WITH REGARD TO THE CONCEPT OF ART OF ARS CATALONIAE

To subscribe itself to an encyclopaedia is, almost an act of faith. The Encyclopaedia, carried this same system of acquisition. Palissot in 1757, while making a criticism acute, relativized the novel one of that work: This tone of inspiration in some, of emphasis in other, so driven away from the reason that doubts or of the truth that it persuades, incited some sensible person to rebellion. The works that were promising examining so big things of nearer, they found that the some they were servile copies of Bacon without that would have warned the reader and that other just containing thoughts rejected a thousand turns, but renewed with an epigrammatic trace and with very bad taste fashionably of today or with a tone of boldness made to measure to seduce the fools".

However, the work made its way, making (-him) to believe in the autonomy of the thought.

Two hundred and forty-one years later ART of Catalonia turns up (Ars Cataloniae, from here AC). The fool of then I am, now, I. One having received five volumes of the sixteen, since it still finds itself in process of elaboration, one introduces in observant-of it the quality of the printing, pictures and thematic structuring. In order to detect the used criteria and ascertain the methodology employed in this new work.

The work from the history framed, then, it is impossible to make history without criticism and this without criteria.

After the one leafed through and finding a series of strange criteria, one appeals to read the serial of presentation made by the M.H. President of the Generalitat de Catalunya and for in X. Barral i Altet, director of the same one. It is from here one buttonhole the joint of which the formulated criteria have been. And the dispersion of these that it amalgamates. Twelve, of volumes, lacking it, it is necessary that, if we are still in time, to introduce a reflection; and if it is necessary to amend a series of criteria with the that is led this work. Binding the presentations - as a hyphen - with the contents of the five arrived volumes.

It gives quite a lot of jewel and nerve to have frightened away, definitively, the correlation between the literary flow and the rest of classical arts, since here the historiography of the art had been contagious of such coming lack to a large extent of the scholars of the Renaissance. This encyclopaedia fills the careless emptiness for those, since, influenced by the called literary Decadence on the one hand, that it was not so deep as is being demonstrated by now, and of the other one, the comparison to the periods splendours contemporary of other societies, as now, Renaissance and Mannerism Italian, baroque of every kind centreuropeus, Italian Counterreformism and castellan, Neoclacissisme, Rococo and Il•luminisme French it entailed an artistic Decadence. As a matter of fact the history of each society has their own chronology, with their dark clearings, and even faces do not have to be coincident.

As example, the social chronology in the Catalan Gothic still lives in a long way with decorative Renaissance models. In such away like in England, but in minor degree from the Castilian influence and the displacement of the center of power. That, in our case, deeply is related with the revival and restudy, in the baroque of finals of the 17th century and principles of the following one, of the Gothic architecture. Phenomenon this, it points today, not too much studied.

The work avoids the classicist vision of Beaux-Arts. Introduction of an extense vision, from the urban planning to the design and traditions (That is the expression of the minorities (ethnic?) Jews, Arabs, etc.

PTo fix an encyclopaedia it is necessary to consider the eternal question of knowing what is a work of art and like studying it. And here the grief comes. The presentation of In Cask it persists to distinguish between work of art and craftsmanship, one does not take into account that from a current perspective, through the change of convey, the one which long ago to make a vessel was pure necessitate, today made by Picasso or Miró and Artigues, such utensil is a work of art and non alone this but we consider equally art that antique.
For the simple fact that has been made by the men. Having spilled intelligence and intention about that subject. As a matter of fact they are both, today, in the museums, because they are representative from a movement, |society etc of a time and a place. Central point of the immense field of the History of the art. We, the humans, do not create, but we, the humans, transform the nature.

The art is not the set of places or demonstrative facts of a collective identity. The art is a communicative work. ¿ How the Catalans demonstrates a work “bofillana” or “gaudiniana”?

The Presentation starts with "the art is one of the main aspects of the one that constitutes the same essence of a nation..."

Therefore, of AC one can deduce that starting from the art as: the essence as a permanent category that it triturates and passes through the sieve of their essence all the artistic periods, and when for several reasons one "passes on tiptoe" and does not make a production at the height of other societies, ¿ what we make? ¿ there is not art? When, but on the contrary, a nation is consolidated precisely through its art, of their ways of making characteristics, in a historical meaning.

From this concept that intent of introducing: "The important one is not the being but the evolution".

The art of a society is the set of, happened experiences, symbolic production that its individuals carry out, for own consumption and, from of cultural exchange, with the rest of societies.

This encyclopaedia of Ars Cataloniae splits of the epistemological conception coming from the theories of Jacob Burckhardt(1818-97) that it gives predominance to the intuition and to the vital impulse of the artist - the intensity that Jordi Pujol speaks about- while including the idea about spirit there national, he attempts to understand the stylistic phenomena in yes, abstaining from giving judgements of valour, and of here the evolutionist ideas with elements of the psychology soaked by Wölfflin (1864-1945) are added. Patched up with a little structuralism - supose that for the step for the Sorbona, of the sr. Barral, which tends to seeing the set of the human experience like the effect of the culture, like their consequence. In the orientation of this trend the culture is seen like one all programmatic and of conduits that act as filter in the process of apprehension of the world, on the part of the cultural subjects.

Human consciousness as mere projection of the culture, progressively freelance of its real-concrete-historical being.
On accounts, it is necessary to insert ourselves in the cultural debate of the 20th century, at least, that the establishment of the social relation and the transformation and the consumption cultural has been being based on systematically about the industrial models of communication. In the end to overcome the mythical vision of the pre-industrial cultural models.

Surpassing the Culture concept as a given object, which it is necessary to administer to become the culture object that all make in a daily way. And applicable non alone by now but, also, in a retrospective meaning. Because the survival of the art in the world of the future, it has, it depends especially on the project of art that we make today.

In short, it seems, that in this work is not working with the more current methodological parameters, the basis is more or less “Noucentista”, and of root, at least, more antique.

“Noucentista”, where the Principality, in a basic way central, subject made, everything him, of consciousness -national- it practices the art like prompt experiences in the experimental field. With this it manages to be concluded that between the Gothic and the modernism, in short, there continues being a huge Decadency. We have, then, an art, syncopated and without continuity. When the reality is very different, as they demonstrate today the research about micro history, where a rich and diverse activity is made evident. In this sense the kernels of research of the universities, among them that of Valencia, they are leaders to figure out the history that hid for us behind the epic histories from the Big Captains.

Otherwise to introduce the industrial design to their pages does not mean that the methodological basis has of today, simply that this concept is in the street and that they have not been able to avoid this concept it. Referring, quietly, W. Benjamin is not to assume it and to update it transposing it.

"Nowadays the art is an essential part of the world..." Not men, today and always from this perspective it is CONSUBSTANTIAL, then on to consider art the daily utensils of other societies for the archaeology ¿ it is not deep down a transposition of the concept of current art -of the current society of masses?. Where the criteria of current analysis are applied in all periods. One says that Sanchis Guarner explained that each generation has to rethink all the history. And it has to make it from the current and contemporary parameters, which explain the present and also the past. Therefore it is always an open and systematic process that it encompasses, always to the precedents. In this way how they are head, in a set of Russian nesting dolls Euclides-Descartes-Newton-Einstein-Hawking. Or the industrial archaeology of the last century, windmills and water, the "steam", the factory of counter and factories of cars of today.

A diachronic model of applicable Social-Technical-Artistic knowledge to adopt.

The model -synchronic- of the knowledge expressed by the theoretician Peter Carruthers, correspond in an island with form of sea star, this is, with tentacular and irregular edges floating in a sea of ignorance. The increase of knowledge corresponds to an increase of the area of the island, where the different arms are associated to the different scientific fields.

With this vision no field has the monopoly of being a border of the science. What differentiates the border of the knowledge from the established body is the approach of new questions. The advance of the knowledge does not make the new questions brought up, but all the opponent decrease. One senior knowledge implies a border senior, that is, one senior number of questions and questions to propose.

There are processes of great specialization and of synthesis that are from great significance in the dynamics of the science. The model like this brought up it makes that the convergence of two fields of the knowledge is the most effective way to swallow a lot of ration of ignorance. (Carruthers, P. Emerging Syntheses modern in science. 1988).

If in this model called it as an open and temporary process, that is, the “diacronicidad”, the chronological time the center of gravity of the above-mentioned island of knowledge is described like the spatial line that it shapes. Some more or less ruled superficies of paraboloids and hyperboloids of continuous branches being the border edges with the ignorance.

It is evident that to simplify this it would be necessary to introduce all the branches of the artistic chore or of application, secondary sayings for me: cinema, architecture, sculpture, medicine, video, urban planning, comic, pottery (¿ what sculptures were not made with more or less industrial models in the workshops and workshops?), painting, stained glass window, engineering, industrial design, numismatics, printing (¿ what industrial design was not?), etc patched up with concentric circles joint in the temporary axis of the primary sciences, like the chemistry, biology, mineralogy, mathematics, physics, semiology, etc and in the outlying district those of application

That today it is possible with the current industry with computer and cybernetic support (CD-ROM, Internet, etc). Then the reach is much more extense - in the obligatorily interdisciplinary elaboration- and mediatic with respect to the receivers. That is, with the possibility of manipulation on the part of the receiver, for personal re-elaboration. Creating a synergy and interaction between both sectors. And then making a breakthrough against the general stereotyping and not a stale culture; where the intelligence activates doing entity to find out and to give light about the differences.

It is not a matter of not making a conception and vision that configures the whole of the culture a shiny intellectual exercise but of spilling, the artistic one, about a discipline - in an extended sense.

This current period where the mass-media of the hand of the cybernetics are the vehicle of communication has quite a lot of credibility - in a upper stair- with the appearance and general extension of the printing some centuries ago.

Therefore, it is priority that in the elaboration of a work of such magnitude we combine the three arms, at least, with the current criteria in order to succeed in a work: 1) It is the society that which carries out such art, independently of the concepts that their mythical representatives handled individually (then if it would not be necessary to extradite in a Dalí for example, of this encyclopaedia). 2) Which the technical and human knowledge are with that society organically working and are in their reach, and 3) With everything what has been made with relay from the point of view of the artistic. Spinning but thin the processes.

As now, exemplary and remarkable the famous analysis of Oriol Bohigas, made at the sixties, 'about the posterior projection on to compare the work of Domènech i Montaner and that of Gaudí. And we would separate dark points still and of general reach how it is the conceptualization, casual or not, of the first cubist stage given birth simultaneously and without many connection among Braque to Ceret and Picasso to Horta d'Ebre and Gósol, with the Parisian ideas that had mattered.

"The geographical limits of the art of a country not even coincide step with the recent political history, the chronology, however, it would be infallibly some historical stages to enumerate the work of the historian".

They do not coincide, effectively, and in Catalonia it points less, for two effective and instrumental motives:

A) The Catalan society is not only the one that is in the Principality. The art of Catalonia is the art generated by the Catalan society. For a society as well as the one ours, quite fidgety in a historical way, it’s difficult and little susceptible of territoriality. Any more if following the budgets of the work with the thread of the national consciousness, it begins daydreaming since this consciousness is not shaped after feeling forts during the period count - in Romanesque period- but if to our Gothic period, when the situation is clear in the known world, part of the Mediterranean one is dominated good, that is, when the asset and the low well-to-do class in Valencia. In way similar to Portugal with Coimbra or to Spain with Toledo. If we consider the period among the end of the Gothic and the Modernism, in a basic way there is not own national consciousness. Spaniard and Frenchwoman yes there is profusely. And however there was art of Catalonia. This society continued making. From this point of view the recent Manifest north-Catalan revulsista is symptomatic. It does not exit from the nothingness.

B) The chronology of a part of the country can not be continuous when it subtracts their mutilated and quartered development. ¿ Like explaining but the access of the Renaissance for Valencia in the Catalan culture?, ¿ How to explain the Modernism skewedly without commenting on the other cheek of the Modernism that of Germanic root and Englishwoman, that yes the step towards the Noucentismed gives, Neobaroques and some purism, in Mallorca, Alcoi, Valencia and Girona, that are not lavished, in the regions from Barcelona?. ¿ And the jesuitiques churches, starting for the Gesù vignolià without the parish churches of only ship with chapels among buttresses, transported for st. Francesc de Borja in Rome? And in the back ¿ the Group explains R without the relations with the Piamont and the Llombardia?. Does Calatrava without Gaudí explain, Candle, the vague university students and the library of the ETSA of Valencia - not soaked of technological and at all conceptual books- and the step for the ETH of Zurich, to himself?.

The scientific speech of the concepts and the notions that develop them, although, they do not have a strictly instrumental function, it’s fundamental in the posterior uncoiling of the history of the art that we speak about.

Therefore one describes art of Catalonia like that one that unrolls for the society of Catalan culture. With all theirs details. But, because one highlights the art of the Phoenicians, Iberians, Greek, roman, etc and "pitifully" the developed art is hidden by the "Moors" of this to use.

Because this fear or fancy to be encompassed or be in the Ars Hispaniae uncomfortable for the south Catalonians and leave the north Catalonians in their judgement and jewel with the stories of the art French with their vôutes roussillones, cayroux, mahous, small carreaux, Loges you Aristides Maillol?. If we avoid the architecture, painting and work of the coral of the Sardenya and in particular of the Alguer is necessary, coherently also, to obviate the current and delicate intervention of Joan Busquets in the Lungomare (Maritime walk).

¿ When the art of this society is much richer and flowed with other societies?

¿ How it explains but the Catholic cathedral of st. John Divine in Harlem or the turns of the New Yorker subway? Works of the cabanyaler Rafel Guastavino, precisely, with vôutes roussillones of made concrete.

Because to assume the relationship just with Spain or Europe? ¿ What we make with the architect Tolsà in Mexico, with the Sert, Miranda, Valdés, Renau, Bofill in US, with Torres-Garcia on Montevideo, Bonet in Argentina, etc?

Art of Catalonia just refers to Catalonia more Andorra and the North of Catalonia "when in a historical way this justifies and the more or less direct comparative references to the País Valencià or to the Balearic islands are there when it is necessary."

Then, they ARE necessary ALWAYS. As a matter of fact the five volumes go full of the interrelation which it is attempted to conceal. The subject of the markets treated without explicit relation and above to put that of Valencia as a paradigm is the wasting in that it moves around AC. Item: inserting Andreu Alfaro for the relationship that he sustains with Barcelona is to falsify the reality. One supposes a similar knock for Barceló. Eluding the Art Deco of Valencia or the urbanistic work of the Majorcan ones Forteza i Alomar, it is not to touch the floor. When the first elaborates the first complete theory of a Wolksgeist general and ours. Already overcome in many aspects, however. But, we have a history of the puny and unreal art. And the three goals of the Art of Catalonia are not approached when one suggests to have attained them:

a) To construct a story typical of Catalonia IS NOT POSSIBLE. To not be that rest as a story slanted, full of jerks and pauses, without continuity. How the partial stories of the Islands or of the País Valencià are it. Even, all three joints, given the character of deep relationship with other cultures, neither not would be possible, but it remains very evident these relationships. In turn of this:

If we compared the whole of the encyclopaedia with a work of art and as a matter of fact according to the criteria that invest me to that be adopted, the comparison is valid as in cultural product and symbolic of our time we could conclude, following Arnheim, that he distinguishes between two types in form. Contained and continent. The one meant (form) and the significant one (shape). If this pretend work to draw a rough of the history of the art in Catalonia. It should be able to be made with some features that they considered it characteristic, which familiarized us with them.

For Arnheim the form of an object goes for his limits determinate. But not with his contour necessarily not even with their silhouette, which he remits directly in the line. The eyes -and the brain- they receive information in the external ways and the perceptual form can change considerably if we alter the point of view or their orientation. Or said otherwise, in the style of the Gestalttheorie "the whole is senior that the sum of their deliveries". That is, taking into account the existence of the structural components in the contents form we have big made possible of extracting the evidence from the global structure. That it’s the one that it aimed for l'AC.

With the dispersion of criteria not put in common among the different authors it spends equal with the criticism that the abbot Didier-Pierre Diderot makes to his companion Denis with the Encyclopaedia in 1772: "I will avoid enough well reading the Encyclopaedia; only he would find a group of opinions heterodox, of feelings eccentric... a confusion of all the most singular ideas about the most extraordinary men that never there are turned up in the world; in a word, a Tower of Bedlam where the authors do not understand themselves among them".

That it does not mean that the fact that each matter of application explains coincident and definitive is for all. The sculpture does not have the same definitive feature than the architecture or the engineering or the design.

With the contents given by the current line of AC and for whom AC, "a very extense, restless, interested public", is sent... university students and the students use this work as a reference book..." it will not be in disposition of clearing up the art that has been made, makes and will be made.

b) Elaborating an own subject matter, treating individuality and entering in little explored terrains until now. We make two examples contradictory. The Valencian works of Using and a March they are art of Catalonia?. Are the bridges 9 of October and of the Exposition less art of Catalonia than that of Bach de Roda?.

c) In collation of this the relationship industrial design and mentioned numismatics formerly is paradigmatic.

d) With grief it can be concluded that AC is not a bibliographical milestone, and then the History of the Catalan art of Editions 62 was already there an advance in the same direction.

Therefore, we are, in the face of another lost occasion. With this fall in the paradox of being making a story convergent, one divergent results from it.

Simply the methodology is rejecting for the methodological frame in what develops, of the instruments and corolellariament of society and territory, becoming an ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ART OF CATALONIA OF GOLD. But of that of Madrid, D. Eugenio.

Josep Blesa i Morante, architect