Photo taken: September 22, 2010
As someone who notices the strange and bizarre, I seem to have an affinity for capturing what I endearingly term shitty statuary. The lower tier of this countdown has several of the mis-sculpted gems I’ve uncovered over the years… mostly on my trips to various baseball stadia. This bust of former Pittsburgh Pirates team president Carl Barger that is on display at PNC Park can really only be described as grotesque. What in the everloving hell? I know Pittsburgh prides itself as being a gritty blue collar town… but that’s no reason to give the late Mr. Barger the Freddy Krueger treatment he got in this permanent monument to his service. Seriously, this is the kind of artwork that would give both children and adults nightmares! And yes, it looks like he has snot running out of his nose. Once I spotted that for the first time, I’ve never been able to unsee it. Is it a coincidence that the Pirates have not won their division since Barger died in 1992 and they chose this way to honor him? I don’t think so…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
yes… Freddy was in my minds immediately too….. the difference between art and fart is often just one letter…
I think there are farts that are better than this piece of fartwork…
I’m almost speechless on this one. Would be interesting to know how much the artist received for creating this abomination…..
Knowing how modern art is valued, probably entirely too much. They could have went to a day care and had a whole bunch of three years olds slap globs of Play Doh and slime together and come up with a better tribute to the poor guy…
Which is probably exactly what the artist did!
You may be right on the coincidence factor. Yikes, it’s a wonder small kids aren’t terrified to play baseball if they’ll be remembered like that!
I think small kids would be terrified if they even got a look at that hideous thing! They may as well just have clowns parading around the ballpark…
I assume he died in some sort of horrible fire. Or maybe he became a zombie and that’s his actual head. Do his eyes follow you round the room?
LOL! He actually had a heart attack at some big meeting between baseball executives during the offseason… though maybe he was cremated and they decided to get his likeness for the bust after that. I couldn’t look into his eyes…. who knows what evil lurks there!