Embrace your inner brutalist.

Brutalism may be “underloved,” as Christopher Shea recently described it, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone at UC Irvine who would argue against the notion that brutalist buildings come “across as oppressive and dreary.” How oppressive are they? Remember my earlier post about where the grade inflation study was performed? You know what else happened there?

I am, as the kids say, seriously:

So if you don’t know why brutalism feels oppressive, ask an ape.  Why do I point this out?  To prove that my campus runs brutal circles around Ari and Eric’s.  How much more brutal is it?  Here’s a picture of the statue they erected in my backyard last week:

I imagine they sat down and said:

“You know, Irvine’s already pretty darn brutal, but it’s not brutal enough.  What can we do?  Jenkins!”

“Statue of a pony, sir?”

“Ridiculous.  Ponies aren’t brutal.  Smith!”

“What about an orc, sir?”

“An orc?  I don’t know what that is, Smith, but it sounds Anglo-Saxon.  I think I like it!”

“What if we stuck an orc on a pony, sir?”

“What is it with you and ponies, Jenkins?”

“If I can interject, sir, Jenkins might have a point.  What if we mount the orc on a Volvo-sized wolf?  Wouldn’t that be pretty darn brutal?”

“Could we show it eating Jenkin’s pony?”

“I don’t see why not.”

That’s some hardcore brutality.

(x-posted.)

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

That statue is so brutal that it destroyed your left-hand sidebar, comments and all.

That's some high-impact art, right there.

[Eric]

Seriously, what on earth is that thing?

[Jonathan M]

Is that a real statue? isn't that the table-sized piece that Penny Arcade auctioned off a little while back. I can't imagine anyone would be insane enough to think that it would be appropriate for a university. It's like the cover of a Saxon or Manowar album.

[SEK]

That statue is so brutal that it destroyed your left-hand sidebar, comments and all.

That's odd. It's there on the design page. It's there on the preview. It's just not there. Hm...

Seriously, what on earth is that thing?

I added the link that was in the original post. Maybe that killed my column?

[Sisyphus]

So you're the wargs instead of, whatever, the anteaters?

Hmph. At least you don't have giant eggs on your campus, or stiffly posed naked women. Oh wait, no, no those are real naked women posing stiffly at our campus ---- I forgot where I was at. Hmph again.

[Karl Steel]

We have a nice mossy bust of Paul Robson on ours.

[Jonathan Dresner]

We have gorillas.

[JPool]

We gots a new dancing skeleton.
Who can be brutal with a top hat?

[Adam Roberts]

I gotta to confess, I'm struggling to see how I can fit a cricket reference in on this post.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Don't orcs play cricket with heads? No, that's hobbits and golf.

[Miriam]

I take it that they've still got the Middle Earth dorms, then?

When I was at UCI, we joked that the campus had two kinds of architecture: ugly and functional vs. ugly and dysfunctional.

[Vellum]

It's been put up by blizzard entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft -- see: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/15/giant-orc-statue-on.html

[J. Harker]

I sense I'm alone in this, but I friggin' love that statue.