Robert Hughes first went to Barcelona in the 1960s, long before he became a celebrity architecture critic and historian. In his newly published book about the Spanish metropolis, ”Barcelona” (Knopf), Hughes briefly alludes to that carefree time: ”A good morning in Barcelona in 1966 was a joint on the serpentine encrusted bench of the Guell Park, and then a descent to the city to groove on the facade of the Sagrada Familia. . . .”
Further recalling those hippie days in an interview last week, Hughes said: ”Barcelona didn`t get many tourists then. But there was this continuous minority interest in the place, sometimes for the wrong reasons. . . . Basically one went there because it was the freest and hippest area of Spain at the time.”
As his new book would indicate, Hughes is still grooving on Barcelona, but his concern is decidedly more cultural than countercultural. Hughes`
enduring interest in the Spanish city will bring him to Chicago`s Art Institute on Tuesday, where he`ll squeeze 2,000 years of Catalan history, roughly the period covered by his book, into a one-hour illustrated lecture.
The Art Institute program, which begins at 6 p.m., boils down to ”the very, very short course on Barcelona,” Hughes said, speaking by phone from his New York home. ”The quick trot, you might say.” (Hughes also has filmed a PBS ”walk-through” tour of Barcelona, to be broadcast on PBS-Ch. 11`s
”Travels” series at 8 p.m. May 15.)
With so much attention focused on Barcelona as the site of the Summer Olympics, Hughes` book couldn`t be more timely. But as anyone familiar with his brilliantly cranky Time magazine essays (”The Fraying of America”), his erudite books (”The Shock of the New”) or his television appearances could easily guess, it wasn`t a love of sports that inspired his ”Barcelona.”
According to Hughes, the idea for ”Barcelona” was born in 1984, well before the city was designated host for the Olympics. ”I was talking with some Catalan friends, lamenting the absence of a decent guidebook on the city for foreigners, and one of them suggested I write one.”
Although Barcelona`s later selection for the Olympics was a coincidental stroke of fortune, it suddenly imposed a deadline for the book. ”I had to really waggle my tail to finish it in time,” said the author, who didn`t confine his tour to architectural monuments. He also examines such cultural phenomena as the urinal in a discotheque called Torre d`Avila and the transvestite hookers in the Via Liturgica.
After Madrid, Barcelona is Spain`s second city, which makes it the Iberian equivalent of Chicago. And Barcelonans tend to be as chauvinistic about their architecture as Chicagoans, Hughes pointed out.
”There`s indeed a considerable analogy to Chicago,” he said. ”The great efflorescence of Catalan architecture really took place about the same time as the one in Chicago, between 1875 and 1915.”
Of the Spanish architects Hughes discusses, the most intriguing is Antoni Gaudi, who designed the unfinished Sagrada Familia, a devoutly kitschy, almost Disneyesque church. ”In all his genius and melancholy and retrogressiveness and eccentricity and operatic qualities, Gaudi is the outstanding figure of Catalan architecture,” Hughes said.
For all its architectural splendor, Barcelona may not be an ideal playground for the Olympics. Hughes indicated. ”July in Barcelona is really punishing,” said Hughes. ”It`s going to be tough on the athletes.” And equally tough on tourists, he said, not only because of the heat but also the traffic and the shortage of hotel rooms.
Whatever happens, Hughes won`t be around to watch. ”God no!” he said, when asked if he`d be among the spectators. ”I won`t go back to Barcelona until the festivities are over, all the torn tickets are picked up, and the city gets back to something like normal.”
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Tickets to Robert Hughes` lecture are $15 for Art Institute members, $17 for others. Call 312-443-3915.
