Last month, in Tina Turner’s hometown of Brownsville, Tennessee, a bronze statue honoring the late singer was erected.

When famous people die, people want to remember them. A statue goes up, and people start remembering. The thing about the Tina Turner statue is that it is, as fans pointed out, extremely ugly and looks nothing like the not-ugly Tina Turner. Thankfully, some noted, Turner was not alive to see it.

The rest of us were not as fortunate.

Perhaps even stranger than the idea that someone thinks Tina Turner looks like that is that Turner is merely the latest victim of a bad “lifelike” statue.

Back in 2009, the town of Celoron, New York, witnessed the unveiling of a statue known colloquially as “Scary Lucy,” a figure that was supposed to honor Lucille Ball but ended up looking more like a villain from a Bavarian fairy tale whose primary purpose is to scare children. There’s also the infamously crooked Cristiano Ronaldo bust from 2017 that looks like it was made by a scorned rival, rather than an admiring fan. NBA star Dwyane Wade has one too, as does the late actor James Dean.

These bad statues raise an obvious question: Why are these bronze statues so bad? And so many others: If they’re bad and so many people think they’re awful, who keeps making them and who keeps commissioning them? Is there a larger conspiracy at hand, perhaps a cabal of sculptors who hate Lucille Ball and Dwyane Wade? If we want to honor people we adore, why then do we keep making ugly statues of them?

Why haven’t we freed ourselves from the chokehold of ugly bronze statues?

Why so many bronze statues are deeply, horrifyingly, bad

The visceral reaction to the Tina Turner statue was largely due to what people believe is misrepresentation. The Tina Turner in their minds — shaped by performances, music videos, photos, interviews, and their own experiences — did not match up with the foreboding, bronze effigy that was also supposed to be Tina Turner.

What appears to be........

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