World's Unusual Statues

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Totem, Leuven, Belgium monument erected in honor of the 575th anniversary of the Catholic University of Leuven. Totem is a statue at the centre of the Ladeuzeplein; it is a work of the Belgian artist Jan Fabre. Featuring a 23-metre-high needle impaling a giant jewelled beetle, the statue towers over the square in front of the university library.





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The Hand of the Desert", Atacama, Chile
The sculpture was constructed by the Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal at an altitude of 1,100 meters above sea level. Irarrázabal used the human figure to express emotions like injustice, loneliness, sorrow and torture.Its exaggerated size is said to emphasize human vulnerability and helplessness. The work has a base of iron and cement, and stands 11 metres (36 ft) tall. Funded by Corporación Pro Antofagasta, a local booster organization, the sculpture was inaugurated on March 28, 1992.





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Dream is a sculpture and a piece of public art by Jaume Plensa in Sutton, St Helens, Merseyside.
Dream consists of an elongated white structure 20 metres (66 ft) tall, weighing 500 tons, which has been cast to resemble the head and neck of a young woman with her eyes closed in meditation. The structure is coated in sparkling white Spanish dolomite, as a contrast to the coal which used to be mined here. It cost nearly £1.9 million and it is hoped it will become as powerful a symbol in North West England as Antony Gormley's Angel of the North is in North East England.





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The Tarasque is a fearsome legendary dragon from Provence, in southern France, tamed in a story about Saint Martha. On 25 November 2005 the UNESCO included the Tarasque on the list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Legend reported among others by the Golden Legend[2] has it that the creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, France, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting. It had a lion's head.[3]a scaly, bison-like beast which burned everything it touched (this creature is similar to the Bonnacon). The Tarasque was the offspring of the Onachus and the Leviathan of biblical account; disputably a giant sea serpent.
The king of Nerluc had attacked the Tarasque with knights and catapults to no avail. But Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers, and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly-Christianized townspeople changed the town's name to Tarascon.





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"Ozimandis on the plains", Texas, USA This strange statue, or rather, there are only two feet in Texas at the whim of an eccentric American millionaire Stanley Marsh's third in 1997 the year. Monument is enclosed in a deep philosophical meaning: the idea was inspired by a poem by one of the greatest English poets of the XIX-th century Percy Shelley's "Ozimandis", which focuses on the futility of erecting monuments. humorously plaque mounted on the monument says that Shelley wrote poem on this very spot after seeing these "ruins", which, of course, can not be true, as the carved image of at least 20 years of age. Author "Ozimandisa" - the artist Lighting McDuff, and "socks" on the soles of the feet was added later by unknown pranksters.





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"Eater of children", Bern, Switzerland This seemingly uncanny name is an old fountain located in the Swiss city of Bern.According to some reports, the sculpture was created in the XVI-th century, but who raised her, and why, this is not entirely clear.According to popular belief, the "Eater" appeared on the streets of the city during one of the carnivals to frighten small children.





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"Mazinger Z" Mas del Plata, Spain "Mazinger Z", if someone does not know - is a popular Japanese comics and cartoons about fighting robots, were born back in 1972 by the artist Go Nagai. Comics had a marked effect on the "Transformers" and "Power Rangers", not to mention countless other movies, books, and cartoons. Fans of "fighting robots" live all over the world, and they were found in Spanish Catalonia: a newly built village of Mas del Plata enthusiasts in 1978, built a 12-foot statue (by the way, in the original robot must be 18 m in height), and the construction of Mas del Plata was never completed due to lack of funding, and "Mazinger Z "still stands today, attracting thousands of fans of anime and manga around the world.





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Maman (1999) is a sculpture by the artist Louise Bourgeois. The sculpture, which resembles a spider, is amongst the world's largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide, with a sac containing 26 marble eggs. Its abdomen and thorax are made up of ribbed bronze. The title is the familiar French word for Mother. The sculpture was created by Bourgeois as a part of her inaugural commission of The Unilever Series in 1999 for Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall. The sculpture picks up the theme of the arachnid that Bourgeois had first contemplated in a small ink and charcoal drawing in 1947. It alludes to the strength of Bourgeois' mother, with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection. Her mother Josephine was a woman who repaired tapestries in her father's textile restoration workshop in Paris.Bourgeois lost her mother at the age of twenty-one. A few days afterwards, in front of her father who did not seem to take his daughter’s despair seriously, she threw herself into the Bièvre River; he swam to her rescue.
The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother- Louise Bourgeois.





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Svinoutka" (or "Utkosvin" in Finnish «Posankka»), Turku, Finland The original monument, which is a cross between a duck and a pig, designed by Finnish artist Alvar Gullihsen. Funny statue came into being in 1999 and was initially floated on the river Aura, and in 2001, the year it set up on a pedestal near the campus of the University of Turku. According to Alvaro, the sculpture represents a critical approach to modern genetic engineering.