The raging bull
Angry sculptor: 'Fearless Girl' has got to go
The artist who sculpted Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” is seeing red over the statue of the defiant girl placed in his snorting beast’s path — and hopes the city decides to cart her away. The bull is art, Arturo Di Modica said of his bronze behemoth. The girl is, well, bull.
“That is not a symbol! That’s an advertising trick,” the 76-year-old Sicilian immigrant told The Post in an interview from his Church Street studio.
To Di Modica, the 50-inch girl is almost a form of vandalism of his work, recasting his bull as a villain.
The foundry that cast “Fearless Girl” admits the sculpture — based on artist Kristen Visbal’s design — was always meant to disrupt the bull.
“If I had made [“Charging Bull”], I’d be upset, too,” New Arts Foundry owner Gary Siegel told The Post about Di Modica’s reaction.
“Fearless Girl” was commissioned as a publicity stunt tied to International Women’s Day by State Street Global Advisors, a Boston-based investment company that manages some $2.5 trillion in assets. The firm said the girl is intended to promote its campaign urging “gender diversity in corporate leadership roles.”
Di Modica said there’s nothing wrong with promoting women.
“Women, girls, that’s great, but that’s not what [“Fearless Girl”] is,” he said, clutching his heart.
He said he is urging women’srights groups and politicians to think twice about letting it stay beyond its permit, which expires April 2.
Di Modica cast his bull as a gift to the city following the 1987 stockmarket crash, believing the 7,100pound symbol of strength would be an antidote to New York’s flaccid economy. He spent $350,000 of his own money and then dropped the bull right in front of the New York Stock Exchange (without permission) in December 1989.
Tourists now love to rub its snout, horns and testicles for good luck — and the work is considered to be New York’s second most-popular sculptural attraction, after the Statue of Liberty.
“I put it there for art,” Di Modica said. “My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.”