Chronicles of the Magic Barcelona: Casa Amatller

There are those who claim, and I believe so, that Maestro Gaudí was genuinely respectful when he remodeled the house that would be the future home of the merchant Batlló and his family from top to bottom, so as not to affect this other intriguing and superb architectural exponent of the Catalan Modernism or Reinaixença, the work of the prolific architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, which is the Casa Amatller. Commissioned by the chocolate industrialist Antoni Amatller - the area already seemed to sense that it would become the stronghold of the wealthy bourgeoisie of the time and emblem of the opulence of the future - it was projected between 1898 and 1900. If in its execution, the neighbor and amazing Casa Batlló plays intensely with visual seduction, adapting insipid conventionalism to natural inspiration, Casa Amatller uses design sculpture and old myths to attract the attention of a world still involved in the immemorial heritage of the archetypes . So, a look at the facade, as well as the ground floor, which is the only one allowed to visit, is a kind of introduction to that other parallel world of cultural fantasy that accompanied the man throughout his life. History, from the moment in which he left the dark womb of the caverns, in a period in which in his primitive psyche, the language was not if not an embryo to develop.

Even though its proximity to the Gaudinian Casa Batlló, the entrance to the Puig i Cadafalch building, consisting of two asymmetrical doors or biphoras-a resource widely used in arts such as Romanesque, being the most relevant examples, the cover of Platerías of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela or the west facade of the church of San Vicente de Ávila- show as a guardian and paladin to Saint George, a lunar knight in eternal struggle with the Dragon - work of the sculptor Eusebi Arnau, as a little girl, to a world where the metaphor flows freely from the soul of the stone, to the point of hiding more esoteric, mystical, perhaps, if not also alchemical, meanings in a varied and amazing range of characters whose mediatic idiosyncrasies produce different sensations in the spirit and understanding of the spectator: if in the Romanesque church of San Martín de Frómista, in Palencia, the the donkey playing an instrument as sensitive as the harp, in Casa Amatller the animals, on the other hand, become skilled workers - that new reinterpretation of the social pyramid, annexed to the world of industry - where, for example, that strange association between the cat and the mouse - the Yin and the Yang - traditional enemies who stand in solidarity here, as an ode to the impossible, perhaps to build castles in the air or perhaps to demonstrate stealth, industriousness and dexterity, alluding to the trade of the future owner of the house, executing the noble art of making chocolate, a subject in which the ancient monks of the monastery of Piedra arrogated the honor of being the first to sacrifice the spirit of cocoa in the divine altars of pleasure.

The goliardo with the bear, imitation of those medieval sui generis compadres indifferent to the threat of excommunication of the powers that made the roads schools of realism, both ordinary and fantastic, models that nurtured so many transgressing spirits in later centuries , including Villon, the French libertine poet, who always found justice and inspiration in taverns. The old cranky-like the stepmother of Snow White or the witch of Hansel and Gretel, negative archetypes of the primordial figure of the Mother Goddess-that seems to emerge from the bowels of the stone and not far from her, the beautiful spring maiden, another a more obliging facet of the aforementioned Goddess, who likewise can suggest added questions as a subtle allusion to the Old and the New Religion; to the imperishable cycle of death and rebirth, so present in all cultures and civilizations since the dawn of time and the immutable law of the Universe, with the added relativity that nothing is created or destroyed, since it only transforms.

The Arts staged in the optimistic painter, who like a young and full of Van Gogh, seems to smile in front of an imaginary universe of sunflowers in evolution, or the thoughtful sculptor -rabine creator of Golems- who contemplates the head that he has in his hands, getting in the skin of that paripatético Hamlet, prince of Denmark, who took care of him desperate and a step of the madness to the calavera monda and lironda of his inseparable friend Horacio. Or going further: talking perhaps, with his soul or with his animus?

And between the shields, the curious representation of two stellar girls holding one, in whose interior the figure of an amphora stands out and to the left, something smaller a jug: allegory griálica, I remember, perhaps, of the famous hydria of the weddings of Canaan, where Jesus Christ turned water into wine and of which, the tradition wants that, apart from what is supposed to be preserved in Cana, in the Peninsula we have another one, that which is kept inside that of the church of Santa María de Cambre, in La Coruña, which does not stop visiting the pilgrim who goes to Compostela, following the stars marked by the Way of the Coast or English Way ?.

The eternal serpent, the Ouroboros, spectacular, magnificent and disconcerting, that sinuously crawls on the pavement, once inside, is another of the works that leaves us speechless. Even the stepped pyramid shape that crowns the upper part of the building, which reminds us of these fantastic Mayan constructions, which both puzzled and amazed the Spanish conquerors, whose peak was inhabited by gods who, based on the sacrifices of the priests, seemed follow the axiom of Bram Stocker's Dracula, referring to the fact that blood is life.

So many and so many details, that listing them one by one would entail, at least, a little essay of art and symbolism, at least, rather than peculiar, one of the most representative elements of this magical Barcelona, which is worth discovering.

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NOTICE : This is a revised and expanded entry that was originally published in my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the photographs, the text, and the video that is exposed in the original entry, are my exclusive intellectual property. This can be viewed at the following address: http://jc347.blogspot.com/2015/01/la-casa-ametller.html