I don’t understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout – he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unprecedented phantasmagoria that he designed in stone, iron and ceramic could be called miracles. He even suffered a form of martyrdom, being hit by a tram while apparently deep in thought about his most famous work, the church of Sagrada Família. It’s not quite the same as a burning at the stake or a fusillade of arrows or the other grisly ends of ancient saints, but has its own significance. Gaudí’s mission was to find spiritual meaning in a world transformed by industry and machines, of which the fatal tram might be considered a representative.
Indefensible Gill
One man who was not a saint was the artist Eric Gill, for whom Catholicism was no impediment to raping his daughters. His work can be seen in many churches and public places, including his 1932 sculpture of Prospero and Ariel above the entrance to the original Broadcasting House. The BBC, in response to hammer attacks by an angry member of the public, has now put a transparent case over it, to protect it from further damage.
This is surely the worst of both worlds – it compromises whatever integrity there may be of sculpture and architecture, while making the corporation look (again) like a defender of child abuse. Removal would have been a better option. While it is true that great art can transcend the sins of its makers, in Gill’s case there is too close a link between his evil as a person and his lubricious depictions of young nudes, for which he sometimes used his children as models. If you know anything about Gill, it’s hard to see this sculpture, of a naked boy standing against the legs of a clothed man, as innocent.
Apocalypse when?
It’s timely, The Great Gatsby being 100 years old, to recall a line from Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan. “If we don’t look out,” he says, “the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” This is the position of current believers in the “great replacement” theory, and of writers of shrieking headlines in British newspapers to the effect that Muslim extremism is taking over. Which goes to show that the tendency of the privileged to believe themselves under mortal threat is always with us. The fact that, a century on, their “scientific” predictions of racial apocalypse have still not come true, should also give those rightwing snowflakes pause for thought. It won’t, of course.
Call for honesty
“It is not the role of the court,” reads last week’s supreme court judgment on the definition of “woman” in the Equality Act 2010, “to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word ‘woman’ other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010”. It says this in the second paragraph, so these words are hard to miss, yet much of the subsequent deluge of reporting and commentary has ignored them, and acts as if the court did indeed make such a broad adjudication. In a debate that affects the lives of many and sometimes vulnerable people, a bit more honesty would help.
• Rowan Moore is the Observer’s architecture critic
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