Readers may remember Fearless Girl, the 50-inch-tall bronze statue of an intrepid young girl, placed in front of the famous Charging Bull sculpture in Lower Manhattan. The girl, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced, will be moved to a new location nearby—in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
The reason cited for the move is safety. Too many pedestrians are skipping across busy Broadway to have pictures taken with the girl. The bull may in time be removed to the Stock Exchange location as well, which is incidentally where its sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, originally deposited his work under cover of night in 1989.
Di Modica has never been happy with the girl bravely facing his bull. He points out, with some justification in our view, that what is supposed to be a symbol of optimism has been turned into a savage beast on the verge of mauling a child. His attorney is demanding that the city leave the bull where it is: “The message to Mayor de Blasio is that you have no right to unilaterally move the bull,” he said. “They don’t own the statue.”
De Blasio’s office, however, wants the girl to continue facing the beast. “The mayor felt it was important that the ‘Fearless Girl’ be in a position to stand up to the bull and what it stands for,” the mayor’s press secretary told the New York Times. “That’s why we’re aiming to keep them together. The bull has also always been a traffic and safety issue the city’s hemmed and hawed over. The moves achieve a few goals.”
So we want the girl to “stand up to the bull and what it stands for”? Remind us—what sort of things does the bull stand for that must be stood up to? And by forcing the girl to “be in a position to stand up to the bull,” are we not guilty of some form of retrograde patriarchalism? Has she no meaning apart from the bull?
What happy times these must be, when the political leaders of our greatest city have the time and resources to quarrel over such abstruse questions, and fancy themselves postmodern art critics.
