I write from home. From a cabin of barely thirty square meters surrounded by dry stone walls. In solitude. With Bach's Cello Suites in the background. It had been a while since I last listened to them. I have retrieved them from one of the poems in the pile of books that help me concretize the ideas for this text I have in hand. These winter days, as stingy as a cistern, unfold according to the manual: cold, rain, and, from time to time, wind. I have a wood-burning stove as my only source of heat. And I am lucky, because without that heat, which is light, I would not know how to see the beauty of the wild olive trees.
This consolidation coincided with the emergence of peculiar daily routines such as, for example, the distribution of butane, which meant the democratization of heat in homes. A cheap energy, within reach of lower-income pockets, and long-lasting. Catalytic stoves became part of residential furniture, matching the living room television. And the streets experienced the scene that can still be seen in some towns and neighborhoods, that of the pile of gas cylinders arranged in rows, while, dressed in the classic overalls, the butane delivery man honked the truck's horn without reservation; a caricaturesque approximation to Pop Art that, at the same time, had exploded in London and New York, a victim of the expansion of the mass movement applied to the canvas.
The poet Ponç Pons makes a brushstroke in his latest book, Els ullastres de Manhattan (Quaderns Crema, 2020), when he brings us closer to the sensations that MOMA awakened in him, probably the cathedral of the movement led by Warhol, Mel Ramos, Lichtenstein and company. Pons says of MOMA that it is a neuronal resuscitation center, and he finishes it by transporting us to the beginning of the consumerist spirit, also coinciding with the consolidation of the change of light and color in cities like Barcelona, citing a verse by the poet Pedro Salinas: the more lights there are, the more doubts there are! Salinas, in some way, implies the dehumanization of society at the cost of increasing comforts.
Grandparents had the salamander until the nineties, when they installed heating. And the stove ended up, in pieces, in the storage room. When a home is heated with wood or coal, the ardor is sensationally overwhelming. More than if it is heated with gas or electricity. The heat of wood or coal envelops like a fever. It invokes sleep and invites, especially these days when it rains day in and day out, to lie down and read, slowly falling asleep.
Rediscovering the city from historical detail and anecdotes
As I mentioned at the beginning, on my desk I have several books that help me concretize the images I have configured for the article. The cover of one of these books looks like an exact X-ray of this sunset. The uniform violet color incorporates a stripe at the bottom. The stripe reproduces the photograph of an ashen winter day in a city that could be Barcelona and that, judging by the cars seen ---the increase in models and colors in the case of vehicles is another sign of the consolidation of the city's new light palette--- should be around the years we are discussing.
The heat of wood or coal envelops like a fever. It invokes sleep and invites, especially these days when it rains day in and day out, to lie down and read, slowly falling asleepIn Barcelona, homes begin to be heated in a semi-industrial way, coinciding with the first buildings of the Eixample, a complex period as explained by journalist and writer Enric Calpena in Barcelona. A biography (Edicions 62, 2015). A delicious and unmissable book for those who want to rediscover the city from historical detail and anecdotes. In the mid-19th century, Barcelona was a powder keg of social and economic tension. People were fed up with the moderates, which led to the unnatural articulation of Carlists, progressives, and republicans. At that time, the population reached two hundred thousand people. All of them enclosed within the city walls, giving rise to one of the highest agglomerations in Europe. The walls led to an unprecedented concentration of problems. The atmosphere was sordid, infected, to the point of being unbreathable in many cases. And gray, without light, without color.
The change of regime led the city council to hasten the promotion of the demolition of the walls. But to reach this point there was a series of back and forths. First they demolished a part, then they wanted to reconstruct it, but they realized the absurdity and stopped the project until they knew how and in what way the city should grow. And that is how the City Council enthusiastically opted for a radial expansion project by architect Rovira i Trias, inspired by cities like Paris or the Westminster district of London. But Madrid imposed the other candidate, Idelfons Cerdà, who, having studied engineering, enjoyed certain advantages and privileges among Madrid's civil servants.
Cerdà's Eixample
Even so, the new Eixample was not as Cerdà imagined it. In the book Barcelona. Una biografia, Enric Calpena also details what was taken into account when constructing the new buildings of the Eixample: a good part of these consisted of a central staircase that distributed to the different floors. The mezzanine was intended for offices or as housing for the service of the owners of the main floor, who were usually the owners of the entire building. The more or less luxurious apartments, instead of a balcony, sometimes incorporated a gallery or, as it is called in Menorcan, boinder. At that time, the toilet ---the commune--- was a hole arranged at one of the ends of the interior gallery. It was also where the chimneys of the economic kitchens, which ran on coal, were located, as did the stoves that heated some corner of the home. The smoke from the stoves was also directed to the interior patio. Between one circumstance and another, the interior patio was a considerable dung heap.
The coal used for the economic kitchen and the stove was stored in the semi-basement, a space that today is occupied by some commercial establishments or pubs like Les genes que j'aime, on Valencia street, between Passatge dels Camps Elisis and Pau Claris. A few years later, in these same underground spaces, the first boilers that fed the cast iron radiators were installed. And this is how the first heating systems appeared, exclusive to the apartments of wealthy families.
Conversing with the artist Jordi Jové, he makes me notice that meanwhile, in the world, the proliferation of pigment in an industrialized way facilitated the appearance of pictorial movements with color as a radical element. The first movements that set out to seek light outside, or that move to places where light provides a new magnitude, are Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as is the case of Van Gogh, who moves to Arles. They recreate the same landscapes at different times of the day and different times of the year to recognize that the change in light implies a change in the perception of color.
Light came to be adored, unlike before, when color was scarce. Especially blue, because it was rare. It was difficult to find in nature. So much so that in Renaissance sales contracts, payments were made with gold or with blue color, which denoted aristocratic level and represented the sky and all the liturgy surrounding it. However, it is French Fauvism and German Expressionism that consolidate this change. In a matter of two or three decades, life exploded in intensity.
The first movements that set out to seek light outside, or that move to places where light provides a new magnitude, are Impressionism and Post-ImpressionismIn parallel, the adoration for light became popular throughout Europe. And it did so through various cracks, such as, for example, the appearance of the first Kodak cameras, sixty years after the birth of photography: you press the button, we do the rest, said the slogan.
Barcelona has consolidated enormous steps to expose itself to the light and continues fighting in this direction because it knows that the circulation of light is hygiene. It is to extol color. And color is emotion and beauty. Due to its geographical location, this is a subject that will always accompany it. In Els ullastres de Manhattan, Ponç Pons reminds us that, according to Thomas Aquinas, beauty requires perfection, harmony, and luminosity. And that despite the invasive rhythm of cars and not being able to enjoy silence, in urban life, a little warmth makes all trees beautiful.
* Jordi Jové. Painter and Drawing professor. Some notable exhibitions in recent years: the collective DelicARTessen 2020-2021 at the Esther Montoriol Gallery in Barcelona. In Yellow Wood, 2015 at the Quilu Arte Espace gallery in Shanghai (China) jointly with photographer Espe Pons. In 2015 he received the 1st Prize of the LIII International Drawing Contest of the Ynglada - Guillot Foundation of Barcelona, and in 2016 he was a Finalist in the sixth edition of the Vila Casas Foundation Painting Prize, Barcelona.
Jordi Jové advocates for a retinal painting, in the sense of the enjoyment or enormous pleasure that recognizing, in every painting, the encounter between form, color, and gesture entails. Reconstructing this path of trials, certainties, errors, and amendments that the painter weaves, as if it were a great palimpsest. Jordi Jové affirms that any aesthetic decision entails an ethical and moral positioning that is fundamental in all artistic work and in the exercise of individual freedom.