The Italian Wall Street bull
Everyone knows the Charging Bull sculpture that symbolizes the Wall Street district, but few perhaps know how that three and a half ton bull got there. This is the story of a symbol and of Arturo Di Modica, a boundless Sicilian.
Arebel, maybe. A provocateur, too. An artist, absolutely. Today he is 79 years old and, in his life, has collected stories and anecdotes of those who have always had something to say, with the tools that best allowed him to express himself. His name is Arturo Di Modica, a Sicilian from Vittoria, near Ragusa, and a naturalized American. His name appears under “sculptor” and his curriculum boasts one of the works that characterizes the city of New York. In the American metropolis full of symbols and iconic monuments that identify the city with its many faces, the Italian history of Arturo Di Modica is linked to that of the Big Apple through the famous Charging Bull, the Wall Street bull: three and a half tons of bronze for a sculpture that in 1989 placed its hoofs on the ground of the financial district, in the heart of
Wall Street.
Sicily has always been his homeland, but Arturo’s curiosity and temperament soon led him to open his eyes to the rest of the world and take journeys outside Italy’s borders which gave him inspiration to become an artist without limits. His first journey of discovery was to the Scuola Libera del Nudo “free school of the nude” at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, which gave him his identity as a dandy, eccentric and out-of-the-box artist, and then another journey to New York, the right place to live his life to the fullest and transform it. Arturo Di Modica falls perfectly into the part of the self-made man, the one who chases the stars and stripes mythos of the American dream. He does so in an atmosphere of artistic enthusiasm that reinvigorates his expressive dimension and makes the style that typifies him more and more personal, the direct son of that classically baroque Sicilian culture, as well as an extremely libertarian contemporary vision.
If there is one thing that has distinguished Di Modica, it is that he has always been far from pure market logic, rebelling against critics and being defined. His rejection to being labeled by art critics and ignored – Hilton Kramer a famous art critic di not to attend a show inside Fort Clinton in Battery Park – was born from his conviction that art must stay outside museums and galleries to meet the ordinary person. In 1976
The Wall Street Bull was the third - and finally successful - attempt by the artist to install his statues on the streets of New York without permission.
he decided to gather a large group of friends and acquaintances to distribute a considerable number of flyers describing the “artistic attack” he had just set up: placing Carrara marble sculptures in front of Rockfeller Center. Needless to say, the police wanted to arrest him, but the good-natured - and favourable intervention of the mayor cost him only a twenty dollar fine. Di Modica, after all, was no stranger to such initiatives: he had already attempted such an operation as soon as he arrived in New York, when he loaded his Ferrari with another of his sculptures representing a horse holding its tail in its mouth: it was a work dedicated to lovers which he left in front of Lincoln Center. Both actions were on the front page of the important newspapers. Arturo Di Modica was in town and was ready to make people talk about him. Guerrilla art had become his form of expression, a way to speak directly to his public, without the mediation of canonical places or preventive reviews; Di Modica’s art landed directly on the streets: the people who crowded them were the only ones to judge.
Ten years go by and America finds itself living one of its most difficult financial moments, where the stock market falls and rises repeatedly for months and the famous “Black Monday of 1987” started one of the worst economic crises in history. It was precisely after the collapse of Wall Street that Arturo Di Modica returned to the New York scene: on December 15 1989, the artist placed - in one of his classic night raids - a huge bronze bull in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Forging that imposing beast with its furious expression - a symbol of growth in the economic stock market - It cost Di Modica 350 thousand dollars and was intended to be the symbol of the upturn in financial markets after their violent decline, a tribute to the economic superpower. Arturo Di Modica ended up again in the newspapers and the police were forced to intervene and remove his creation. Due to public
“I tell people: the bull is not fighting; it represents a stronger economy and a better world for young people in the future.” Arturo Di Modica
demand, however, the indomitable bull reappeared after a few days in the Financial District, at Bowling Green Park, its final location which came about through an agreement between the head of New York public parks, the mayor at the time, Ed Koch, and the president of the Bowling Green Association, the Italian-american Arthur Piccolo. Today the power of the Charging Bull is one of the symbols of the city that never sleeps and of the strength of the American economy, which has risen by 919% since that day in December. Needless to wonder why people flock to the sculpture to perform the now famous ritual of touching the bull’s attributes, to attract some of the luck that raised the American coffers.
Certainly, that statue has extolled the name Arturo Di Modica among the most famous artists in the world, a recognition that earned him the Medal of Honour of Ellis Island, the one that is awarded to immigrants who have been able to honor the United States of America with some particular merit. This is the story of Arturo Di Modica, an out-of-the-ordinary Sicilian who has always replied “No, thanks!” to canonical art and who now dreams of creating for his hometown, Vittoria, his biggest project.