Charging Bull sculptor says New York's Fearless Girl statue violates his rights
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> Di Modica called the statue an “advertising trick”
A mite ironic, seeing as "Charging Bull" was initially an advertising trick installed without the city's permission...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_Bull#History
That said, I am a tiny bit sympathetic to the Charging Bull artist who had the stated meaning of his art subverted a bit - I get it, you didn't mean it as a "male power!" thing and it sucks to have your work treated that way.
At the same time though, I do feel that this sort of subversion is important artistically, and allowing copyright to stifle it would be unfortunate. Furthermore, I can't help but feel that the idea that you could be able to control the context of an artistic work (not the art itself, but the environment around it) with copyright a little silly, especially for art as public and symbolic as "Charging Bull". All-in-all, an interesting case.
However it goes, I hope it doesn't involve one side or the other saying the other had no business even having their opinion on the matter.
Both artists seem to have had positive intents, yet the two together are incompatible with the first artist's intent. While satire typically allows both works to exist in their original contexts, the Charging Bull becomes a menace here, no longer able to be interpreted as a symbol of economic optimism.
The Fearless Girl has value, too, but it is not without critics either, so there is at least a valid discussion to be had.
I'm all for discussion, but from what little information we have to go on, it appears the bull's sculptor is seeking to stifle discussion and simply have the girl removed despite a valid permit and public interest.
That's what I take issue with; he doesn't get to dictate what is placed on a public street any more than the girl's sculptor does (which she isn't).
I mean, if someone added a 'Camera' statue to the mix that looked up the girl's skirt, that could be a valid statement about something (objectification of women, for example). But we'd be outraged about the change of the meaning to 'Fearless Girl' - and so I think it's at least interesting to talk about the change in the meaning of 'Charging Bull'.
Personally I've never liked Charging Bull as an artwork - tis' too propagandistic for my taste, and I think the creator half-assed it by not exploring the equally powerful concept of an angry bear - and then we wonder why people on Wall Street profess surprise and helplessness in times of recession.
I think it's an interesting modification to the work to confront the bull with a human female; not only does it finally balance the work, but by choosing an oppositional figure whose identity is rooted in self-awareness rather than atavistic force, it refutes the abdication of moral agency that underpins the business culture of Wall Street. Assuming it's not destroyed by vandals, the new work has the potential for historical significance.
"financial resilience" becomes "confronting women"? wow.
I prefer learning from observations rather than being subjected to ideological propaganda. One respects the sovereignty of my conscience, the other does not.
Art does have a great impact on everyone's conscience, this is what makes it poignant. But there is good art and bad art, and in my book, ideological art is always bad since it veers your mind towards ideologies, towards a self-imprisonment of the mind, towards a false sense of consciousness, etc.
Not women, cute little girls with cross looks on their faces.
Presumably State Street (creator of the thing) thinks full-grown women are less sympathetic, or the image of full-grown women confronting bulls hits a little too close to home with regard to their corporate culture, or something.
It's less about environment and more about the fact that Fearless Girl would not make any sense without Charging Bull.
Whether the artist has a right to prevent derivative works, whether this counts, and whether the city was within its rights is what's up for dispute.
Reminds me of this case. The movie made a reference to a sculpture, but made it appear demonic instead of the intended angelic effect.
The author of the work sued and won a settlement, having the scene be cut for video sales.
It is the artistic equivalent of putting a mustache sculpture in front of the Mona Lisa.
So a swastika on a war memorial is also "art"?
I know it's not the same thing. But "the Mona Lisa with a mustache" is a work of art.
But I kind of agree with the artist. For some, the space where the artistic object is exposed is as important as the object itself. I can see that the statue of the girl changes the whole space and the bull statue.
I think this could be prevented if they would talk to Di Modica about the new status.
I think having the Bull turned 90 or 180 degrees would be hilarious.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/bull-sculptor-fearless...
Copied, modified and spread, until it supercedes the original meme
And then you have the original meme's creator complaining about his meme was stolen
You'd tell him to shut up, its the natural existence of a meme, to be subsumed and regurgitated in new fashion
That's how I see this, anyways. Art should be modifiable in this way; though I don't have an opinion on the ownership of the case, but it seems to me (based on charging bull's wiki) that Modica is overly defensive about his meme in any context (possibly purely for licensing's sake), and fearless girl clearly kills any value Modica has in charging bull
In spirit I think fearless girl is fine; in practice, its pretty messy.
That said, once an artist lets their work go into the public, how that piece is displayed, reflected, or even understood is no longer under their control.
How many authors find their books published, only for the reading public to find an interpretation of their written word different than intended?
When an artist's painting is hung or displayed in a museum, does the artist control the how's and why's of their piece's display? No...
Unless I'm missing something here, and the artist can claim copyright to the sidewalk, this is some next level bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_v_Eaton_Centre_Ltd
That said, I can't speak to how US law will see it, or how the law works in regards to adjacent art installations.
Moreover, it's important to note that the federal copyright exceptions regarding satire and other forms of commentary, even though some of them are also reflected in statutory fair use, are of constitutional dimension, and would therefore similarly limit application of any state-law restriction on a new work as they do federal copyright law.
This approach seem pretty strange to those used to the American system of copyright law and U.S. law does not fully recognize them. But, being Italian, this framework is probably informing the artist's views here.
Here is a brief write-up: https://cyber.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html
> Authors may seek moral rights protection from state moral rights laws and art preservation statutes in California and New York, whose provisions resemble those of VARA.
> VARA grants two rights to authors of visual works: the right of attribution, and the right of integrity.
I'll keep VARA in mind, looks like he could use both the federal VARA law and the state's
The boundary of a work is very important artistically, and there are all sorts of explicit and implicit conceptual assertions made by how it shapes the rest of the work. Di Modica chose not create an explicit border around the statue, not least because to do so might have changed its meaning - a ring, for example, would suggest that the bull should be confined, where his intention was to celebrate its vitality and strength. Where, then, is the boundary of a sculpture? At what point does something impinge upon it?
I suggest that the fair boundary of a free-standing sculpture is that distance from it which allows a human viewer to apprehend the work as a whole. The point of an art work is to create a unique sense impression in a person who encounters it, and size is a quality independent of individual sensory channels, but measured in relation to ourselves. In this case I feel that the distance around Charging Bull from which people can view the whole thing in unimpaired in any significant way.
People who feel the space around the sculpture has become a part of the work are equating the semantic content that the work presents with the work itself. The sense of power and motion in Di Modica's sculpture touches our instincts about how much space to give it. But those distances are personal, and exist in our psychic space rather than in real space. In real space, the only kind of distance over which one can speak of damaging an art work is by impairing the ability to view it in full. How people feel about Charging Bull is a personal matter, but it's misleading to conflate the experience of contemplating it from a given spatial point with the content of the work itself. We have become used to thinking of the sculpture as dominating the space around it, but the space is no more part of the work than the Louvre is part of the Mona Lisa.
Maybe Di Modica should be more sour that the fallibility of the market, and the cultural realisation of gender bias, has changed the meaning of his work. Or Instagram and the many people polishing it's balls.
A better solution might be to add a third statue changing the meaning of the girl to be negative.