[Dominick]

From an artistic perspective, it isn't even experimental. It is stilted, the fingers splayed to describe what? The nudity is there to shock, in a prurient manner, but there is no message beyond that. It is like a scoolboy screaming the f-bomb out a car window as he drives down the street.

The form is distorted to no discernible end. There is no purpose to the distorted body, there is no composition to the piece. It appears this guy just turned this out between casting lawn gnomes. The only thing I can say that this person is either unschooled, or careless.

Even for an unschooled artist, it isn't interesting. It doesn't convey any semblance of suffering, there is no feeling at all, except "there's a bad bas relief of a naked man who could be Jesus, why are his arms a quarter of the size of his legs?"

[annalex]

There is a purpose. The purpose is to make a huggable, lovable, childlike creature that is sadly dead. The artist achieved his purpose well, it is just not deep enough as far as purposes go. And the reason is, the artist is not humble enough. A medieval artist never thought of himself as interesting enough to express original thoughts. He humbly repeated what he learned from the elders. The results were majestic, although very often anatomically just as incorrect as this one.