Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- December 6th

Major by Charles Fehlen

Northwest corner of 8th and Locust

Major? Major piece of shit!! Pic from philart.net.

                   What an ugly pile of assfruit. Like the most butt-fugly buildings, this dung arch is made of concrete. Unlike most of the public art in the city, this one was actually designed by a Philadelphia-based artist (!!!!!!!!!!!)... too bad it looks like crap.
                    The year was 1983. At that point, the ugly-ass American Postal Workers House (now part of HUP) had been complete for 6 years without satisfying its percent-for-art requirement. They commissioned local artist Charles Fahlen to put together anything ugly enough to distract your eyes from their disfigured-ass structure... and he gave them this giant concrete Duplo Block Disaster.
                 The Postal Workers House was built away from the corner of 8th and Locust, probably because the PATCO train turns under there. It's logical to assume that they didn't want so much weight over the train tunnel. Well that whole theory goes to shit considering that this monstrosity weighs 53,000 goddamn pounds!!!! It's just a matter of time before this thing just falls straight through the sidewalk... and that day will be glorious.

                 Not much is known about what this crap is supposed to represent... this piece is called Major, but if there's anything we've learned about public art so far, it's that the title doesn't mean shit. You could say its some kind of monumental arch... but is it for a dog or something? The opening at the bottom is tiny, considering this thing is like 14 feet tall. Major? Major what? Like the military rank Major? Wow Fahlen, way to take a huge shit on our armed forces!
                I like to think that Fahlen drank a bunch of wet concrete and ate some tacos. He then shit out this giant fucknugget the next day. When he was done, he was like "Wow, that was a MAJOR poop!", and named the sculpture after it. Maybe he was building a new dog house and kept fucking up... after the third time he just piled them all up and submitted it as his newest sculpture. He named it Major to say how much of a major pain in the ass it was to build a dog house out of concrete.
                No matter what it means, its still garbage. A statue of a guy jerking off would be more appealing than this fading bunch of concrete blocks. Feh.