I haven't read any Robert Hughes for years - not since The Fatal Shore, about Britain's penal transportation colonies in Australia. That was great, and so is this. He's an art historian by background, and I'm not all that interested in art history, but the descriptions of what is called modernism (and is really art nouveau rather than what everyone else means by modernism) in art, architecture and planning are just wonderful. He's really good on Gaudi, the man and his buildings, but also on some of the other architects and buildings. A bit of a shame that it stops with Gaudi, because it would be nice to hear what he'd make of later architecture too. I've spent a lot of time in Barcelona - I went there every year for Mobile World Congress for years, but even so this book made me want to go there again right now.
I didn't like every aspect of the politics, which is present all the time, but he's rather good on the smug superiority underlying Catalan nationalism and separatism. Mind you, he's not going to win any awards for predictions, since he seems to think that Catalan separatism is over and done with, and that it will gradually fade away.
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