In the 1980s, Washington National Cathedral became one of the first to experiment with of gargoyle reinterpretation. Many of these examples are unfortunately high on the façades out of sight, but a pair of binoculars might help you out.
Credit: Ted / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0. If some of them copied meticulously the medieval form of the past, others had another vision of what gargoyles could be.ĭarth Vader Gargoyle at the Washington National Cathedral. In order to remedy to this situation, conservation programs were started for some of them, and 20th and 21st century stone carvers were asked to replace as many destroyed gargoyles as possible. A large amount of stunning chimeras were actually falling to the ground like a plague rainfall. But centuries of capricious weather and a lack of care had disfigured the legions of statues that were still silently guarding the old gothic monuments. Naturally, gargoyles became one of the stylish signatures of this new Neo Gothic architectural type.
Gothic architecture was later revived in the 18th and 19th century in England and the United States. Beyond their moral function, gargoyles also had an “ apotropaic” value: their grimacing faces were believed to avert the evil eye and keep it from the sacred space. With their demonic grins and anthropomorphic shapes, gargoyles and grotesques were used to visually exemplify the concept of evil and virtue at a time when a large part of the population was illiterate.
They evolved to become “grotesques, ” ornamental elements with a specific symbolic charge. Projected from roofs at parapet level, the strange leaning creatures created a siphon for rainwater to protect the walls of the edifice. At first, they were designed as an indispensable engineering trick. Credit: Roquic / Wikimedia Commons / Cc BY 3.0.įascinating ghouls of another era, gargoyles emerged around the 13th century in European architecture with a vast array of form and function.
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