There should be little mistake about d'Ors noucentisme project. He wants to make life like his conception of the work of art: ordered, harmonious, and serene in all of its "realización plástico-literaria", as he puts it in the prologue to La ben plantada. This literary-plasticity, speaking of a text that has been chiseled away into visual symmetry, represents what Cataluña looked like (read should look like) in the eyes of D'ors. It predicates from an insulated landart, built to shut out too much Nature (we have the Romantics to thank for that move, according to D'ors), and too much urbanism. These esthetic pieces are whittled down into nubs so that they might fit together. Any conceivable excess is boiled off (or carved out, to continue the sculpture analogy).
Yet I have just stumbled across an interesting text of his, Poussin y el Greco, which provides a contrast between Poussin, "the artist of the philosopher" from el Greco, "the artist of the spirits (which d'Ors connects to poetry). What interests me is the countervalence he establishes between the two painters.
La tierra nos atrae. Parece que de esta atracción la vida puede emanciparse de dos maneras: volando o manteniéndose en pie. Volar es más poético; pero mantenerse en pie es más noble.
El Greco: pintor de las formas que vuelan. Poussin: pintor de las formas que se mantienen en pie. (16)
The distinction here develops from different types of movements. Demonic forms in a flux of flight patterns and others that are allowed to remain "backdrops". There are a variety of reading strategies that should highlight the flash point between these forms as focus points and forms as backdrops. The result would produce more instability than d'Ors would care to admit.
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