The 14 Most Unintentionally Terrifying Statues in the World
Write a book or paint a painting, and who knows whether it'll still be around a few years later. But build a goddamned 100-ton bronze statue, and people will still be staring at that shit centuries from now. Which makes it all the more awesome when a sculptor creates a horrifying monument to his own insanity and gets it erected in city park or town square. Like ...
#14.
Frogner Park Babyfighter (?) -- Oslo, Norway
Via ellenmac11
Frogner Park in Oslo is a beautiful place. It is filled with a great number of statues that capture the beauty and grace of human anatomy in a way that has to be seen to be believed. Also, this statue of a naked man kicking the shit out of several babies.
Via Toni Kaarttinen
What exactly is going on here? Is it ... symbolic of something? Or, even better, is it memorializing an actual person? Did this used to be an Olympic event, and did this guy win the gold for Norway? Did they knock off points for having his dick out?
This baffling statue actually depicts four child-shaped "genii" spirits attacking a man. Or maybe only three of them are spirits, and he just happened to be doing his daily nude baby punt when they descended on him. Really, feel free to just write your own backstory here.
#13.
The Child-Eater Fountain -- Bern, Switzerland
Via Curious Expeditions
It wasn't as though he was aiming for any kind of subtlety here.
Damn, we should have done a whole article just about baby-murder statues. The Kindlifresserbrunnen, or Child-Eater, fountain of Bern was built way back in the 16th century. And really, it looks like pretty standard fountainry when you're walking by it:
Via Jaume Meneses
Hell, from here you can barely tell that the top depicts a man snacking on a bag of babies. Probably why the artist named it "Child Eater," just to make sure you got his point.
And we say "probably" because nobody seems to know the exact story -- whatever grand point the statue was supposed to be making has been lost to time. But the artist went all-out, from the horrified, desperate expressions of the remaining uneaten babies to the legion of armed bears that stand guard around the fountain's base ...
iStockphoto
... to the fact that at least one of them is sporting a clearly visible erection.
#12.
The, Uh, Turd Monument -- Ponta Grossa, Brazil
Via tudolink.com
If you're thinking this looks like a shit statue, a lot of people agree with you. But you'd be wrong. It's also a shit fountain.
Via That mind-boggling, giant turd-on-a-stick is called Cocozao. It's located in the unfortunate town of Ponta Grossa, and Google Translate tells us it's actually supposed to represent a local tree called the Araucaria pine. For reference, here's an Araucaria pine:
Via Yeah, Brazil. That's totally what it is.
For the surprisingly large portion of our readers who are already packing for a pilgrimage to pay respects to the Ultimate Poop Joke, we regret to inform you that the people of Ponta Grossa finally came to their senses in 2009 and demolished the statue. As a small consolation, however, they opted to do it like this:
Via adlertech.blogspot.com
"Damn kids." - God, after falling for the oldest trick in the book and stomping the fire out.
#11.
The Kafka Museum Entrance -- Prague
Via vagabondvince310
Prague clearly wanted the museum for its greatest author, Franz Kafka, to be something special. Which is why we have the above sculpture in the courtyard. If you think it looks like they're pissing a pool in the shape of the Czech Republic, a simple look closer ...
Via ilovebutter
... says that's exactly what you're looking at.
This is the work of David Cerny, an artist hailed by half his peers as a controversial genius and scorned by the other half as an utter dickhole. This won't be his only stop on this list.
The statues' dongs are robotic, so they actually move. They piss shapes in the water, and you can also make them piss a phrase of your own by sending an SMS to a pay number. And Cerny got someone to agree to that. And by the way, this was not even his most ridiculous penis-related project. He was once very, very close to being able to make the Czech National Theatre look like this:
Via davidcerny.cz
That piece was going to be called "Nation to Itself Forever," a 30-foot golden man ejaculating steam at random intervals. It unfortunately got canceled just prior to installation, which we assume means Cerny was forced to pay up on a bet he made to another artist years ago about just how much shit he could get away with before someone stopped writing him checks.
Fortunately, this is not Prague's only artistic tribute to Kafka. There's also this ...
#10.
Man and Skull -- Prague
Via sfoshee
Yes, for some reason or another, they figured that the best way to honor Kafka was by erecting a statue featuring a giant skull getting intimate with a subservient male figure at a major tourist attraction (Prague Castle's Daliborka Tower). They say this is based on a character in Kafka's books, and although we can't call ourselves experts on Kafka, we have a hard time believing any of his major characters were ever prison-raped by Skeletor's disembodied head.
Via tiny_tear
Hey, let's check it out from the back:
Via archangeldeb
Seriously, there are some sights that are not meant to be seen when casually tourist-hiking, and one of them is definitely a bronze scrotum. Which, by the way, appears to have been crushed flat with a mallet.
#9.
The Faceless Crawling Horror Babies -- Prague
Via Radim Beznoska / Isifa / Getty
If you go to the park in Prague, you'll occasionally see these big, bronze babies crawling around. OK, that's ... weird, we think, but definitely not all that insane. Oh, wait, here's more of them covering the local TV tower like ants:
Via In case you've never suffered the symptoms of heroin withdrawal and still don't see the problem, let's try taking the camera up front, and get a view of their adorable little faces ...
Via Brad_King
Those crawling nightmares are also the work of David Cerny, by the way. But he can't be blamed for ...
#8.
Fountain of Virtues -- Nuremberg
Via edwhitaker
If there's just one place in the world where you could safely take your pious old grandmother, it would no doubt be Nuremberg, the German town where some of the earliest bound Bibles were made and some really evil people were finally brought to justice. And what would be a better sight than the famous Nuremberg Fountain of Virtues, made all the way back in 1589, when an iron caster decided to make a fountain that represented the three theological and three cardinal virtues as women ...
... NO, GRANDMA! DON'T LOOK!
Via edwhitaker
Yes, who would have thought that the ultimate virtue in the 16th century was considered to be high-pressure lactation? Not you and your no-longer-in-Grandma's-will ass, that's for sure. And in case you think this was one random bad statue idea, head over to Bologna, Italy, and take a gander at the deceptively named Neptune fountain:
Via Bouncey2k
She looks quite calm for someone with perforated breasts.
All right, Renaissance-period sculptor guy, that's even less biologically believable than the last one. What's wrong with your women, Europe? How the hell did any of your children make it through the breast-feeding phase?
The Denver Airport actually has all kinds of weird-ass art. If you know where to look once you are inside you can find everything from Gargoyles popping out of suitcases to time capsule sealed with a masonic symbol that ins't supposed to be opened for a few hundred years.
ReplyWasn't there a s****y horror movie about mothman?
ReplyThe giant demon horse there is also being joined by Anubis, the Egyptian god of death. Is Denver Airport trying to tell us something?
Reply#5 is best pony.
ReplyThe EYE is the same color as mine.
ReplyIf Cracked ever does a sequel to this, I have three words for them: Grounds. for. Sculpture. If you thought one creepy statue in a random town was bad, try dozens.
ReplyI think the "Screaming Lady" statue in Iraq should have made this list, but seeing how it was made during Saddam's regime, it's probably intentionally terrifying.
ReplyI've met the artist who created the giant eyeball :) His name is Tony Tasset and he's actually this really unassuming man. The whole concept of the eye was based around the fact that beginning artists will have notebooks full of trying to draw the perfect eye as an art object. This was sort of him trolling young art students XD
ReplyI've seen the one in Denver, Washington, and Chicago
ReplyI laughed my ass off at number one. I'm studying abroad in Reutlingen, Germany this semester. I immediately wondered if the Tübingen Vagina statue would make the list when I started this article!
ReplyI live in Fort Collins, which is just north of Denver. I've seen that horse statue before, and I have to say... If you thought it looked terrifying in the picture, you haven't seen anything. Did I mention it's "anatomically" correct minus the fact that it's blue?
ReplySorry writer sir, that is how milk comes out of breasts, the last image I mean. /comfort
Reply...Now they just need to erect an erection next to the vagina.
ReplySeattle's Fremont Troll could definitely qualify for most people, especially at night. Not me. I punched it in the nose.
ReplyShould have included the statue for the boyscout memorial in DC. It depicts a scout dressed in uniform followed closely by a full grown naked man.
ReplyI went to see 'The Awakening' when I was in eighth grade but a series of statues that terrify me much further than this ever could would be tall, lanky bunnies in Washington D.C. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of bunnies, but the way that they stand upright and their distorted proportions make it seem like they're rabbits...if rabbits were rising from the pits of hell to scare the crap out of little children when they see one of them for the first time.
ReplyI want El Mesteno on the next red dead redemption
ReplyYeah, I passed that demon horse twice while dropping my brother off at the Denver airport last month. I had to do a double-take and then keep staring at it, hoping I wasn't the only one who found it kind of creepy and disturbing....
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesOh, and this was in broad daylight, mind you, that I was able to see the eeriness. Thanks for showing me how it would've appeared had I been there at night! o.O XD Man, it's too bad cameras takes forever to start on.
I had the same experience last night when I dropped my boyfriend off at DIA. He asked me, "Do you know what El Mesteno is?" And right as I said, "No...", it came into view and it freaked me the hell out. It was at night, too, so the eyes looked even creepier D:
It's creepier when you're on a plane that's taking off or landing and can see it glowing in the night. Lol.
I live in Denver though, eventually I've learned to ignore it.
No offense to Nebraskans, but if you want an unintentionally terrifying statue, try rounding the corner to see that gigantic bust of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln, NA in the middle of the night. My family and I had been searching for a hotel with a vacancy, but there was some kind of convention in town, so we ended up stumbling upon old Honest Abe at around midnight.
ReplyScariest part: He is lit from below like someone holding a flashlight under their chin while they tell a ghost story.
I was very happy to see El Mesteno aka "Ol' Blue Balls" on this list. It is a scourge on the city of Denver.
ReplyTime for us Denverites to kill it with fire..
Actually that would probably make it even more demonic..