On Friday I posted this photo of the interior of the York Minster:

York Minster entrance (interior)

What’s difficult to see in that photo is that there are statues that flank the door that are modern, not in the style one might expect in a Gothic church built between 1280-1500. The statues are also headless, purposely made that way.

Here’s a closer look at the group on the left:

Semaphore Saints on the left

And here’s the group on the right:

Semaphore Saints on the right

The statues were created by an artist named Terry Hammill for an art exhibition at the Minster in 2004. He later donated them to the church.  The statues are headless to symbolize the fact that during the Reformation, statues of the saints were all beheaded, and all the symbols of what they were holding (which indicated who was who) were also removed, leaving just the rest of their bodies. The motivation for the destruction back then was, apparently, so that the statues — without their IDs and without their mouths (since they had no heads) — would be unable to communicate with the churchgoers in the way they had when the church was Catholic.

Why the people destroying parts of the statues didn’t just destroy all of the statue bodies isn’t clear to me, but apparently just destroying part of the statue was in style.

Anyway, Hammill’s idea with the modern statues was to represent that it is still possible to communicate a message through headless statues. His saints all have 2 halos apiece, and are using them to spell out a message in semaphore code. The figures on the left spell “Christ”; the figures on the right spell “is here.”

So in the Semaphore Saints we have modern art meets medieval Gothic architecture. An intriguing concept, one which I will admit seemed very odd to me at first glance.

But then, I started to think about how much art styles would have changed between 1280 and 1472 while the York Minster was being built. Even though we tend to think of that period today as all lumped together, it wasn’t, and tastes and designs changed during those 200 years. Consider the Kings Screen, for example, which was added in the late 15th century; that red and gold ornamentation was a far cry from the austere designs in the older parts of the church.  And the colorful gold and red decorations on the organ, which were added in 1832, must have struck some people as just as out-of-place as the Semaphore Saints struck me when I saw them last September.

They say that everything old eventually becomes new again; is it also the case that  everything new will someday seem old?

Hmm…

***

P.S. It’s certainly true that this is a new use of an old tradition of optical “telegraphs”. Flag semaphores systems have been used by naval troops for centuries, according to this site I found online.  It was most famously used during the Battle of Trafalgar, for example.

Now, I’m not sure if it was ever used in any American naval battles, but the military connection seems fitting to mention today, since today is Memorial Day in the U.S, a day to honor the troops and their sacrifices. To all those in the U.S., have a happy and safe holiday!