A kid destroyed a Lego sculpture worth about $15,000 on Saturday, leaving the convincing sculpture of a Disney character in pieces and the artist so devastated that he briefly questioned his life choices, Time is reporting .
A 22-year-old Chinese artist who goes by the name “Mr. Zhao” says he spent three days assembling 10,000 individual Lego pieces into a sculpture of Nick Wilde, a character in the Disney film Zootopia , at a cost of about 100,000 Chinese yuan (about $15,000).
It happened at a LEGO Expo in Ningbo, China. A giant fox figurine of Nick Wilde that cost $1 https://t.co/QBz9kjJeLb pic.twitter.com/5QWLCmAUYd
— funny (@Funny_pics_1111) June 1, 2016
Zhao displayed his work at a Lego sculpture exhibition in Ningbo City, China, on Saturday, where it stayed up for about an hour — until a kid destroyed it, that is.
The child, whose name and age have not been revealed as of this writing, leaned up against the sculpture to pose for a picture and accidentally knocked it over. The sculpture instantly became naught but several thousand Lego pieces scattered across the floor.
OMG THIS NICK WILDE LEGO FIGURINE AS TALL AS HUMAN AND HIS ENDING IS SO HEARTBREAKING???????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/3OSo6lV0yy
— ?????? (@teapani) May 30, 2016
Zhao was, of course, devastated, he tells Buzzfeed .
“I felt really frustrated and I even start to question my life.”
The parents apologized, and Zhao said that — perhaps after some reflection — he has forgiven the child and his parents.
“A child couldn’t really comprehend the cost of such an accident… I really don’t blame the kid.”
Zhao has also said that he doesn’t intend to try to get reimbursed for the money he invested in his sculpture.
This is not the first time a child has destroyed a work of art. Just a couple of weeks ago, May 17 to be specific, two small boys were caught on video roughing up a priceless sculpture of an angel at the Shanghai Museum of Glass.
Perhaps more frustrating than seeing the priceless sculpture destroyed is the cavalier way in which the kids’ adult chaperones seemed not to care at all. In fact, rather than discipline and redirect the kids while they’re roughing up the sculpture, the adults can be seen pulling out their phones and recording the misbehaving kids. Only after the sculpture falls apart do the frantic adults act concerned.
According to Hyperallergic , the museum now plays a video loop of the incident next to the broken sculpture, now re-titled “Broken” by the artist. Perhaps the video is there to show museum patrons what the sculpture used to be. Or perhaps it’s there to publicly shame the perpetrators and their adults who did nothing, an act not inconsistent with Chinese culture.
This is also not the first time a Lego sculpture has been destroyed. In a disturbing August 2015 incident, two teen boys destroyed a Lego sculpture for no other reason that pure malice.
As Lehigh Valley Live reported at the time, two high school football players from Notre Dame High School broke into the grounds of rival high school Pen Argyle Area High School and destroyed the school’s mascot: a three-foot-tall statue of a knight made of Lego pieces. Both boys were ordered to pay $300 in restitution, which is a small price to pay – as any parent will tell you, Lego bricks are not cheap.
Nailing down just what, exactly, was or is the largest Lego sculpture of all time is a matter of dispute, as Lego artists are constantly competing with each other for the biggest and the best, and often, the sculptures don’t remain exhibited permanently. Nevertheless, according to a November 2015 GEMR report, the largest Lego sculpture ever was a life-sized sculpture of an X-Wing Fighter from the Star Wars franchise, which was composed of 5.3 million blocks and weighing 23 tons.
Do you think the family of the kid who destroyed a Lego sculpture should be made to repay the artist?
[Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
