Arturo Di Modica: Charging Bull (1987-89)

  • Back to: HOME PAGE “It was Black Monday,” Arturo Di Modica says. “The crash of ’87. The big crash.” Only...

    Charging Bull, New York, Wall Street

    Edition of 5 + AP, Privately Owned

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    “It was Black Monday,” Arturo Di Modica says. “The crash of ’87. The big crash.” Only fifteen years earlier, the sculptor had arrived in New York without money or security. By the late 1980s, he was working from his own five-storey building on Crosby Street in SoHo — a central artery of the international art world — with collectors pursuing his work across the globe.

     

    America had given Di Modica opportunity and freedom. Now the country was shaken. Markets had collapsed, confidence had evaporated, and the atmosphere was one of shock. Di Modica felt a need to respond. He would give something back — not a statement, but a sculpture.

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  • 1987: Conceived in the wake of the Black Monday market crash

    "My point was to show people that if you want to do something in a moment things are very bad, you can do it."

     
    - Arturo Di Modica

    The subject was clear. His most successful recent works had been monumental horse sculptures, and the financial press was saturated with animal metaphors. The bull and the bear — symbols of rise and ruin embedded in economic language since the early eighteenth century — dominated the narrative. This was a catastrophic bear market, and Di Modica’s instinct was to push against it. “The bear has to go down, the bull has to go up,” he says. “I decided that I must do the bull.” He retreated into his Crosby Street studio. “I worked for two years. I didn’t stop,” he says. By the time the sculpture was completed and cast in bronze, he had spent $350,000 of his own money. When friends visited the studio and heard his plan — to install the work directly outside the New York Stock Exchange — they were alarmed.

  • 1987-89: Conceived in 54 Crosby St

    1987-89: Conceived in 54 Crosby St

    The NYSE was one of the most symbolically loaded sites in the city. It had last been targeted by a guerrilla art action in 1967, when Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Yippies showered traders with dollar bills from a visitors’ gallery, mocking capitalism itself. Di Modica’s intention was different, but the risks were obvious.

     

    “Everybody said don’t do it, don’t do it!” Di Modica recalled. “They will deport you to Italy. I said why will they deport me? I did this work for love. This is a bull I made for America, for the future.”

     

    Over several nights, Di Modica and a small group of friends surveyed the area in front of the Stock Exchange. They carefully observed the security patrols and calculated that they would have just four and a half minutes to complete the installation. Di Modica chose the exact roadside position himself.

  • 15 December 1989

    15 December 1989

    “A lot of people came by in the evening before I dropped it,” he says. In the early hours of the morning, Di Modica and his companions loaded the Charging Bull onto a flatbed truck and drove downtown. On arrival, they discovered that a Christmas tree had been erected precisely on their chosen spot. The solution was immediate. The bull would become the city’s Christmas gift.
     
    They unloaded the sculpture and positioned it beneath the tree. It was 1:30 a.m. on Friday, 14 December 1989. When asked what he expected to happen next — after devoting two years of his life and an enormous personal sum — Di Modica was clear. “I wasn’t thinking about getting back money,” he said. “If I was waiting for money from other people, it would never have happened. It happened because I struggled to put the money together to keep it going for two years. My point was to show people that if you want to do something in a moment when things are very bad, you can do it. Without help from anybody. You can do it by yourself. My point was that you must be strong.”

  • “I said if they are going to arrest me? I will get out. And I will take the bull and put it another place."

     

    Arturo Di Modica

    He did not leave the scene. “No. I stayed there all night. On the site.” Later that morning, the New York Daily News reported the sudden appearance of a giant bronze bull outside the Stock Exchange. Arthur Piccolo, a historian of downtown New York who worked closely with the city parks department, read the article on his way to work. Passing the sculpture shortly afterwards, he immediately recognised its impact.
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    “It was particularly well placed because there was a bit of an incline which gave it even more emphasis,” he says. “And at seven, seven thirty in the morning there were hundreds of people and there was a load of media out there.” As the day progressed, the story gained momentum. “I went back again and again during the day and the story was developing,” Piccolo says. “The word was getting out that the New York Stock Exchange were clamoring for the city to remove the Bull. Apparently the city said we don’t have the equipment to do this. We’re not going to do anything at this point.”
     
    Piccolo soon became one of the voices urging that the sculpture remain. The Stock Exchange disagreed. “They got in a truck and they moved the Bull,” Di Modica says. “I wasn’t there. I was at lunch. Now I didn’t know where was the Bull.” Piccolo called Di Modica shortly afterwards. “Arturo picks up the phone,” Piccolo says. “He says I’m so distraught! I can’t get out of bed. They took away my Bull!”
     
    Piccolo had an alternative in mind. Bowling Green — a small park at the southern tip of Broadway, just below Wall Street — offered a more fitting and permanent location. “I said, well, Mr Di Modica I have an idea for you. I think there’s a much better place for your bull. And that spot is down here in Bowling Green.”
     
    They drove there together. The location was perfect. Approval followed from the parks commissioner and Mayor Ed Koch. On Monday morning, Di Modica recovered the sculpture from police storage in Queens. “It was at the Police Storage in Queens,” he says. “So I went there. I picked it up, I paid the fine. They wanted me to pay for the truck that they used to move it. So I paid it.”
     
    The Charging Bull arrived at Bowling Green on the morning of 20 December. Di Modica remained wary. “I said if they are going to arrest me? I will get out. And I will take the bull and put it another place. This is a bull I made for the American people, for the young people, for the future, for a better America.” No such conflict followed. The sculpture was welcomed.
    “I still remember the Bull coming down Broadway on a truck as clearly as if it was yesterday,” Piccolo says. “There was a ceremony. And it became an instant hit. The crowds of people coming started that very first day. And every day since. The crowds kept coming and coming and coming.”
     
    Today, the Charging Bull is New York’s most visited single-site attraction. “I always make the comparison with the Statue of Liberty,” Piccolo says. “People say are you kidding? I’m not kidding at all. More people come to see the Bull than take the boat over to the Statue of Liberty. It’s not even an argument!”
     
    From a defiant, nocturnal intervention, the Charging Bull has entered the world’s shared visual language. Recognisable even to those who have never entered a museum, it stands alongside works such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Munch’s The Scream. Artists have responded in turn — from Peter Beard’s photographs to Olek’s crocheted transformation. “It really has become a national monument,” Di Modica says. And that was something he took seriously.

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