Children Are the Victims of Adult Vices is a group of sculptures created by Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin. The sculptures are located in a park in Bolotnaya Square, Balchug, 2000 feet south of the Moscow Kremlin behind the British Ambassador's residence. Chemiakin said that, " ... was conceived and carried out by me as a symbol and a call to fight for the salvation of present and future generations."
The sculptures are of thirteen bronze figures, which depict adult vices, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and prostitution, that affect children. The figures are perceptibly closing in on two unaware playmates, a girl and a boy, with the centrepiece figure being 'Indifference'. The sculpture was commissioned by then-Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and sponsored by the state-owned oil company Rosneft. It was unveiled in 2001 amid some controversy. Some Muscovites worried that the graphic imagery would frighten children.
Coordinates: 55°44′45″N 37°37′10″E / 55.745935°N 37.619376°E / 55.745935; 37.619376
Famous quotes containing the words children are, children, victims, adult and/or vices:
“Feeling that you have to be the perfect parent places a tremendous and completely unnecessary burden on you. If we’ve learned anything from the past half-century’s research on child development, it’s that children are remarkably resilient. You can make lots of mistakes and still wind up with great kids.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Could it be that those who were reared in the postwar years really were spoiled, as we used to hear? Did a child-centered generation, raised in depression and war, produce a self-centered generation that resents children and parenthood?”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.... The Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish villages as I have seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)