On the Charging Bull-Fearless Girl-Pissing Pug Controversy 3: The Pissing Pug

Alex Gardega, Fearless Girl and Pissing Pug

Photo: Gabriella Bass / New York Post 

Added text by Perez Hilton

It's not often that one finds oneself in agreement with Perez Hilton, but, with reference to the case of Alex Gardega and his Pissing Pug (aka Sketchy Dog), I pretty much share his view that being an artist doesn't always prevent one from behaving like an ass.

For if Arturo Di Modica has some right to irritation with the Fearless Girl deflecting attention from his Charging Bull and playfully seducing its potency, he's nevertheless an old man who subscribes to a long-dead tradition of aesthetic idealism and doesn't understand how times have changed, art moved on, and determining public narrative and perception no longer the preserve of a few privileged males. 

Gardega, however, has no excuse for his asinine, misogynistic and self-publicising stunt. In the end, Pissing Dog doesn't degrade or bring shame upon the Fearless Girl, but upon its owner. He didn't even have the courage or decency to leave the dog in place - worried, apparently, that some passer-by might walk off with it, or that it would be impounded by the authorities. So, after just a few hours and a few photos - and after some people gave it a kick up the arse - he removed the pooch and took it home with its tail between its legs.

The whole thing stinks of male entitlement and resentment, as Perez says: "And to have a dog pissing on a little girl that has become such a symbol of strength and poise is especially heinous. It's like Alex Gardega is essentially taking a piss on women. Stay classy, guy!"

See: Perez Hilton, 'Fragile Man-Baby Places Pissing Dog Sculpture Next To The Empowering Fearless Girl Statue in Manhattan', posted on perezhilton.com (May 30, 2017) - click here.

Click here to read part one of this post: The Charging Bull. 

Click here to read part two of this post: The Fearless Girl.

On the Charging Bull-Fearless Girl-Pissing Pug Controversy 1: The Charging Bull

Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull (1989) - also known as the Wall Street Bull - is a three-and-a-half ton bronze sculpture located in the Financial District of Manhattan. Originally a piece of guerrilla art (i.e., one installed without official permission), its huge popularity with New Yorkers and tourists alike led to it becoming a permanent feature. 

The larger-than-life piece - standing 11 ft in height and 16 ft in length - is said by the artist to affirm the optimism and can-do spirit of America. But I think it fair to say that its muscular dynamism has roots in a fascist aesthetic; the hard, dark-looking metal from which the sculpture is made only reinforcing its aggressive character. As do the prominently displayed testicles, that have been shined to gleaming perfection by visitors who rub them for luck.        

Unsurprisingly, the Charging Bull has often been subject to criticism from anti-capitalist protesters and various women's groups; the former see it as a symbol of corporate greed, the latter argue that it publicly endorses a threatening model of hypermasculinity. The work has also been condemned by interfaith religious leaders who regard it as a piece of neo-pagan idolatry (comparing it to the golden calf worshipped by the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt).  

Despite such criticisms, the Wall St. Bull has stood its ground and secured its place in the popular cultural imagination, successfully seeing off all challenges to its presence and its power. But then along came a Fearless Girl ...

Click here to read part two of this post: The Fearless Girl.
 

Click here to read part three of this post: The Pissing Pug.

In Defence of Giant Lovers

The Meeting Place (detail) by Paul Day 

POV shot by Stephen Alexander

Whilst I wouldn't say I'm a fan, I certainly admire much of Antony Gormley's sculptural work and share many of his criticisms and concerns to do with public art. 

I think he's right, for example, to argue that many pieces unimaginatively plonked down in our airports, stations, and city centres lack ambition or challenge and fail to address the question of what role statues might play in the 21st century. 

However, I'm disappointed to discover that he seems to particularly despise Paul Day's giant brass figure of two lovers embracing at St Pancras International Station, as I quite like it. The Meeting Place might be crude and ill-proportioned - might, in a word used by Gormley, even be described as crap - but it can still excite fetishistically, even if it fails aesthetically.

For not only does the female figure have very lovely calves and ankles, given emphasis by her high-heeled shoes and tip-toe posture, but she also invites an upskirt peek (although, alas, there's nothing to see). 

And then there's the fact that she's thirty-feet tall, which surely brings out the macrophile in many a man. I don't know why it is that giant women - or, more precisely, the thought of being crushed beneath their feet - is so ingrained within the pornographic imagination, but so it is and Day's sculpture obscenely exploits this fact (whether or not he consciously intended to do so).

So, to conclude, we might say this: that whilst The Angel of the North artistically intrigues as an erection, it doesn't solicit an erection; it makes one wonder, but it doesn't make one want to perv.     

     

The Little Dancer: Armed and Dangerous

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Girl Ballerina (2007) 

 Photo © Yinka Shonibare MBE / Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, NY 

and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Most people instantly recognise Degas's sculpture of The Little Dancer Aged-Fourteen (1880-81) with her hands held politely (somewhat nervously) behind her back as if tied; eyes closed and face lifted as though waiting to receive an unwelcome kiss from an ardent male admirer.

Originally sculpted in wax and fitted with a bodice, a tutu, and a pair of ballet shoes - not to mention a wig of real human hair tied with a ribbon - la petite danseuse was first cast in bronze in 1922, four years after the artist's death.

Since then, the numerous reproductions displayed in museums and galleries around the world have enchanted - or troubled, depending upon your perspective - generations of viewers and she has become an established figure not only in the image-repertoire of modern cultural history, but also in the popular and pornographic imagination; everyone loves her and Degas makes back stage johnnies of us all complicit in child prostitution, paedophilia and art.     

This pervy aspect of the sculpture has long been recognised. Indeed, when first shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition, the majority of critics were outraged; one described the Little Dancer as a fleur du mal who blossomed with precocious depravity and had a face which betrayed a wicked character, marked by the hateful promise of every vice; a promise that doubtless many of these hypocrites wished to hold her to.     

Certainly neither they nor anyone since has ever done much to free, as it were, the Little Dancer from the sexually objectifying gaze of the knowing male voyeur or would-be rapist, or to provide her with the means by which she might defend herself and accomplish her own liberty. Until, that is, two London-based artists, Ryan Gander and Yinka Shonibare MBE, decided to revisit and rework this piece each in a very wonderful manner by assigning independent and rebellious agency to the young girl.  

In Gander's work Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame Or Absinth blurs my thoughts, I think we should be moving on (2009),  Degas's dancer has abandoned her plinth and escaped any glass display case that might have previously been used to imprison her and made her way to the window which she peers out of standing on tiptoes. She is thus, in the words of Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, "transformed from an object of desire into a figure enacting its own desires to explore the surrounding world".

In the earlier I don't blame you, or, When we made love you used to cry and I love you like the stars above and I'll love you 'til I die (2008), his bronze ballerina is seen taking a crafty cigarette break, having again stepped down from the pedestal on which in her earlier incarnation she stood for over eighty years, bored out of her mind. 
  
As much as I like these pieces by Gander, I have to express a preference ultimately for Shonibare's work entitled Girl Ballerina (2007), pictured above. Life-sized, as opposed to Degas's dancer who was diminished in stature, and looking tanned of skin and colourful of dress, there are two startling aspects to the sculpture.

Most immediately noticeable is the fact that she's headless, which, speaking from an acephalic philosophical perspective informed by Georges Bataille, is always a good sign; a girl who has escaped from her head finds herself unaware of prohibition and she makes others laugh with revolutionary joy due to the fact that she perfectly combines innocence with criminal irresponsibility.

This brings us to the second startling aspect; the fact that she holds a large gun behind her back and has her finger on the trigger - ready to shoot anyone who would violate her sovereignty or think of her as easy prey. Shonibare's ballerina does not passively conform to male desire or acquiesce in her own subordination; she is not a sexual naif, but more of a sex pistol: bang, bang she'll shoot you down ...


Notes: 

The above works by Ryan Gander and Yinka Shonibare MBE can be viewed as part of The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture, an exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff at the Hayward Gallery, London (17 June - 7 September 2014). 

The quotation from Ralph Rugoff is taken from his introductory essay to the book that accompanies the exhibition, The Human Factor, (Hayward Publishing, 2014), p. 12.