One Of "The Ugliest Public Art Ever" Is ??? Well, let you be the judge...: The Ugliest Publicart Ever

A few month ago I decided to build a website on Public Art around the world, I know a brave and bold move on my part. But over the years I had collected an enormous amount of images of statues, momuments and sculptures from every corner of the globe. Being in the media I knew one day these images would come in handy. My objective was to build an impressive site of public art backed up with detailed research of each piece. Public art is a great way to follow and learn history. Someone is always erecting a statue to someone and I figured if they took all that time and effort to create it the person they are honoring must have done something pretty important, right?.
Then after a few years of collecting these images I began taking photos of the plaques on the statues as I realised some people did take a lot of time and effort on people who weren't so special after all. Some pieces of work just would never find their way onto the World WIde Web (check out the Fred and Mary Tree Stumps if you don't believe me) let alone the local rags. So anyway I began to do a little research and before long I  discovered an amazing thing. More intriguing than the Da Vinci Code, more controversial than the magic bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. Public art has more scandal, controversy, conspiracy, theft and More bitchy than even the National Enquirer. I was hooked. You can go back to ancient times when they were wearing nothing more than a toga and thongs and discover some sort of crazy story about the creation of a statue. Unfortunately in those times it wasn't at all that rare to be bumped off for art. Either by a rival artist or by an unhappy (usually fat and ugly) Emperor who didn't like what he saw. The public were also so much more involved and vocal way back then, especially about what went up in their neighbourhood. One little slip and your fountain becomes the local laundry hangout, just go ask Bartolomeo Ammannati. In just about every case I have an earthed a funny, bizarre or simply crazy story involving a statue or sculpture. More often than not the person represented in the sculpture has a deep and sometimes sordid past.

So in writing content for my website I had a dilema, a snag if you like.
I couldn't really write what I felt like writing because since I am creating a serious site (sort of)I didn't really want to offend. There is no nice way of writing your sculpture has ended up becoming a local shelter for the homeless (don't laugh it happened in Melbourne, Australia) nor could I delve too deeply into some of the "so-called" rumours .
So my solution is to get a squidoo lens.

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• Controversial public art
• Ed Dale

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