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96 Comments:
So much for the theory that "at least Communism supported the arts"...
Correct.
Howver,just change "supported" to deformed and ...
I did recognize one of the sculptures as a representation of a Russian folk story about a farmer trying to pull a huge beet or turnip from the ground. It only looks scary in sculpture.
Cthulhu for President in '08.
Why vote for the lesser evil?
Children appreciate any playground. Even if it is creepy.
I actually liked the little bears with light-up eyes though, and I'd love to have the Cthulhu chair in my study; maybe I could sit next to him while reading the Necronomicon...
haha some of this stuff is really creepy but some of it it is funny :] i geusse kids would have fun on anything
Well, it was kind of like a bad accident... horrible and scary, but yet... I want to see more...
http://lh5.google.ca/abramsv/R5mGIO9HheI/AAAAAAAAE4c/Ol7kgwMiVbA/post-1200088287.jpg
its hungarian fountain :-)
Lovely Art Goddess: there is going to be more! We have lots more photos sent to us for part 2... btw, great nick :)
Picture number six shows the 'Grün 80' in Münchenstein near Basel/Switzerland. There was a exhibition in 1980 when this strange thing was built. I played there sometimes in my childhood, it isnt that bad :)
http://www.migrosbasel.ch/parkgruen/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-183//218_read-345
there are not SCARY sculptures. the problem is in your HEAD/BRAIN, you create SCARY thoughts from that, and kids are not brainwashed like you.
"...are in danger to become psychologically scarred from thinking too much about these monsters..."
If anyone actually did successfully sue somebody over this, they and anyone that thinks it was a good idea should get impaled, stuffed, and made into a creepy statue for a playground somewhere.
Some of these are creepy, but some I found quite endearing. The turtle and snail sculptures were pretty cute. I also liked the black bear looking little guys that were just a picture or two after the "intermission".
The one sculptures that I don't think kids will enjoy are the lady with the bloody eyes (though that could be later-added graffiti), and the giant bugs. Still, only SOME kids wont like the giant bugs.
You have some very interesting images here. Like very much the sports collection...
i really find most of these images beautiful and interesting. maybe the problem is that you have a very narrow concept of what beauty must be. you know, boy used to disney and all that things. not that it's bad, but you can't judge other cultures just because they are different to/ oh, wait, you are an american! sorry, forget it, my fault...
found another picture http://flickr.com/photos/pyr0_de/141003780/
" not that it's bad, but you can't judge other cultures just because they are different to/ oh, wait, you are an american! sorry, forget it, my fault..." um? does anyone else see the irony in this?
So you wanted to prove with this gallery that you have a very narrow concept of art? And what has this to do with playgrounds? Besides - i find the playgrounds at a typical McDonnalds way scarier.
These are freaking cool! I would've loved to have something like this growing up. In your mind it might be scary for children, but to children, it's the starting point for imagination (except maybe the one with the bleeding eyes). A little bit of scariness can be exciting!
I agree with the Mcdonalds comment. Ronald Mcdonald is surely the most scary thing on earth!
I would welcome some of these in our school playgrounds to frighten the crap out of gobby kids before they come into school.
you obviously have a poor conception of what art is. Allot of that is interesting abstract art, you are way to ignorant to realize how this could add to a kids imagination. And if a kid doesn't like whats at the park go to a different one. Or the parent should explain to the kid that theirs nothing scary about it.
Most of you people are just ignorant to any kind of abstract art any ways.
I was flicking through the pictures and I spotted one I knew.
but its not Russian...
its in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden.
its the one with four mole looking creatures.
its in the middle of a bigger park, the moles are heated if you sit on them (handy in Stockholm!) and the eyes are lit up with halogen bulbs.
they are actually pretty cool.
pity its all just punk kids drinking on them most of the time.
Thanks for all the location info - I updated the post. Api-punk, Abstract art is a wonderful thing when done tastefully. Some of the sculptures shown here are cool, but not all kids might appreciate it.
"even sweden", "even america" - as if... looks like art to me... read a Grimm tale, lately?
it's not art vs. art so much as creepy vs. creepy. and i love the little black bears - they're great! but the woman with the bleeding eyes needs to be repainted.
Awww, they're all so wonderful! I especially loved the bird creatures (pic# 7). Why don't we have more of that here in The States. *sigh*
If anyone has ever successfully sued because a park scarred them...they need to be locked in a room with the bleeding eye lady! (whom I think is fine just the way she is!) :D
I don't really get how a lot of these pieces are supposed to be creepy, outside of like... the elephant slide and the bleeding eye lady. Everything else is pretty benign. this story did not live up to the hype.
Dude...those are just freaky. XD
That bleeding eyed-lady is gunna give me nightmares or something.
o.0
And I really WOULDN'T want to play on a playground with a huge statue of a doctor holding a large NEEDLE...
An ode to toejam!
Stinky? Yes!
But it doesn't come in strawberry or grape.
What a shame.
I actually live in the city where are those weird pink and orange female and male figures.. You can climb on them... They ARE actually kinda scary...
i tend to agree that the scariness of these playgrounds is overblown.
maybe you'd have been better off calling them "ugly playgrounds."
i'm guessing you don't have kids?
since i had a son my playground aesthetics have changed a lot. safety and fun are a hell of a lot more important than cosmetics. and actually, "ugly" things can be cool to play on.
Here's a submission for the topic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/micahdonahue/2422670999/sizes/l/
Captured on our recent trip to Chile.
I can't WAIT to subject my kids to this! Good psychological learning for the formative years.
The giant reptile with knives in its back is not displayed at the Guggenheim. It's on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum.
Yes, some of these playgrounds are a little odd, even creepy. I think some of the them are kind of cool with kids climbing on sculptures. You aren't taking into account the culture or the amount of money they have to work with for building playgrounds.
I'd like to have the skeletons playing cards for my yard, way cool.
A couple I can see is not for kids, but the majority of them are fine. Nothing is wrong about getting your imagination going. Most great writers have very creative minds. I'm in the USA and I wish I could see playgrounds with a child's mind as the focus, not what we think is suitable. It's not what you play with, but how you play is what is important. ( the elephant, it's better than going in the rear and out the mouth) now that would be gross!!!
My sons would have loved the elephant as it combines fun with the potty talk so common in childhood. The other sculptures are obviously not professional but look like something a child would make. (I made somethin simliar to the mermaid in 3rd grade.) The skeletons playing cards was a little weird.
Yeah, I agree on the McDonald's idea. The scary playgrounds are the generic cookie-cutter playgrounds as the place for our children to learn about "creative play." When I was in school we got to design our own playground including a maze that had "scary creatures" at the dead ends. We painted the creatures ourselves. I still remember how much fun that maze was. I don't remember a particularly joyful McDonald's playground ... just empty fun.
These freaking rock! Thanks for the collection.
(And yes the "judging cultures .. oh wait you're American" comment was pretty funny ... but whatever, typical internet ridiculousness.)
I found these stimulating and enjoyable. My daughters would be terrified of them, but I wish they were exposed to more unusual things here in the US. It would be good for them to expand their idea of fun. Disney Princesses leave me cold, and I think whimsical sculptures are better than Barbie for promoting the outside-the-box thinking that I cherish. Then again, I'm an artist, so I'm not sure you'd want my opinion on art.
most of its abstract art. a child can have hours of fun , using their imaginations. perhaps playing on a sculpture that may be scary(doctor w/ needle) will help aleve their fears.can't be that bad if you can play and have fun. some of the playgrounds are run down, but to a child, its better than nothing and they don't see things the way adults see them.oh ya, not all americans feel the way some of the comments will lead you to believe.
Does anyone happen to know where the metal Cthulu sitting on the chair, and the skeletons playing cards happen to be? I'd lovelovelove to visit them.
I really like the skeletons playing cards too. someone let us know where it is please
I think they are great. The woman with the bleeding eyes was the only one that was disturbing and I agree, that it could have been vandalism. Children are fascinated with ideas that are different than adults. They are fascinated with monsters and bugs and gooey things. These sculptures feed imagination. Oh, and by the way, I'm an American too.
Wow, what are you all so up-in-arms about? So the author thinks that these playground sculptures are freaky... and? This offends you somehow? Do we all have to have the same opinion about everything? No. Everyone (for the most part) has differences in aesthetic taste, thankfully.
Personally, i love all things spooky and abhor most things plastic/McDonald's/cookie-cutter, but even i found a lot of these sculptures frightening, to say the least. I loooooved the four little black bears with glowing eyes, but do think that a fair percentage of children, upon being introduced to them, would cry. But maybe that's ok? Maybe that helps them to recognize the truly scary things when they get older.
Anyway, i enjoyed the photos a lot. Actually, i almost feel like the very first photo was the most unsettling, somehow!
Moral: different strokes for different folks.
Well... As far as "miserable playgrounds" go, let me tell you – they're pretty representative of childhood in Eastern Europe in general, but it was all there was. (I grew up in Bulgaria.) Because of the utter lack of funding, a lot of them were made by local artists or even parents, hungry to provide something – anything – for the kids to play on. You can't blame them for not being MoMA-worthy, they were doing their best.
And I think there's a bit of cultural misinterpretation going on. For example, the one sculpture where a man is pulling on something with a woman behind him, a child behind her, and a puppy on the end. It's actually an iconic folk culture image from a tale called something like "Grandpa Pulls The Giant Radish" – it's something like Jack and the Bean Stalk, except it's a radish that grows huge. And that's the family trying to plug it from the ground...not the orgy-like scenario it looks like here.
Anyway, point is, although many of these are laughable today in contemporary Eastern Europe as well, they didn't necessarily come from a bad place.
I agree with the comment from "silvergirl".... TAKE IT EASY PEOPLE) ..Comments are a way of stating your opinion, get it? Name calling & defensiveness just proves your ignorance not everyone else's. The opinions & captions are perfectly understandable. They ARE creepy. That is an opinion! They are also funny, disgusting, sad, morbid & cool. So what people! Now wonder everyone needs meds!
I can't believe that you didn't include the sculpture of "The Awakening" in Haines Point Park Near Washington DC. It is super scary, especially that big open mouth with teeth. My kids used to play on the leg and foot though. They didn't care. Here is a link to view. http://www.senate.gov/visiting/common/image/The-Awakening.htm The sculpture has been moved. Where you ask? Who knows, maybe Prague?
Well, to me it seems that these peolpe in these cultures have been hidden from the real world for a LONG time, perhaps behind a curtain!
Maybe that curtain was made of IRON!
Ya think?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get a grip on the rest of the world its history, folks!
When we lived in Ukraine, we had a fun but oh-so-dangerous playground in the courtyard of our highrise. It was concrete and metal and designed with ne'er a thought to safety.
Hunh. . . don't have a pic online, let me see if I can find one to upload. . .
These aren't scary, not for kids. They are just old and run down. I'm sure they were quite pretty when new. Like someone else said, kids will play on anything and be happy to have something to play on. Something is better than nothing.
Actually, being a Russian and having grown up in Russia, yes, the strong "opinion" in the form of introduction of the article offends me. The majority of the playgrounds' statues found in Russia represent the characters from our good old Russian folklore fairytales. What exactly is wrong with the brown monkey? Oh, it looks old and disgusting to you? Did it even occur to you that the only reason they look so “ugly” is because they are old? Yes, someone should have replaced them, but in the country twice as big as the US, there are other problems more important than renovating the statues of the characters that everybody still loves and recognized. And honestly, it drives me nuts when someone with McDonald’s playgrounds mentioned here earlier goes to the country as old as Russia and begins to critique what they see. Why don’t you critique those “real” playgrounds here that are, let’s be honest here, completely absent from the landscape?! Or shall we look at the lovely schoolyards with nothing but black concrete and wire fences? Or maybe we should look at the private backyards with swings identical to each other because all of them were bought in the same store??!! Please, nobody is perfect!!
Excuse me, what exactly is that "real world" you refer to? A country with 400-year old history -a self-proclaimed world savior? Iron curtain means nothing to you-nothing has changed here since the communism broke down. It's the people on the other side of the curtain are the ones who had lived the real life, not you! Oh, and why don't you check your native language grammar-it is kinda hard to understand your last sentence!
Interesting collection. Thanks for assembling them.
Many of them beautiful, very few of them scary.
Says more to me about the limited education of the weberati if the consensus is that these are scary.
Scary is: cultural myopia; global blanding; having a functional illiterate in the White House.
I know a lot of Europeans who grew up playing in these type of parks. They are, without exception, cultured, bright, modest and hard-working professionals.
Thankfully, those qualities will eventually overcome the cultural hegemony of The Land of Dumbo.
I don't think it moved but when I was in NYC last summer the crocodile with the cutlery was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not the Guggenheim. On the other front, people can say your view of art is narrow but they're just trying to put you down because their own view is closed to all but what they think has artistic value.
Has anyone checked out the City Museum in St. Louis? The entire building is one giant playground, with a jungle gym of old jets perched 5 stories about the ground and an entire cave in the basement.
Also the turtle park outside the St. Louis zoo is also a little wierd.
just my $.02
matt
They have imaginative parks in the States as well. I grew up in New Orleans and we have a beautiful one there called storyland. It has sculptures of all types of creatures - scary and not. My favorite was always the whale that you can walk inside - a representation of Pinnochio.
http://neworleanscitypark.com/storyland_kids.html
These so-called 'artists' could not make a living in the private sector so they asked the government to take money away from hard working families in the form of taxation in order to pay for these butt-ugly creations.
Just look at the sculptures that are placed in front of government buildings. They are almost always ugly. The government bought the sculptures with taxpayer money because no one else would even consider buying their crap.
Kids will be climbing over anything they can and if an adult won't tell them that they should be afraid of those playground then they probably won't be. I am from Czech Republic and they have some really cool playgrounds there. Please, don't judge. Did you maybe realize that in some countries people don't have so much as here in US and they are happy for anything? Maybe people should stop being so spoiled and be thankful for what they have.
I have to agree with a lot of the comments here. I think most kids would find a lot of this stuff interesting, not disturbing. I'd take any of them over a plastic ronald mcdonald any day.
Hi there! I read this post some time ago and I was really shocked to see how, yesterday night, spanish TV program Cuarto Milenio [http://www.cuatro.com/microsites/cuartomilenio/] used the most of these "Nightmare Playgrounds" pictures without giving any credit. They didn't use all the pictures, but all the pictures they used were taken from here. They presented it like "stuff you find in the net". They made it sound as though they had been the ones who made the compillation.
Deadly Bite - we will investigate. Thank you for the heads-up about this.
Why is is funny for you to mock the lot of poor people?
The elephant with the large plastic tube stick out of its butt is in a rather depressing zoo on the island of Majorca.
Charming, it is.
Apart from the sculpture of the woman that was bleeding from the eyes, I didn't see anything particularly wrong with any of these.
In fact, many of them were very imaginative and fascinating, albeit a bit rundown, but in my experience, most kids wouldn't care about that at all.
Seems to me this is more an example of the blogger's rather narrow worldview - not all playgrounds need to be full of licensed Disney characters.
Next up on DRB: photos of Central African mud huts: Holy crap, these guys don't have bidets and air conditioning? Are they retarded or something??
I actually enjoyed many of the pieces posted here. Some were a little grotesque to be placed in children's playgrounds, but I think part of that also has to do with the fact that they were marred by graffiti. (However, I normally like "artistic graffiti".)
Just because you don't understand a work of art does not mean you should simply cast it aside as meaningless. Art is supposed to make one think critically and invoke emotion.
Stay tuned for the Part 2!
Even uglier and more entertaining.
I found these extremely interesting and so creepy - but I agree that little kids don't see things the way we do - these reminded me of a sculpture I remember playing on as a little kid growing up in suburban Miami decades ago - may be I really only played on it once, but to me it seems like it was many times... I thought maybe it was something I had dreamed of until I found pictures of it online recently:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zwelling/566206994/
I visited the one with the dragon. All I saw was a whole lot of kids having fun. I saw alot of amazing art when I visited Russia, however, there was not a whole lot of public art. I was taken there by a 20-somthing Russia who expressed how much he enjoyed it when he was a child. I really enjoyed visiting that scuplture, I know those who live around do as well.
only an american would think that this is horrible or scary, i've been many times to america, to diferent places of it and it always amazed me how everythink looks the same, saving geographical diferences all the country looks and feels exactly the same is like a uniform country made of prefabricated buildings with zero apreciation for any human factor. i am gratefull that i grew up in a variety of places so culturally fullfilling so vast in it's human nature that i can see things in a deeper way, and i feel ashamed to know that i share this world with a society so destroyed as the north american that makes young inexpierienced to feel good about being the though type, like gangsters i mean they actually look up the delincuent life... they see it as "cool", where i come from of course we have crime... A LOT of it, but no criminal or gangster is proud of it at all, they are ashamed, maybe angry that the society pushed them to that kind of life.
btw i'm not eastern european, i'm southamerican and we have those kind of landscapes in parks and public places too. i think is great.
Some crazy stuff.
Surprised to see the basel one! (6th from the top). Its in a park close to the city, used for massive parties by the international school kids. The hill in the background is usually the epicenter whereas the artsy object can be entered and is usually where the stoners do their thing.
The cthulhu is actually a leather doll with joints and stuff, not a piece of playground equiptment, it's by this guy http://bob-basset.livejournal.com/
Really theres a lot of hate going on here for what is in essence a showcase of unusual and fascinating sculpture that the OP even calls masterpieces, just because he accuses them of being disturbing doesn't mean that it's necessarily a criticism and certainly doesn't suggest that they aren't appreciated.
Some of the comments people have made accuse the poster of being close minded, as far as I have read it's many of these very defensive posters making inflammatory comments that have brought any feelings of ill will into the discussion, not to mention the feeling of bigotry against America (I myself am not American before you make an accusation).
I understand these are hand crafted and a far cry from the generic, mentally sterile, factory creations, but the imagery does evoke the same Grimm's fairy tales level of eeriness.
Some of these sculptures are scary in the same way a derelict house turns from being a family home into terrifying place kids are warned of (because of this they are often all the more fascinated), decaying and decrepit things are unsightly to many, but perhaps kids have the imagination to see things as they could be.
Personally I find them wonderful and I'm certain the original poster does too.
What's the big deal? Art doesn't have to be beautiful. Most of these images are fascinating. Sure, the lady with the bleeding eyes was terrifying, but I can imagine kids happily climbing all over almost all of the other playground fixtures shown on this page.
As usual, human nature rears it's ugly head. An amusing, forgettable morning-coffee article becomes an ugly debate in the comments section. Get on with your lives, you moaning myrtles. DRB, thanks for a great site. x
About 10mins. from where I live is the Manitou; a giant, anatomically correct buffalo sculpture at the Earlton Zoo in Earlton, Ontario, Canada. I don't think the addition of that 'bit' of anatomy makes it any less of a buffalo but someone apparently thought it might.
http://www.bigthings.ca/ontario/pictures/manitou1.jpg
I love the pic that's like, "Dear Cthulhu, I'd like a pony, and some candy and my little brother to be eaten last."
that elephant hole probably goes with the phallic slide from nightmare playgrounds part 3
The picture with the giant lilac-colored lady is from Turku, Finland. I used to play there as a child, it features even weirder sculptures... Fun to play on though.
I recognized the turnip/beet story in one of the sculptures as well. They tell it in Japan, too (I think it's a daikon radish there). But it definitely could have been represented in a way that looks a little less... in appropriate for children.
Outside the Sazka building at the bus stop K Žižkovu, you will find one of the most upsetting sculptures (though hopefully, NEVER intended as a playground installation.)
It is of a man sitting on a bench and a young woman on her knees in front of him. Her head is resting against his inner thigh.
So far, it's ok, right?
BUT go behind her and her skirt is hiked up and there are two labia staring you in the face.
Amazing.
Oh, that execrable lippy lady is in Prague. Sorry for neglecting to add that.
one word people, 'diversity'.
The pink lady giant (with children inside her), and the yellow foot of the other giant terror is located in Kupittaa park, Turku, Finland. I don't know if they're still there, last seen them ten years ago (I live on the other side of the city). If they are, kudos to the Turku children's parks for being creepy as hell.
i love them :)
There is a Giganta in Benbrook Texas. We called it the Monster Park. The slide is fast! it had all old school stuff. lots of fun.
whats wrong with bees in a playground? or an abstract horse? and are you really surprised that dirt poor people living in a an apartment complex in the former soviet block have a shitty playground? really interesting pictures presented in a really idiotic context.
most of em' are amazing uniques pieces of art!, i give you the fact that some make me FEEL weird...
but isn't art about waking up feelings???
Doesn't every kid want a chance to be expelled from the inners of an elephant? Is it intended to be a life-sized replica of an elephant anus? I would love to hear how they pitched that project to the community association.
notsospanish.wordpress.com
Its funny to see how people get so easily offended on the internet.
Doux Jésus!!!!!!! How can people install such hideous things in public places! Seigneur, sauvons-nous!!!
Last picture: Facepalm!
The scariest playground is definately the first one with the sandbox. It looks like a little prison yard for children.
Some really dark playgrounds, there are some lighter ones here
http://grassrootsplay.com/case-studies
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