Musings on a Touchy Bull Sculptor

When I read that the sculptor of Manhattan's 'Charging Bull' statue had complained about the continued presence in its line of sight of the 'Fearless Girl', I felt zero sympathy, but his whining did at least spur me to contemplate the meanings, intentional and unintentional, of the two works.

Once an artwork is made, its interpretation is out of the artist's hands. Many consumers of art, myself included, like to take the artist's intent into account when interpreting the work, as well as the historic context in which it was made, but people are also quite capable of looking at, say, a painting by Kandinsky without knowing the name of the artist or the date when he painted it and nevertheless coming to some quite definite conclusions.

When a work of art is created explicitly as a reaction to events in the real world and displayed prominently in a public place visited by millions of tourists yearly, it must be even more obvious to the artist and everyone else that its meaning is liable to change over time, and not just because another sculpture is put in front of it.

The creator of the 'Charging Bull', Arturo Di Modica, doesn't seem to get this.

His bull statue arrived in Bowling Green, near Wall Street, in 1989, a couple of years after the second of two major stock market crashes that occurred during that decade.

At the time, the artist said it represented the "strength and power of the American people." He now thinks it means "freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love." Either way, it brings his capacity to interpret his own work into question. Wikipedia does a much better job by describing it simply as a "symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity".

It is reminiscent of the bronze statue of a bull fighting a bear that once stood outside the New York Stock Exchange Luncheon Club, but with the bear removed, neatly reflecting the delusions of the 1980s financiers that made the rapid cycle of boom and bust inevitable in the first place.

Garish ties, red suspenders, cocaine, testosterone and greed mix to make a potent cocktail of masculinity that is best represented by that rampant bull, perhaps the most male of animal images.

The bull gives form to the intoxicating idea that as long as stocks and champagne are bubbly, bonuses and crude oil are flowing freely and that some guy, somewhere, is making boatloads of cash, all is well with the world.

The girl statue, which has stood in brazen opposition to the bull since 7 March and has struck a chord with the public, has now annoyed Di Modica to the point of arranging a news conference to complain publicly and threaten legal action. Perhaps he is worried that his bull will become associated with chauvinism (unaware that it already is) and that his reputation will be tarnished.

It seems unlikely, however, that State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based asset management firm that commissioned Kristen Visbal to produce the 'Fearless Girl', intended to subvert the bull's basic message that capitalism is essentially good.

No, it was transparently a paid-for stunt to draw positive publicity to the firm in time for International Women's Day, the high class equivalent of a British paper cup manufacturer attempting to cash in on a #RoyalBaby hashtag with a marketing tweet.

But just as Di Modica can no longer control what his rutting bull symbolizes, neither can State Street dictate the precise meaning of the defiant girl.