Print Size: 11" x 17" (Frame 16" x 20") Architect: Alfred Weinert, Sculptor; Photographer:Carol Highsmith
In his treatise De Architectura, written in the first century, Vitruvius condemned decorative half-plant/half-human grotesques. “Such things do not exist and cannot exist and never have existed.” And yet they flourished in ancient Rome and the 15th-century Renaissance it inspired, and found their way across the ocean and centuries onto the great stucco frieze that surrounds the main reading room of the Library of Congress. By articulating surface rather than structure and substituting free-flowing fantasies for architecture’s rational thought, grotesques extended the boundaries of imagination. Perfect for a library, particularly when the creatures toast and hold high the torch of learning. (What the scissors are for is anybody’s guess!)
