I never realized that the bull was there since only 1987. I would have assumed much longer. (Also didn’t realize that it was sneaked there.)
Why the hat?
Perhaps a more pertinent bit would be various “ambush marketing” campaigns which similarly subverts one companies advertisement by co-placing one of you own that feeds off of it.
Examples:
I believe the artist has a valid point. The Fearless Girl statue has totally changed his work of art. If the sculptor of the Girl wanted to make a statement about a bold female facing up to a bull then he or she would be quite free to make such a sculpture but co-opting the work of another artist as part of your own is not right. I really hope that the guy wins his case, I think he’s being victimized here.
According to the NYT’s coverage of his recent reaction he meant The Charging Bull to be about “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love” (Really? A message of optimism maybe, but peace and love?) and clearly the Girl’s placement subverts it and creates a context in which the Bull becomes a symbol of male oppression and of threat.
So sucks to be him. Yeah the Girl is bullying the Bull, not the other way around.
But art once created is completed by the viewer and times and contexts change. Not sure what his whining about it accomplishes.
I agree with this.
I do not agree with this.
The placement of the girl changes the meaning of the work but it was his choice to place his statue on a public street without permission, even if approval was retroactively given. If I decide to add additional characters to Banksy graffiti we can argue whether my additions improve or detract from his works but Banksy himself has not been victimized by the act despite whatever complaints he may offer. Only the owner of the wall or building we’ve painted on has a substantive say in the matter.
I’m not going to tell other people how to feel, but the statue debacle referenced in the OP does not inspire outrage in me. Obviously, it’s not the fault of the sculptor, but I really don’t care about this drunk guy and his moment of thoughtless idiocy.
But I am very interested in public shaming as a phenomenon (I find it both disturbing and fascinating, some remaining vestige of the stoning days.) I’ve learned to be very careful about taking a single photo out of context to indict someone’s character. I recently listened to a Reply All podcast hosting Jon Ronson, a journalist who wrote a book on the subject called So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. That podcast focused on a young woman who worked for the developmentally disabled and was by all accounts a wonderful, compassionate person. She also had a long-standing game with her friends where they would take photos of themselves with various official signs, doing the exact opposite of what the signs requested. One day she visited D.C. and her friend snapped a picture of her at the Tomb of the Uknown Soldier, flipping the bird and pretending to yell in front of a sign that said ''Silence and Respect." The photo was posted on Facebook, where it received little interest for months, until someone sent it to a pro-military website, and then all hell broke loose.
She not only lost her job, but was subject to a cacophony of voices calling for her to be raped, burned alive, and have her uterus cut out. Her life was ruined because the internet took a moment of stupid thoughtlessness and used it to decide they knew everything about her and what she represented.
I’m not about to do that to this guy.
Just a point of interest addendum… I haven’t read his book, but I’ve listened to several interviews with Jon Ronson and I found his ‘‘origin story’’ pretty fascinating. Basically, a few academics started an offensive Twitter feed using his public persona and were making his life miserable. They agreed to be interviewed for a YouTube video, in which Jon Ronson politely asked them not to use his public image because it was causing him distress. The academics were complete dicks to him, discounting his concerns and insulting him for no apparent reason.
He expected YouTube commenters to side with the academics, but was relieved when most of them took his side… it didn’t take long, however, for the ‘‘Wow, these academics are dicks’’ to devolve into ‘‘they should lose their jobs’’ and ‘‘they should be set on fire’’ etc. He was so horrified by this reaction that he decided to study the phenomenon.
He also recounted a story in which he himself posted a comment about a Paul McCartney song, something to the effect of "Mark David Chapman shot the wrong Beatle.’’ Not long after, he received a letter from goddamn Linda McCartney, who said, “Are you saying that you believe my husband, the father of my children, should have been murdered by the man who killed his best friend?” It really forced him to step back and re-evaluate the fact that his words impacted real people. And we often don’t think of celebrities and public figures as real people. I doubt we think of ‘‘brosef’’ as real people either… he’s a blank slate onto which we project our anxieties and traumas and personal experiences. Instead of this drunk guy doing a stupid drunk guy thing, he becomes the patriarchy.
Eh, I think the artist of the bull statue has a point. Also, he was silent for weeks about it when it was new and supposedly temporary and only spoke up after the decision to keep it there for a year. So I don’t see his reaction as “whining” – he was willing to let the other artist have their moment on a temporary basis but would rather not have the intent of his own work changed on a perhaps permanent basis. Seems rational to me.
“Art changes, too bad!” seems a weak excuse. Especially for anyone who was upset about the dude humping the girl statue. Hey, art changes, maybe the new intent of Fearless Girl is for guys to come along and face-bang her as a symbol of female submissiveness and sexual slavery. Why should anyone else get a voice in its new role?
My view remains consistent.
The indignities foisted on the girl statue are not a big issue and the artist of the original bull has not got a valid point. Art is intended to provoke a reaction and you don’t get to dictate what the public response is, and should be, to the art you create.
Mission accomplished. 
The bull artist should put a statue of a flat screen television between the two of them and then the girl will just look petulant and pissed off that the bull is ignoring her to watch his shows. She can become a symbol of annoying kids who won’t leave you in peace.
Now I’m wondering if they ever arrange artwork in museums to create a unified message?
Like the Bull and fearless girl.
Something similar could be done by carefully selecting art from a large collection and displaying it together to create a message unintended by the actual artists.
The Degenerate Art Exhibition by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in 1937 would be the most extreme example.
But it also could be done in a positive way.
I knew that when I saw the first headline. What an ass… A Special Snowflake, that is.
Obligatory trivial aside - a portrayal of humping a minor crosses some lines.
Bigger picture -
It’s not an “excuse” at all. It is a simple statement of reality. An artist may intend their work to be interpreted as a particular “meaning” … maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, and maybe its meaning changes in another context of time or place and how it resonates with the needs of the viewing public. When Di Modica placed his statue there (yeah, without permissions) in 1989 it resonated with a mood of the time, cheerleading for a rebounding economy/market and expressing faith in capitalism and our financial systems. The times, they change.
Hey, Fearless Girl does not resonate with me. To me it is dumb. The Bull is to me a still a symbol of economic optimism, not of threat or male oppression or Trumpism, and I see the co-placement as very confused messaging. Heck the next scene I imagine with a girl “bravely” standing in front of a charging bull is pretty grisly! Pluck only takes you so far.
But the morph of Charging Bull’s meaning from the artist’s intent had begun *before *Fearless Girl. By the time of the Occupy movement the statue had already become re-interpreted by many to be a symbol of Wall Street’s unbridled greed and capitalism run amuck.
The Bull, with its large scrotum shiny from being rubbed by so many (yeah, not clear why bestiality does not cross the line as much as child porn does) becoming a further reinterpreted as a symbol of the boy’s club inside Wall Street’s board rooms and the current threat to women’s rights? Well that’s the message that apparently resonates with more right now.
Di Modica has choices. His sculpture is in fact just on loan to the city and still officially on “temporary exhibition.” It’s his property. He has offered to sell it before ($5 million minimum bid). And he’s made a lot of money trading on the fame of his famous statue. Subverting its message decreases the value of his copyright. He could place it elsewhere if someone was will to take it. And while $5 million he might not get, some collector would pay a significant penny to buy it outright with no strings attached.
IANAL and have no idea if the fact that Fearless Girl depends on the context with and proximity to Charging Bull for its meaning in fact infringes on his artistic copyright (which again, he still holds) but suing for Fearless Girl’s removal will not help recover the value of his copyright, even if he wins. It would instead cement its new meaning as a symbol of maleness being unwilling to share centrality with femaleness.
If I was him? I’d work with Kristen Visbal, the creator of Fearless Girl to bring his now dated work into today:
“Hey Kristen, I know the times have changed over these past 38 years and there is a need to reinterpret the message of my work for this new era. How about this? We together create something that takes the current installations and after your approved eleven months continue the story of your plucky girl and my now misunderstood bull by having your character charging forward with my bull into the future of inclusive economic strength? The message, is a good one, no? (And the marketing value for us both, is not bad, yes?)”
Suppose he makes another midnight run and flips the bull to face in the opposite direction. Now the girl is facing the bull’s rear end.
He treats objects like women, man.
I wonder why, with all the publicity that the photo received, no-one has recognized the man in the photo?
I have read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and one of the striking things about his thesis was just how lacking in anonymity we are today and how easy it is to be brought undone. Yet this sinner, as far as I can tell, remains simply " the guy who…"
Not sure that the story of: “The Fearless Girl stood up tThe Charging Bull who then turned tail and ran the other way” helps the value of his artistic copyright much …
Put a statue of a scary knife-wielding clown in front of the girl. Now she’s staring down the clown while the bull prepares to charge him in the ass – now they’re allies!