to have a real impact of the destiny of the world.
The parallel between this subplot, and the project of the church of the Sagrada Familia is compelling.This project has been in the making now for amost 130 years (started in 1882). Gaudi himself worked on the temple for 15 of these years, largely on the Nativity facade. All work on the church post his death purports to conform to his artistic vision.
After his death, the project has been completed by numerous other architects, and hundreds of on site workers, in line with Gaudi's overall vision. The most striking mark has perhaps been left by Joseph Subirachs, whose sculptures at the Passion facade cannot help but move you to the angst and the glory of Christ's suffering. What I found the most striking about his work however, was its technique. Subirach's sculptures are modern art as we know it, with clean, bold lines. The texture of the stone is the medium providing the emotional narrative. They are in striking contrasts to Gaudi's opulent and fantastic Nativity Facade, yet the two seem to exist in harmony and add substance to each other.
Over its history, the church has seen evolution in terms of architectural techniques, from Gaudi's original drawings, models and moulds, to sophisticated 3D CAD software today; from hand sculpture to modern stone drilling tools; from stone and sand to concrete.
There could not be a more substantive example of a harnessing of collective consciousness to preserve an artist's vision, and to perhaps to create a work of art that will outlast us to capture the imaginations of generations to come. In the act of its creation, this site transcends the narrow confines of tradition and religion.
As I gazed, awestruck, at Barcelona from the top of the Gaudi's spires, the final line from Dan Brown's novel ran through my head - " God was a symbol that we all shared ... a symbol of our limitless human potential."
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