'Fearless Girl' gets dissed by 'Pissing Pug'

An annoyed artist decided to do to “Fearless Girl” what “Fearless Girl” did to Wall Street’s famed statue Charging Bull, i.e. recontextualize it in a way that diminishes it without the artist’s permission. Not surprisingly, some people are upset at this disrespectful treatment of their favorite statue.

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Sculptor Alex Gardega created a small sculpture he calls “Pissing Pug” and placed it next to Fearless Girl so that it appears the dog statue is urinating on the girl’s shoe. From the NY Post:

“This is corporate nonsense,” Gardega told The Post of “Fearless Girl,” saying it was put opposite artist Arturo Di Modica’s famed bull as a publicity stunt by a Boston-based financial firm.

“It has nothing to do with feminism, and it is disrespect to the artist that made the bull,” he said. “That bull had integrity.”…

“That’s an a–hole move. You call this art?” said one woman, who kicked the dog statue as she walked by.

This unnamed woman who was outraged by the addition of the pug seems to have totally missed the point. And she wasn’t alone. Gardega told Gothamist he decided to remove his statue, which is made out of paper mache and spray paint, after seeing several people react angrily to it:

“There were a few people who got really upset by it,” Gardega said. “A few people kicked it. One girl tried to throw it. I made the decision to take it away. I still have it. I’m fixing its broken leg right now.”

“I wanted it to be, like, punk rock lo-fi as a statement,” he added. As for Fearless Girl’s proximity to the Charging Bull, “It’s kind of like sticking something in front of Michelangelo’s David.”

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There was also some outrage on Twitter:

Back in April I wrote about the sculptor of Charging Bull, Arturo Di Modica, who complained that the addition of the girl had changed the meaning of his work into something he never intended. Slate’s Christina Cauterucci summarized it this way:

Before Fearless Girl came on the scene, the bull was an encouraging representation of a booming economy. Now, charging toward a tiny human, it’s a stand-in for the gendered forces that work against women’s success in the workplace. This isn’t the same kind of contextual shift that might result from a curator’s juxtaposition of two works; the girl is derivative. Di Modica meant his bull to stand alone—now, it’s as if Visbal and New York City have made a solo piece a diptych without his consent.

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Fearless Girl isn’t competition with Charging Bull, that would imply it could stand on its own. In fact, Fearless Girl is weak and entirely dependent on another piece of art it has co-opted, not unlike “Pissing Pug.”

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