Cast with good intentions but perhaps a poor eye for accuracy, terrible statues have been something of a trend lately. Now the residents of a Serbian town are ruffled over an owl effigy, which some say resembles a penis.
The hefty terracotta statue was meant to honor the large winter owl population of Kikinda, Serbia. Instead, the owl sculpture has garnered bizarre criticism for apparently looking too much like the male sex organ.
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The 2.8-meter monument was created by local artist Jovan Blato. Unveiled this month, the new landmark has generated some bad reviews online and among Kikinda residents, who are angry at the perceived lack of invention with the statue.
“This one really looks like a penis,” one person commented under the Facebook unveiling of the artwork.
“Hahaha so beautiful now a lot of men in the city will have their own statue,” a second social media critic posited, while perhaps also critiquing something entirely different.
A third commenter added: “This doesn't look like an owl. God save me, who ever approved this has no eyes.”
Miodrag Jankov, who lives in Kikinda, said the town is in danger of becoming solely known for the phallic statue.
“I think [the sculptor] should have done something that would represent the city in the best possible light, and not cause ridicule from all sides,” Jankov said.
“I am an artist myself, and I do not like the kind of contemporary art where under the veil of freedom, something does not look like anything,” he added, maybe putting himself into the frame for future work.
Another resident, Tatjana Kovalik, had some choice words for the piece, saying it should never have seen the light of day.
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“This sculpture should’ve remained in some enclosed space – if the artist saw it the way he did – where there’s people who understand what the artist wanted to say,” Kovalik said.
The Kikinda statue joins a growing list of monuments that have been met with widespread ridicule. Sculptors like Emanuel Santo, who moulded the now-infamous Madeira Islands Cristiano Ronaldo statue, have come in for serious flack recently at the hands of social media critics. Maybe the best defense is to say that art is subjective.
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