The artist who sculpted Wall Street’s iconic “Charging Bull” is seeing red over the statue of the defiant girl placed in his snorting beast’s path — and says she should be carted away immediately.
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 said, clutching his heart.
“Fearless Girl” was in fact commissioned as a publicity stunt tied to International Women’s Day by State Street Global Advisors, a Boston-based investment company which manages some $2.5 trillion in assets. The firm says the girl is intended to promote its campaign urging “greater gender diversity on corporate boards.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Di Modica said. “Women, girls, that’s great, but that’s not what that (sculpture) is,” he said in an interview from his Church Street art studio.
The foundry that cast “Fearless Girl” Monday said the sculpture — based on artist Kristen Visbal’s design — was specifically 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.
State Street and Visbal did not return calls seeking comment.
Di Modica cast the bull as a gift to the city following the 1987 stock-market crash, believing the 7,100-pound symbol of virility would be an antidote to New York’s flaccid, Low-T economy. He spent $350,000 of his own cash and then dropped the bull right in front of the New York Stock Exchange (without permission) in December 1989.
After first hauling the bull off to Queens, the city allowed the bull to move to its current location — tourists now love to rub the nose, horns and testicles for good luck — and the work is considered New York’s second-most popular sculptural attraction after the Statue of Liberty.
“I put it there for art,” he explained. “My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.” And one can even argue it worked: The sculpture did awaken the market’s “animal spirits,” at least judging by the generally bullish run in the years since its arrival.
Di Modica has, of course, also profited from licensing the work, to which he owns the copyright. But, he says, it’s unfair to compare his guerrilla stunt to State Street’s corporate marketing effort.
Marketing ploy or not, “Fearless Girl,” created by Delaware artist Kristen Visbal, has been almost universally hailed by New Yorkers and people around the world since it was installed March 8. But to Di Modica, the 50-inch girl is almost a form of vandalism of his work, recasting his bull as a villain, an oppressor. It would be as though someone put an AR-15 rifle in the hands of Michelangelo’s David.
He urged women’s right groups and politicians not to be blinded by blatant marketing attempts and said City Hall should think carefully before allowing the sculpture to stay beyond its temporary permit, which expires April 2.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has not commented on plans to extend the permit.
People should not have championed the girl as a symbol of female empowerment, Di Modica said. “They made a mistake.”
This was a joint report by the New York Post and MarketWatch.