Gaudí

The Cathedral of Europe
What is an exhibition about the Sagrada Familia Cathedral doing in the European Parliament? Simple: showing that Gaudí’s masterpiece and the European Union have a lot in common–their roots, to begin with. So says Etsuro Sotoo, the Japanese sculptor who has inherited the legacy of the Catalan architect

by Carlo Dignola

This is not an article about an exhibition. The exhibition that opened on October 6th (“The Realism of Gaudí and the Hope of Europe”) in the hall of the European Parliament, which links its three glass towers, is not an exhibition to celebrate the construction of a cathedral, if by a cathedral we mean a building made of stone and mortar. The purpose of taking it to Brussels is not to bring more tourists to Barcelona, and perhaps it will never succeed in convincing the secularism that haunts these chambers of the importance of the Christian roots of Europe, if by roots we mean only something that draws sap from the past and not from the future.
In the workshop of the sculptor Etsuro Sotoo inside the Sagrada Familia, there are sketches of the colored fruits that the astonishing Catalan architect Gaudí imagined for its pinnacles. His faithful pupil, who comes from the other hemisphere of the cultural planet, sculpts them with unrestrained fidelity, accurately and imaginatively. On the wall hang not only the mallets and chisels of the first sculptor but also modern drills and lapping machines powered by lithium-ion batteries.
From a window, Diego Giordani, commissioner for the exhibition, looks at a big crate containing a cast: “That is the mold of a pinnacle to which will be attached pieces of mosaic to be signed in Brussels by those European parliamentarian who wish to do so. It will then be sent back to Barcelona, filled with concrete, and their names will remain engraved on one of the components of the cathedral.”

All from stone
On the shelves of Sotoo’s workshop are ranged an angel’s wings, a cat, ants, spiders, beetles, and other creatures that will end up on the doors of the church. There is even a plaster caterpillar. “One day,” says the sculptor, “it will be a big butterfly.” This is just one synecdoche among the many of this building, where each part stands for the whole, where the finite gesture at every step points to an endless task. “For thirty years, I’ve been working here on the Sagrada Familia,” the Japanese artist says. “I consider this exhibition at the European Parliament extremely important. I believe this is the completion of this long journey. And yet it is not a point of arrival. Whenever I’ve met something very beautiful in my life, I’ve always instinctively thought it was the last step and instead it was always a new beginning. The Brussels exhibition is again a proof that these were truly my foundations. As boy, I came to Europe without knowing anything about the Sagrada Familia. I only wanted to sculpt and transform a small piece of stone, seeking to become a good sculptor. That small piece of stone has brought us to the European Parliament.”
So, taking serious care of the modest things each of us has in our hands is the right method? “Correctísimo!” says Sotoo. “What might look like a little seed doomed to fall on parched ground has now grown into a tree.” When, 125 years ago, Gaudí set his hand to the work on the cathedral, this was an outer city area, not in the least suited to such a building. Or rather, it was actually another village: San Martin de Provenzal. In a photograph preserved here in the Catalan museum you can see goats grazing around it. Nor did Gaudí have any more than a tiny portion of the funds needed for a work like this. “Now,” observes Sotoo, “it’s becoming the center of Barcelona, the gateway to the city. Who would have imagined it back then? We men never know anything about the future; we can only obey what we have before us.”

Fathers of Europe
It was much the same in the case of the “building” of the European Union, says Chiara Curti, who curated the exhibition and edited the catalog for Magrada Proyectos, bringing together major Gaudí experts such as Juan Bassegoda, Tokutoshi Torii, and Lluis Bonet. “The first time the idea of the European Union was discussed in Paris, it was only conceived as a steel and coal union. As the epigraph of the exhibition, we took a saying of Robert Schuman, which would also be perfect for Gaudí: ‘We are all tools, albeit imperfect, of Providence, who uses them for projects that transcend them.’ In preparing the exhibition, we discovered that the intuition of an analogy between the two constructions–the Sagrada Familia Cathedral and the European Union–was correct, to the point that even the words that Gaudí and the fathers of the European Union used are the same.”

First, build man
Diego Giordani says that it all happened by chance. “In December 2006, Mario Mauro came to Barcelona for the New Year, and we organized a visit to the Sagrada Familia with Sotoo.”
“While I was listening to him, I had an intuition,” recalls the Vice-President of the European Parliament. “On the one hand, this cathedral was really rather like the construction of Europe: it broke all the rules. Like Gaudí, the founding fathers had gone against all the rules of ‘static’ politics. Their construction should never have stood the test of time.” Mauro also noted another analogy: “Listening to Sotoo describe how the construction of the Sagrada Familia had deviated from Gaudí’s ideas over the years, I thought about the distorted façade of Europe. It also needs to find someone like Sotoo who will take it back to its original project. Just as he has faithfully resumed Gaudí’s ideas, so we should return to De Gasperi, Schuman, and Adenauer, restore their pinnacles, and put the construction of Europe back on the right road. Those men, in securing us fifty years of peace and development, were also guided by Christian friendship. Gaudí imagined that the sound of his church, designed as a single huge musical instrument, would be heard 60 miles away. Sotoo and I want to make it resound through all the regions of the European Union.”
The Japanese sculptor is convinced about this point: “This temple should not be the cathedral of Barcelona, which already has one a few blocks away, but the cathedral of all Europe. Europe is a new country and it will need a new church to represent the continent’s common destiny.”
But the true cathedral, explains Etsuro Sotoo, “is within us. Building the church means building ourselves. The Sagrada Familia would not be here before our eyes unless its foundations were sunk deep within us. It is thanks to these foundations that the church of stone can be built. If we build man, the cathedral is already complete. It is as if the Sagrada Familia were complete, because it already conveys faith. No one can know what the future of this church will be. It might even be that when the high-speed trains run underneath it, as planned, it will suddenly collapse. Then we will have to start building it again from scratch.”

Something new
The Sagrada Familia is certainly not a new discovery. In recent years, a number of excellent studies have come out. But today in Barcelona there is something new. What attracts people is not just the fact that they have found this brilliant architect who, exceptionally, was a Catholic. And it is not only the glamour of trying to decipher its exuberant symbolism and its enigmatic culture. Says Diego Giordani, “There’s something Sotoo told me the first time we met: ‘You should help me finish the Sagrada Familia.’ I was astonished: ‘Us? You’re joking!’ We had a big laugh and the thing ended there. Today, I realize that everything that’s happening around the building is also helping to complete the temple. I see the people coming here; many of them have changed. And we’ve changed, too. Before I met Sotoo, I’d been in Barcelona for ten years, but I always thought of the Sagrada Familia as a kind of Disneyland–all tourism and bustle. Instead, at a certain point, I realized that I was fascinated not with the cultural or artistic aspects of the church, which you may or may not respond to, but with the change in man made possible by looking at this church through Sotoo’s eyes, through Gaudí’s eyes.”
As Chiara Curti says: “When you see someone who does something great, you wonder, ‘What sort of person is he? I want to be like him.’ This exhibition can teach you to create something that has nothing to do with Europe or the Expiatory Temple of Barcelona–for example, a family, a true friendship, or a business.”