Art is relative. Great art is relatively great.
I don’t care how many people love the Sagrada Familia, I will always think that it is a piece of “artistic dogshit”. Not only is this monstrosity being funded by the Spanish government, ticket fees from people coming to gawk, UNESCO and probably the spawn of Satan, but the fact that Gaudi’s original blueprints were destroyed by anarchists in the Civil War means that we will never know his true design and vision. I do not think that what has been built in its place, would have reflected his vision, no matter how “Modernisme” it is.
There some fundamentally great parts, pieces and features to it but collectively it is as though a great artist basically had all his ideas, took a big shit of all his ideas, then ate and vomited it back again. I saw the Sagrada Familia a couple years ago and I felt as strongly as I do now, but I didn’t say it publicly to my friends for fear of being branded a complete “art moron”. I know that I still do NOT know art, but I do know a clusterf$ck when I see one.
Aside from the perpetual state of construction that thing is going through, a significant thing they screwed up was the extremely un-Gaudi interior. The columns, with those strange egg shaped objects at their tops, look like nothing Gaudi ever did, nor would do. And, the interior is fundamentally repetitive, such as the columns and the ceiling and from reading about Gaudi, he was NEVER repetitive. The amount of detail in the church itself makes it look like it was something dreamed up by Ridley Scott, as though aliens came and redesigned this thing.
Just because a building has tons of detail, does not make it great. For instance, the Cathedral in Toledo is great because of the detail and because it was done properly. La Sagrada Familia .. what transpired here, should make people reevaluate their artistic integrity.