Strangest Thing I Ever Saw

You’ll find the oddest sculpture called The Big Giving outside of the Royal Festival Hall in South Bank, London. This art installation was created between 2006 and 2007 by Klaus Weber. It consists of three rock sculptures with human heads and hands that are doing odd things like spitting, vomiting, and pissing water.

Imagine seeing a criminal rising up from the sewers and tripping up a policeman. The De Vaartkapoe statue is the creation of the Belgian artist Rom Frantzen. It was installed in 1985 in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium.

The Einstein Fountain in Ulm, Germany, depicts a wild-haired head of Einstein cast in bronze and tucked into the shell of a snail. The snail forms the top of a rocket from which shoots out a fountain of water. Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879. This fountain was built to honor the physicist in 1984. It is the creation of Jurgen Goertz.

Floralis Genérica is located in the United Nations Park in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the Recoleta neighborhood. Sitting in a reflecting pool, this 75-foot-tall mechanical flower made of stainless steel and aluminum opens and closes with the sun. It was a gift from the famed Argentinian architect Eduardo Catalano, designed to honor his hometown. At 8 AM every morning, the photocells on this sculpture react to the light of the sun and set off a hydraulic system slowly opening six enormous shine petals. These petals reflect the skyline of the city, the sky, and the water in the pool in which it stands. When sunset comes, the petals close up again.

There you are in the desolate Atacama Desert in Chile, and suddenly you think you might be getting a sunstroke or seeing a mirage, but there it is a giant hand coming up out of the sand. Santiago sculptor Mario Irarrazabal installed a striking sculpture of a left hand rising from the sand in 1992 known as the Hand of the Desert. The huge hand is 36 feet tall and created out of iron and cement. This statue was commissioned by the nearby mining town of Antofagasta.

Imagine seeing a large ogre eating children. The Kindlifresserbrunnen, or Child Eater, is a fountain in Bern, Switzerland. It depicts a large fat ogre eating a bag of babies.

Would you expect to see a giant fork in Switzerland? La Fourchette in Vevey, Switzerland, is a 26-foot-tall stainless steel fork sculpture sticking out of Lake Geneva. The sculpture was created in 1995 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Alimentarium, a food-themed museum. It is the creation of Swiss artists Jean-Pierre Zaugg and Georges Favre. Its mate, a giant spoon, is mounted on the side of the museum.

Everyone knows tourists flock to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris but what about La Pouce? La Pouce, or the Thumb, is a huge 40-foot-tall statue of a thumb weighing 18 tons. It is the creation of Cesar Baldaccini and is located near the Arc de la Défense. (pictured above)

La Tête Carrée Library in Nice, France, is the creation of French sculptor Sacha Sosno. The name of the library translates to “The Square Head,” which was constructed in the artist’s home city of Nice. It houses seven floors of offices of the Louis Nucera Municipal Library. The interior of the offices can be seen at night through the perforations in the exterior sheath of aluminum on the building sculpture.

You’ll be amazed seeing Madame Chapeau on the street in Brussels, Belgium. There she is, an older woman counting her money in public. This creation is a taunt to the local pickpockets in the area who prey on tourists. The statue has a bronze purse and wallet. Looking closer at the statue, you’ll be surprised to see male features. Madame Chapeau is a male transvestite character from the play “Bossemans Coppenolle” by Joris d’Hanswyck and Paul Van Stalle. In 1938, the play was made into a movie.

Man Hanging Out is a creative statue created by David Cerny, a popular Prague visual and performance artist. The sculpture is located in Prague, the Czech Republic. It depicts Sigmund Freud, who was born in the Czech Republic, hanging onto a pole by one hand above the cobbled streets of the Old Town.

What would you say to a giant skull set atop a naked man? It is called the Parable With Skull created by Jaroslaw Rona located at Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic.

The huge statue of Peter the Great, which stands on the deck of a ship that sits on top of a column made of several ships, can be found in Moscow, Russia. It was created as a memorial to honor the 500th anniversary of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. Since the artist Zurab Tsereteli couldn’t find anyone willing to accept a Columbus statue, he substituted the Spanish explorer Peter the Great. The statue found a place on the banks of the Moskva River.

In the early 1990s, the city of Melbourne, Australia, issued a design brief to artists calling for “unique and distinctive forms of street seating.” The result was the Public Purse created by Simon Perry, made with red granite and stainless steel. The oversized purse sculpture also has a functional seating area, and it is symbolic of the retail and commerce focus of the area.

Would you believe it if you saw it? The Space Cow is a floating cow statue created by Swedish artist Tor Svae and found in Stockholm. There is the cow in a space helmet, with an oxygen pack, wearing boots. It was set up in 2004 for the CowParade Art Exhibition.