"“I’m a pretty happy person, not seething or angry and certainly not anti-feminist.”
Hmm.
Please tell me that the idiot in the article’s video (Matt Lauer?) doesn’t actually think “the artist of Mona Lisa …” would be able to complain about a piece next to it. As far as Di Modica feeling his rights are being violated somehow, I’m assuming he missed the bit about where he’s supposed to be a guerrilla artist?
You know what? I’m sorry this has been taken down, because it should keep going. I want someone to add a caricature of a Nazi sculpting the dog. I want a copy of The Thinker with a thought bubble reading “Whoever made this is stupid”, then another statue with a shirt that reads “No YOU’RE a stupid!” I want an Abraham Lincoln facepalming at them all, and a Richard Nixon giving him rabbit ears, and a crying Statue of Liberty, and a grave labeled REAL ART. I want this park to become a gallery crowded with the most petty, jejune statuary the planet has ever imagined.
Come on, Americans. Wall Street deserves no less.
That would be epic. Let’s send out the Banksy signal!
Absolutely!
“Di Modica finished “Charging Bull” after the 1987 stock market collapse, and placed it in front of the New York Stock Exchange as a symbol of American resilience.”
So he picked one of the most common symbols of the stock market, built a conventional, aggressive take on it that the traders would love to bits and placed it in front of the NYSE?
That’s a straightforward symbol of aggressive banking and finance, not “American resilience”. It could only have been more a sucking-up-to-the-financiers gesture if it was a golden parachute.
And in truth, enough ordinary Americans apparently also saw it as a symbol of aggressive finance, otherwise the ‘joke’ of the defiant girl wouldn’t be so popular - If the bull was truly seen as “a symbol of American resilience”, that addition of the girl would have fallen flat and been seen as in bad taste, attacking a tribute to decent Americans, or worse.
Instead, it’s the maker of the pissing dog that (let’s remember) is attempting to mock the response to the bull, who withdrew his sculpture after six hours, because he was afraid his comment on the girl statue would get vandalised/removed.
Because the bull is a symbol of the financiers that bright the house down, despite being a ‘guerilla’, er, bronze cast statue and the response caught the gestalt of public mood better, despite being a commissioned artifact.
(Whew - end-of-rant! I finally articulated what annoyed me about the whole ‘defiling mah bull!’ argument. 
)
I know I’ve just posted a mega-rant, but whatever’s left of Occupy could gain a ton of promotion by implementing this wholesale during the night. 
(Also, nicely said there.)
Wow, I had no idea the defiant girl was a bloody ad.
But yeah, the bull is a pissweak critique. Should’ve been a revoltingly obese pig dressed like the Monopoly man.
Waiting for Godot has certainly brought joy into the lives of children everywhere.
The monopoly man would have been the perfect statue!
Yeah, I just assumed that was damning-with-faint-praise (“Oh, the kiddies like it”)
(Or could even have been a ‘Wah! It was only more popular because of the tastes of children.’ - which is either odd, or insulting.
Has anybody noticed the unwanted Terry Pratchett reference?
In this case I’m inclined to write:
Pretentious artist supports entitled artist. As far as I’m concerned they can both [complicated pictogram] themselves [urinating dog, urinating dog].
[spoiler]Cf. Interesting Times: “The innkeeper said the City had demanded tax but he did not intend to pay…[complicated pictogram] them all except one and he can [complicated pictogram] himself” [urinating dog,urinating dog].
In Agatean script, [urinating dog] is an exclamation mark.[/spoiler]
Yeah, he seems disproportionally angry, as though this is the first time in history that one work of art has commented on another, and that it’s somehow especially egregious that a symbol of aggressive finance would be picked on by an aggressive financial institution for its own gasp financial gain. I get the image of Di Modica quietly weeping like a princess, and gallant Gardega vowing to restore his honor in the most clever and tasteful way he knows how.
“HERE! 'YE SEE! I CAN COMMENT ON ART, TOO!!! YER ART SUX! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?!?”
And isn’t this a bit of a stretch?
I know when I think of a bull, I think of resilience; an animal who suffers many hardships, and yet somehow manages to persevere with only its lumbering size, powerful muscles, massive horns, and aggressive temperament.
A lot of guerillas seem indeed to be over-entitled rich kids who think the world isn’t nice enough to them (Guevara, bin Laden immediately spring to mind.)