The bronze detail
Faces and bodies worked with great precision despite the deliberate ugliness. Look closely.
Gordito1869 — CC BY 3.0 · de:Benutzer:AlterVista — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hubertl — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Hubertl — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because that is intended. The work is based on a satire about human folly, so the figures are deliberately distorted. The artist wanted comment, not beauty.
Two to ten minutes, yes — especially as it lies on your route between the market square and the river. But it is not a reason to change your plans.
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A strange bronze fountain in central Nuremberg, near the Museumsbrücke. The artist Jürgen Weber made it in 1987, drawing on a satirical book written by Sebastian Brant in 1494 called The Ship of Fools. The book mocked human folly, and the fountain puts that into bronze: a group of distorted, exaggerated figures clinging to a boat, with angry faces and twisted bodies. The scene is deliberately ugly, and that is the point. The fountain caused an argument when it was installed, and many residents disliked it. Today it is one of the old town's landmarks, and visitors stop to look into the detail. It is free and very short — ten minutes. A stop on your way rather than a destination, and it sits right beside the Museumsbrücke.
Faces and bodies worked with great precision despite the deliberate ugliness. Look closely.
Drawn from a satirical book of 1494 about human folly — context that changes what you see.
Spitalplatz, 90403 Nürnberg