A Bull, A Fearless Girl, Art and Respect

Popular culture partisans have been trading somewhat predictable arguments about the retention of the statue of a Fearless Girl that faces  down the Wall Street bull in a small plaza in New York's financial district. The Charging Bull was created by Arthur Di Modica in the late 1980s, and was placed originally in front of the New York Stock Exchange, but it was moved to a tight little park or plaza nearby.

Early in March 2017 a "fearless girl" statue appeared in the plaza facing the bull. The girl statue by Kristen Visbal was commissioned by a Boston financial firm. It has been given a year's lease on the plaza. Di Modica says he'll sue. Female comment predictably wants to make the installation permanent.

It would be easy to pick sides in this. I think I'm in a male minority. I like the bull statue and experienced it by accident a decade or so ago. We were walking around the financial district on a sight-seeing Sunday, the only day you can get around down there leisurely. We turned the corner and suddenly confronted this enormous bull in charge mode. It was very powerful. I don't know if the location now is the same tiny, forever-shadowed plaza it dominated when we encountered it.

At first one catches a glimpse of part of it, and in walking further around corners, the whole enormous beast comes into view. It is dynamic, powerful, and awe-inducing. It weighs 7000 lbs.

What does it mean? It's placement as I saw it was so incongruous and unexpected, lurking and dominating. I interpreted it as a symbol of the dynamic power and dominance of markets, the focus of nearby firms. As such, I thought it was an intriguing and artful abstraction. But it wasn't so purposeful in its origins. Di Modica had to push for its installation, where it was, for a time, near the NYSE. The Times notes that it was self-commissioned by the artist. The financial district has little interest beyond its own functional activity, and largely comprises its own audience. Public relations through artwork is unimportant.

The "Fearless Girl" was installed in March 2017 facing the bull. The girl was commissioned by a Boston financial firm and stands just over 4' tall. It was not designed specifically for the installation, where she appears to be defiantly facing down the bull, and was intended to promote workplace gender diversity.

Social media have some pretty strident positions on the statue. The easy interpretation is a celebration of the power of women in the market. The comment streams turn themselves inside-out on issues of power, authority, and gender in general. Some feminists find the Fearless Girl statue "infantilizing," and focuses too much on the personal power of women and not on the structural forces of feminism. (While nothing escapes critique, that just sounds like a refusal of any accommodation.)

One thing is certain. Many women find the installation to be very powerful and want it to be permanent. Fair enough, but I'm with the bull's artist Di Modica, who is going to court to restrict the installation of Fearless Girl. Whatever his intention of meaning in the bull, and the meaning one acquires in contemplation, it is changed and shaped - and perhaps trivialized by the Fearless Girl. As for the Girl, its meaning, too, is shaped by the bull. It makes the defiant attitude specific and targeted, not a profound stance to the world, which I think should be more meaningful.

In museums, great works are juxtaposed to enhance and deepen their meaning and appreciation. Usually this is exhibition-based placement, and the works will be re-positioned over time. The placement of Fearless Girl speaks to the times we are in, but it does also overlay and narrow the meaning of both pieces, in my view. It should not be permanent.


Arthur L. Dirks