Arturo Di Modica

Birth of the Bull

By Anthony Haden Guest (Published 2021)

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

- Arturo Di Modica

The Charging Bull was born in an ugly storm. “It was Black Monday,” Arturo Di Modica says. “The crash of ‘87. The big crash.” This was only a decade and a half after the young sculptor’s penniless arrival in New York, but now he was working out of his own five floor building on Crosby Street, SoHo, a crucial hub in the global art world, and had a network of collectors all around the world. So America had been good to Arturo Di Modica but America was now in shock and reeling. He felt he had to repay. How? No problem. He would make an artwork for the city.

So what would he make? Again, no problem. Di Modica’s most effective and popular pieces had been the two recent horse sculptures and it so happened that two other animals that carry a potent symbolic charge were constantly being referenced in the on-going financial story: the bull and the bear. The animals have been used as emblems of monetary triumph and disaster since the beginning of the 18th century. This, of course, was a bear market from hell which propelled the obstinate Sicilian into the reverse direction. “The bear has to go down, the bull has to go up,” he says. “I decided that I must do the bull.”
New York
1987-89
Into his Crosby Street studio Di Modica plunged. “I worked for two years. I didn’t stop,” he says. He had expended $350,000 on the project by the time Charging Bull was done and cast in bronze and he told friends who came by for a look that he was going to drop the sculpture outside the New York Stock Exchange. They were aghast. The NYSE is one of the city’s most resonant sites, last targeted by a guerrilla art action when Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Yippies showered traders with dollar bills from a visitors’ deck on 24th August 1967. The Yippies had been cocking a snook at capitalism. “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.”

Di Modica and a posse of friends scouted the area in front of the New York Stock Exchange over several nights. They timed the night rounds of the security, finding that they would have just four and a half minutes to make the drop, and Di Modica selected a precise roadside location. “A lot of people came by in the evening before I dropped it,” he says. In the middle of the night, Di Modica and some friends loaded Charging Bull onto a flatbed truck and drove to the site. Oops! The New York Stock Exchange had put up a Christmas tree precisely on their chosen spot.
Wall Street, New York
15th December 1989
Simple. Di Modica’s had planned to make the Bull a Christmas present to the city anyway. They offloaded the Bull and put it under the tree. It was one thirty in the morning of Friday, 14th December 1989. “You dropped off an artwork you had spent two years of your life and a lot of your money on,” I said. “What did you think was going to happen?” “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.” Had he made a getaway after the drop? “No. I stayed there all night. On the site.”

That day a story about the mysterious apparition of a giant bull emerged in the New York Daily News. Arthur Piccolo, who is a specialist on the history of Downtown New York and who works closely with the city parks, read the story on his way to his office. This is close to the Stock Exchange, so he shortly passed the Charging Bull itself. “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. I went back again and again during the day and the story was developing. 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 was soon one of the voices urging the NYSE to let the Bull remain where it was. Richard Grasso, the Stock Exchange voice on all matters Bull-connected, wasn’t interested. “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.” Then Piccolo telephoned. One of the parks in which he has an interest is Bowling Green, which is in the financial district, right at the bottom of Wall Street. “Arturo picks up the phone,” says Piccolo, “He says I’m so distraught! I can’t get out of bed. They took away my Bull!”

“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.” Di Modica drove him down to Bowling Green. Perfect. They chose the location where the Bull is right now. Piccolo got an okay from the parks commissioner and an okay from the mayor, Ed Koch. Di Modica contacted the Stock Exchange on Monday morning. “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.”
"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.”

Charging Bull reached its new terrain on the morning of 20th December. Di Modica’s experience with the Stock Exchange had made him sensitive. “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.” There were no such problems. The Bull was welcome. “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.