boredom and revelry

The artist Oscar Tusquets, at his home in Barcelona.

BAPTIST COMFORT

When 30 years ago Oscar Tusquets began to say (or perhaps howl) that he was fed up with avant-garde art and that he couldn't stand any more soporific progressivism, the correctional nuns (the ones at the time) were horrified and fled with the skirts rolled up with both hands as if they had seen a faun in a demanding attitude.

In Barcelona, ​​then, and even now, a cute, simple, brimming with good intentions, petty and easy-to-sell architecture dominated, the so-called “Barcelona school”.

It was the never-ending continuation of the glass parallelepiped supported by unnecessary

and other inventions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But, of course, for the glass and steel box to have greatness, it must be conceived by Mies van der Rohe, and the

they are a thing of Le Corbusier, but not of the terminal disciples of Gropius, almost all of them born in rural areas and very calendar landscapers.

More information

Consult the articles by Félix de Azúa in EL PAÍS

One wonders why a sheer expression of taste, such as saying that one finds the comb more elegant than the barretina, provoked such indignation, especially when some of the postmodern clan, such as Michael Graves, had achieved considerable recognition among sensible virgins.

The resentment against Oscar was surely due to the fact that they could not forgive him for the two gigantic Doric columns that opened, in his house, on a small Florentine garden.

That and that he had set up the best professional kitchen in the city for personal use and enjoyment.

In short, it is an issue that requires studies in applied anthropology: the far-left Barcelona bourgeoisie (the same as today) did not forgive Oscar for enjoying himself, for having fun with a matter as serious as Catalan architecture, for choosing scandal in a Levitical society that arranged everything in silence and paying.

It must be taken into account that greatness, that ancient virtue, as Hellenic as it is medieval, is very frowned upon in the monkish and bourgeois society of Barcelona whose current landmarks in political matters are Iceta, Montilla and Illa, clear men of the brands.

Well, 30 years later Tusquets reissues (in Tusquets) his testament with the title

, which already says it all.

He has passed the time.

The position of the

, the punks, the brutalists, the deconstructive, anyone with a bit of ambition has been affirmed and the Barcelona school has disappeared.

Some phenomenal articles from previous editions have also disappeared, such as the one on the architecture of the stiletto heel, perhaps to avoid mustering the current vestals.

The entire book, whether one prefers the glass boxes or the acanthus columns, remains clever, flippant, amusing, untenable, and instructive.

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