| I wonder how people would feel if somebody made a huge painting with some modern brightly colorful composition and a cutout rectangle in it and the Louvre Museum put the Mona Lisa in the cutout rectangle to symbolize the abandon of old canons for the new. ...First the Mona Lisa's beauty would be diluted then its meaning - the art in it - would be destroyed (not irreparably, you could always take the Mona Lisa out again and put it where it deserves to be - on its own, in the context it deserves). I love the fearless girl. But the Charging Bull shows the energy of progress, of the economy, of ambition, of growth. Not something I would want anyone to stop. The advance of the bull's charge means we are all better off, means our children will be better off than we are. It means progress. ...If anything the girl should be riding the bull, pointing her finger forward! Yes a little girl can ride and drive the progress, can lead the charge of progress! ...but she should not be there to stop it.
They could have bought an old nazi tank and put her in front of it, and the Fearless Girl would have had exactly the same meaning. Let the Fearless Girl tell her message.
Let the Charging Bull tell its message |
Yes, and if that's a lie, the Girl takes on more significance. The moral argument for not diluting the Bull message rests on whether its location and attitude represents its known intentions. If this is instead a mistake or a lie, that message is best disrupted. And that's absolutely a political argument, not an artistic argument, but all the same it IS a significant public argument that's increasingly mainstream.
If we're not better off and our children will be poorer and more desperate than we are, then this Bull is not progress and some form of counter-argument needs to be made. And you can defend the Bull's right to be its own statement (not actually challenged by the Girl) but this doesn't extend to legislating that the Bull's statement must go unchallenged. Even by index funds, selling something ;)