'Der Hase'

A sculpture of a gigantic goggle-eyed hare is portrayed as having fallen hard upon and smashed open a wooden box from which spills a horde of numerous tiny and demonic-looking rabbits. Look closely and you will see that crushed beneath this heavyweight hare lies a person, whose lifeless hand can be seen outstretched from beneath the animal’s colossal bulk.

Known as Der Hase, this is a monument to Renaissance-era painter and printer Albrecht Dürer, who was born and lived much of his life not far from where the sculpture stands in the city of Nuremberg. The bizarre and irreverent sculpture pays tribute to one of Dürer’s most famous natural history watercolor paintings, Feldhase (A Young Hare), which portrays a leveret sitting in a pose of relaxation.

Created in 1984 by the artist Jurgen Goertz in a spirit of satire, the sculpture has proven to be somewhat controversial. The leviathan lagomorph has often been labeled by its detractors as being “one of the world’s ugliest pieces of public art.”