The world's ugliest monuments

To some, Tito's WWII monuments have an ugly beauty. Others think they're giant alien hairpins.

"Courage" possibly indicating what it takes to gaze upon this bulging concrete Belarusian who looks either very angry or just constipated.

Wilde would presumably have had something witty to say about this well-intended but hideously executed memorial. Once he'd gotten over the shock.

"Now, that's a lot of scrap metal." Africans were unimpressed by this worryingly Teutonic, multimillion-dollar kitsch-ercise.

"Er, Sam, I kinda think the point of Stonehenge is that it doesn't look as if was designed by an orthodontist."

A touchy subject and one unsuccessfully addressed in this lachrymose "gift" from Russia to the United States. Thanks, Vladimir!

Poor Martin Luther King seems to have been decapitated four times. What does it mean? Who cares? Just marvel at it.

Right: The pope statue before people complained about the Mussolini resemblance. Left: After they "fixed" it.

With its mallet, scythe and pen rendered in concrete brick, this one looks like an advertising gimmick dreamed up for a bargain general goods store.

This cheekily named tribute to a Turkman potentate may mark the exact point where tastelessness meets ugliness and mutates.

There are ways of commemorating a great pop music talent and then there's ...

• Belarus's monolithic Courage monument looks angry -- or constipated


• The 48-meter African Renaissance Monument is worryingly Teutonic


• Why did someone "perfect" Stonehenge to commemorate WWI?

(CNN) -- Sculptors, stonemasons and cement stirrers of the world, listen up!

Here's how not to build a monument.

It turns out the line between timeless artistic statement and outsized novelty paperweight is frighteningly thin.

This collection of sentimental howlers and overblown statement pieces serves as gaudy testament to overreaching creative ambition -- not to mention the dictators and selection panels who thought them a great idea at the time.

Courage Monument, Brest Hero-Fortress (Belarus)

This giant, angry Belarusian emerging from a mountainous block of concrete looks as if he's about to thump the West into submission before hurling North America at the sun.

He marks the defense of the Belarusian city of Brest and the Soviet victory in World War II.

He also serves as a reminder not to mess with Belarus -- ever.

Others say he simply looks constipated.

Courage Monument, Memorial Complex Brest Hero-Fortress , Brest, Belarus; +375 162 200 012; open daily, 9 a.m.-6 p.m

"A Conversation with Oscar Wilde" (London)

London fans of Irish author and poet Oscar Wilde spent years campaigning for a monument to his genius.

Unfortunately, the writer and gay figurehead has ended up being commemorated with what looks like a coffin (unfortunate, considering he died a broken man after being jailed under homophobic laws) from which a melted Wilde is emerging.

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The "coffin" was meant to be a bench where you could share a smoke with Wilde, but since someone stole his chiseled cigarette it's more regularly used as a bed for London's homeless or urinated on by late-night drinkers.

"A Conversation with Oscar Wilde," Adelaide Street, London

African Renaissance Monument (Dakar, Senegal)

At 48 meters tall, the $27 million African Renaissance Monument in Dakar, Senegal, is higher than the Statue of Liberty and gives a bird's eye view of the poverty that surrounds it.

The cost of the monument caused local protests, but there were just as many Senegalese voices objecting to the hideous bronze statue's artless design, sexism and failure to capture an African archetype.

African Renaissance Monument, Ouakam, Dakar

Sam Hill's Stonehenge (Maryhill, Washington)

You think Stonehenge deserves its status as an iconic ancient relic?

Haven't you noticed the thing's broken -- with tumbled stone columns everywhere -- plus it's in England?

Early in the last century, U.S. railroad magnate Sam Hill came up with a solution.

He built an ideal, unbroken replica of the neolithic stone circle with slabs of reinforced concrete on land abutting his Maryhill home in Washington state.

The monument is dedicated to the dead of World War I, although it's also proved a draw for local bands shooting Spinal Tap-esque promo videos.

Sadly, in seeking to perfect and modernize Stonehenge, Hill drained it of every drop of its age old, mysterious beauty.

Sam Hill's Stonehenge, Stonehenge Drive, Maryhill, Washington; +1 509 773 3733

Spomeniks (former Yugoslavia)

Commissioned by Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito in the 1960s and '70s to mark World War II battle sites, the brutalist concrete sculptures known as spomeniks endure in often far-flung locations throughout the former country.

Resembling chunks of demolished Soviet apartment block stuck in a field, the monuments (which is what "spomenik" means in Serbo-Croation) at least mark a departure from war memorials of horse-mounted men with fancy hats.

But their actual relevance to the intended military conflict -- or indeed any conflict -- sure gives your brain a workout.

Possessing an ugly beauty to some, to others they're an oppressive reminder of the violent breakup of the Yugoslav nation in the 1990s.

Spomeniks are found throughout Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia

"To the struggle against kitsch tributes."

"To the Struggle Against World Terrorism" (Bayonne, New Jersey)

Monuments don't tend to come with store receipts.

That's a problem when they're given as a gift and the recipient finds them in screamingly bad taste.

Grave subject matter notwithstanding, that was the judgment of many in response to the weeping brick tower with a crack in it given by Russia to the United States to commemorate 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

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Officials found a place for it in a corner of Bayonne, New Jersey.

You'll find a more sober 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center site in New York.

"To the Struggle Against World Terrorism ," Former Military Ocean Terminal, Bayonne, New Jersey

Martin Luther King memorial statue (Toledo, Ohio)

Martin Luther King's contribution to civil rights and equality for African-Americans is marked across the world, but the sculpture marking his Memorial Bridge in Toledo, Ohio, really stands out.

For some reason, it depicts the assassinated religious leader and activist as a kind of sinister, four-faced entity protruding from a globe.

Looking every gleaming inch the sort of commemoration any enemy of Superman or Batman would be proud of, the tripod mounted monument could only be more glaringly unsuccessful if it revolved and played fairground music.

Martin Luther King Memorial Bridge, Cherry Street, Toledo, Ohio

Like a communist version of rock, paper, scissors.

Monument to the Party's Foundation (Pyongyang, North Korea)

Grace, ambiguity, transcendence -- all qualities sadly lacking from this North Korean monument to the foundation of the communist state's Workers' Party.

Rather, with its huge, encircled mallet, scythe and nibbed pen rendered Lego-like in concrete bricks, it resembles a crude advertisement for a general goods store stuck by some lonely Midwestern highway.

Instead of its intended symbolism of workers, farmers and intellectuals acting in unison, some have suggested the North Korean sculpture looks like it could represent a blown-up state communist version of rock, paper, scissors.

Monument to Party Founding, Munsu Street, Pyonyang

Pope John Paul II memorial (Rome)

When signing off on monument design you'd think a beleaguered Catholic Church would have a tick list that includes, "Make sure it doesn't look like Mussolini trying to kidnap a minor."

Unfortunately, decision-makers in Rome, or at least the statue's builders, missed that memo and managed to commission a 2011-built memorial to Pope John Paul II that one critic called "a sin."

A recent reworking has tweaked the design and minimized the widely remarked upon resemblance to the Italian fascist dictator, but that gather-ye-all cape remains a little creepy.

Pope John Paul II memorial, Rome Termini train station, Piazza dei Cinquecento, Rome

Stand on this and rotate.

Neutrality Monument (Ashgabat, Turkmenistan)

There are plenty of monuments to war victories, so to commemorate neutrality gets marks for originality.

And even more marks for irony when that pacifist stance is symbolized by a gargantuan, highway-straddling tower with a 12-meter golden statue of a dead dictator on top.

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Originally built as a 70-meter-tall rotating tribute to the late Turkman potentate Saparmurat Niyazov -- although officially celebrating the country's neutrality -- the monument was relocated from central Ashgabat to the suburbs once a new ruler came to power.

Now 18 meters higher, but no longer rotating, this marker of the boundary between flaming kitsch and sheer ugliness remains outlandish enough to astonish any lost tourist.

Neutrality Monument, Berzengi, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

Michael Jackson tribute statue (Craven Cottage, London)

It would seem hard to do even more damage to Michael Jackson's original handsome looks than his plastic surgeons achieved but this tribute to the pop legend appears to reach that goal

The resemblance to an only slightly reworked production line mannequin was one error, as possibly was its strange location at a soccer ground in London.

The reason for the placement?

The multimillionaire owner of the Fulham FC soccer team, Mohamed Al Fayed, commissioned it to commemorate it his "friend."

Some friend.

The statue was removed after Al Fayed sold the club.

Michael Jackson statue, was at Craven Cottage, Stevenage Road, London

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Iain Aitch.