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Article: HOMAGE IN CATALONIA.(Gaudi)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- November 9, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Gaudi
Gijs van Hensbergen
HarperCollins, $35, 368 pp.
There is a tradition of biographies of artists that goes back at least as far as Giorgio Vasari's great Lives of the Artists, first published in 1550. Vasari focused on biography in order to paint a picture, if you will, of the men who had distinguished themselves by the creation of their hands. Vasari clearly felt the necessity of attending to his contemporary and future readers. In his introduction to part 2 of the Lives, he defines the purpose of history as setting "forth the underlying currents, the character of events, for from these details men learn the true government of life" and as providing "the ...