A Polish town has recreated a communist-era statue of Vladimir Lenin as part of a new fountain, but with an unexpected twist: the Soviet leader is peeing.
The industrial town of Nowa Huta was founded by post-war communist leaders who hoped the city would become a socialist stronghold to counteract Krakow. City workers, however, had political ideas of their own, and once tried to explode a prominently displayed and dramatically imperious statue of Lenin, which was taken down after the fall of the USSR in 1989.
The new Lenin statue, which is a tinted a radioactive hue of yellow-green, has been installed as part of a local art festival, and is called Fountain of the Future. The water feature is designed to make it look as though the communist leader is relieving himself.
Allegedly, the statue’s creators, who include artist Bartosz Szydlowski, hope that the temporary installation of the irreverent post-Soviet monument will help the town decide on a permanent statue for the location. Szydlowski also told the Telegraph that the urinating Lenin statue should help change Nowa Huta’s reputation as a “grey and gloomy” town, highlighting residents’ “sense of humor.”
The offensive Spider-Man statue by Eunsuk Yoo.
Photo: courtesy the artist.
The brightly-colored Lenin isn’t the only recent sculpture to portray a famous man exposing himself. In Korea, a statue of Spider-Man scaling a shopping center wall above a children’s play area was recently removed when someone finally noticed that more than just the superhero’s spider senses were tingling—the statue was sporting a rather large and very conspicuous erection (see report from Complex).
Because the statue, by Eunsuk Yoo, was installed a couple of stories up, its erotic nature escaped notice for about a year. The artist explained that he wanted to portray the superhero being subjected to a “natural physical phenomenon” in a comic light, “without lies.”
When given the choice between removing the statue’s appendage or taking down Spidey altogether, Yoo opted for the latter.