Sagrada Construction Zone

Sagrada Família, the giant church designed by architect Antoni Gaudí is probably Barcelona's most famous landmark, an unmistakable symbol of the city. Its motifs and others by Gaudí are now grist for souvenir shops. In fact, Gaudí is to Barcelona is what Wolfgang Mozart and Gustav Klimt are to Vienna.

Given that the Sagrada Família is one of a handful of structures I've wanted to see ever since I became aware of architecture, my wife and I dutifully exited the subway around 10 one chilly October morning hoping to avoid the worst of the crowds guidebooks had warned us about. No luck. The books told us to expect a 45-minute wait to enter, and that's just about the time it took us. While in line we were entertained by helicopters circling the site bearing tourist-photographers.

The church is unfinished even though construction has been under way for nearly 130 years. The Wikipedia link above mentions that there are hopes it will be completed in 2026, the centennial of Gaudí's death. The link also notes that it was consecrated by the Pope a few days ago despite its unfinished state.

As things stand, construction is going full tilt. Outside, the church is surrounded by cranes and the interior is cluttered with workers and their equipment. The following photos I took are intended to give you a sense of where things stand.

This is the east front with the Nativity Entrance. It was built earlier and is the view people are most familiar with.

Tourists enter on the opposite side, however. This is a general view of that entrance.

Four interior views looking upward.

Views of interior construction.

This photo is of a display case containing models.

Models have been an important design aid since the beginning. This is a room where they are fabricated and stored.


The completed church is supposed to include a large central tower topped by a cross. I'm not sure that will be an improvement over the present state where the building is surrounded by a host of spires.

First, You Put an Airship on the Cover

Science Fiction was simple when I was younger, ranging from "space opera" (cowboys and Indians plots adapted to interplanetary settings) to more genteel, literary "speculative fiction." And when I dropped by the Sci-Fi section of a bookstore, the displayed books dealt pretty much with the spectrum just noted.

Alas (as Sci-Fi writer Jerry Pournelle would preface many a remark), these days matters are a lot messier. It seems that something called Fantasy invaded and then merged with the Sci-Fi book displays. More recently, books about vampires have been added to the mix. The result for me is that I have to do a good deal of serious screening to distill a selection of books dealing with blasters, energy shields and bug-eyed monsters.

That's not all! Over the last couple of decades, a new genre has materialized: steampunk.

This is not a bad thing because I'm prone to like it thanks to my interest in history and technology. My problem is finding steampunk novels that are actually pretty good (I keep wasting money on stuff I discard in boredom or disgust after 40 or 50 pages).

A further confession: What hooks me into buying some of those substandard novels is an image of an airship on the book's cover. Apparently, there are enough folks out there who are fascinated by airships that such covers pop up with alarming regularity. Here are some examples.

The last three illustrations are by Stephan Martiniere, the final two for Jay Lake's "Escapement" and L. Neil Smith's "The American Zone."


Real-world airships come in three structural flavors. At one extreme are those where the main "hull" is the gasbag itself, what we commonly call a "blimp." A more technical name is "non-rigid airship" where rigidity refers to its structure. Opposing this are "rigid airships" that traditionally have a light aluminum frame structure within which is a set of large gasbags. There is an intermediate type called "semi-rigid."

Another term for rigid airships is "dirigible," but sometimes this is sloppily applied to blimps as well. Yet another term is "Zeppelin," but that really should be reserved for German-built dirigibles, the name coming from their great proponent Count (Graf) Zeppelin.

German dirigible LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, the most successful of its breed.
For whatever it's worth, in the steampunk book cover world, airships seldom get displaced by actual airplanes. But if a cover actually did feature a Victorian airplane, I suspect sales would comparatively suffer.

Sorolla Museum: Pictorial Report

Allow me to confess at the outset that I'm a fan of Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923).

So the morning after arrival in Madrid last month -- before visiting the Prado, Thyssen, Sofia and other well-known art museums -- I hightailed it to the Museo Sorolla, the former home of the artist.

Getting there is fairly easy, provided one is willing to take public transit. (From the Plaza Puerto del Sol, the walk is no less than a mile and a quarter; this can be a serious project on a hot summer day.) Get on or connect with the No. 10 Metro line and exit at Gregorio Marañón station. Then walk two blocks south on the Calle Miguel Angel and turn right onto Paseo General Martínez Campos, a street with mid-rise post-1960 structures. A short distance along the north side is a wall, behind which is the Sorolla house/museum, completed in 1911.

House/Museum

Before entering, one must pass through a garden.

That's the entry. To the right once you enter is a desk where you pay for your visit and buy publications (most or all in Spanish); they will give you a free English-language museum guide.

Looking down on a hall area. The house is laden with objets d'art, as can be seen in this and following photos. These were present when Sorolla lived here.

The dining room.

The living room.

Sorolla's studio as seen from above.

The studio from floor-level.

Another general view of the studio. Note the covered bed at the right. Sorolla was driven to paint. Apparently this compulsion required that at times he wanted to sleep close to his work so as to get back in action as quickly as possible without disturbing others in the household.

Sorolla's Tools
The scene set, let's look at his work setup at the time in 1920 when he suffered a debilitating stroke.

The painting is the one Sorolla was working on at the time of his stroke. It's title is Retrato de la Señora de Pérez de Ayala. In the foreground is Sorolla's working setup.

Another view, this in high resolution: click to enlarge.

Sorolla's paintbox and palettes.

Sorolla's smaller palette.

A high-resolution view. Click to enlarge.

Unfinished Study
Sorolla worked rapidly. He left a number of small oil sketches that probably mostly served as notes from the field. Early in his career he produced works that were relatively "tight" and "finished" in the academic tradition. But his better-known later works, aside from some portraits, were large and painted freely. These and the sketches allow us to understand his methods to some degree.

What is rare are clearly unfinished paintings. Fortunately, the museum has an example of a study made as part of his Regions of Spain commission. Part of the work is "complete" (insofar as Sorolla "finished" his later works). Other parts reveal preliminary on-canvas oil sketching of a person.

Here is a detail of the study. The next views are high-resolution pictures that you can click to enlarge.

Painting-Detail Photos in High-Resolution
Snapping digital photos in museums is usually easy, but getting good high-resolution results is a tricky business. When you glance at a preview image on that tiny camera screen it may seem just fine; but loaded into your computer and viewed, the results are often blurred and stray lighting not noticeable to the naked eye in the gallery can become apparent.

Nothing can be done about odd lighting effects; that's largely beyond your control at the time you're taking the picture. Blurred or out-of-focus results can be tamed to some degree, but not entirely.

One problem is that painted images are not always crisp, making it difficult for camera automatic-focusing software to be sure what the correct focus should be. Expensive, manual-focus cameras can avoid this problem, but those of us with a sub-$800 camera budget are in a pickle in this regard.

In many cases it's not possible to get close to the target area of a painting, so the photographer must zoom in close. In telephoto mode, focusing must be precise. But as I just mentioned, this can be hard to do. Another problem in telephoto is holding the camera steady -- movement is exaggerated in telephoto mode (and some museums don't allow use of a tripod, a helpful device).

Wide-angle photography entails greater depth of field (focus zone) than telephoto, but there are problems here too. One is that too much wide-angle creates distortion. Another is that the photographer has to get close to the part of the canvas that he's interested in if he needs plenty of high-res detail -- but, as noted, often one can't get as near as one would like.

All this is a kind of excuse/apology/rationalization for the spotty quality of the high resolution photos shown below that are intended to provide insights regarding Sorolla's color selection and brushwork. These photos are not as good as I intended, but they're what I took when I was on-site. So take a look and click to enlarge if you're interested and your computer allows it.

High-Resolution Details of Various Paintings

Detail of Trata los blancas 1894.

Detail of self-portrait, 1912.

Detail of Clotilde con traje de noche, 1910.

Detail of another portrait of Clotilde.

Detail of Clotilde en la playa, 1904.

Detail of La bata rosa, 1916.

Detail of woman with mantilla.

Detail of Bajo el toldo, playa de Zarauz, 1910

Detail of Cordeleros de Jávea, 1898.

Detail of painting with three women.


Sorolla's work can be found here and there in the United States, but the largest concentration is at the Hispanic Society in New York City, a site that I, alas, have yet to visit.