Darth Vader Grotesque, National Cathedral, Washington DC.
Last Saturday thousands of people donned Star Wars costumes in the annual "May the Fourth be with you" celebration. This a goofy play on the seriously intoned "may the force be with you" from the George Lucas series of films that began in 1977.
During this week someone shared a photo of a carved figure on the National Cathedral in Washington DC, and yes, it is Darth Vader, the villain from Star Wars. This may seem improbable, perhaps an AI invention, but it is real. There are many grotesques, as they are called that are part of the cathedral's rain control system. The grotesques deflect rainwater by bouncing it off the tops of their heads and away from the stone walls.
Why a grotesque rather than a gargoyle? I had not realized that gargoyles are actually rain spouts such as the ones found on Notre Dame Cathedral. Can there be a grotesque gargoyle? This is well beyond my expertise. Most of them are barely visible from the ground, so they are sly, often ribald jokes by the craftsmen who created them
Notre Dame Cathedral Gargoyles
Some critics don't appreciate the pop culture grotesques on the National Cathedral but carvers have been naughty and silly for centuries, so why not today? And there have been naysayers for the better part of a thousand years. The medieval French abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived from 1090-1153, once wrote, with reference to grotesques:"What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read?…To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man?...Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them."
I figure we should delight in the grotesques and gargoyles of every age, even if they bum some people out.
Grotesque from York Cathedral, Great Britain
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