I far, far prefer the second version. I think you may be getting hung up on the content of the photo, ie "there's a freaky looking man sculpture" rather than stepping back and seeing it as a visual composition. Remember Cartier-Bresson's trick of looking at prints upside down to see if he still liked them? That was his way of trying to avoid that.
As ever, this only what I like, and there are plenty of rich artists whose work doesn't impress me, so... :-)