Remember when the Fearless Girl statue appeared opposite Charging Bull on Wall Street a few months ago? A friend of mine shared this article by Greg Fallis with me. After Fearless Girl was installed, it became known that the Charging Bull sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, wanted it removed. The internet went crazy, defending this brave little girl from the dominant patriarchy who wanted to silence and remove her. But Fallis’s article reveals the backstory: Charging Bull is a work of guerilla art, self-funded by Di Modica, meant to represent the “strength and power of the American people.” Fearless Girl, on the other hand, is a corporate-commissioned advertising campaign. Fallis gives more details about the history of both sculptures, but the interesting parts, to me, are the meaning and the interplay of power that result when these two works of art are juxtaposed. With this juxtaposition, these two sculptures create a mashup. When Fallis talks about the way they interact, he uses language that could easily be applied to a musical mashup, as well.
First of all, each sculpture has meaning without the context of the other. Charging Bull has stood on its own in Manhattan’s Financial District since 1989. Like with a song, some combination of the creator’s intent, the aesthetics of the work of art, and the interpretation of an audience leads to meaning. Dianne Durante says that the bull represents the “energy, strength, and unpredictability of the stock market.” Fearless Girl has never existed on its own, apart from Charging Bull, but Fallis acknowledges that it could. Without an opposing force, though, he says that Fearless Girl “becomes Really Confident Girl.” I’m not sure that I see as big a difference between these two as Fallis does. There are certainly enough things for young girls to stand up against, even without the bull being a specific antagonist. She still looks like she’s facing an adversary, even if that adversary is unseen. The point here, though, is that like a popular song, each statue is a complete work of art on its own.
When placed in dialogue with each other, then, a composite meaning is generated by the interaction. Most obviously, the girl is now standing up against something very precise. Her confident stance is more clearly a reaction to the bull, and not just her general attitude while taking on the world. And, Fallis notes, the bull is no longer a simple emblem of strength; “it’s now seen as an aggressive threat to women and girls – a symbol of patriarchal oppression.” This is exactly what happens in mashups. In a forthcoming article, I specifically discussion the power relationships that occur between musical artists when they are placed into conversation with one another via a mashup. This, I argue, is why mashups haven’t disappeared yet. If this was only about musical cleverness and harmonic/melodic/rhythmic fit, I don’t think that people would still be making mashups, of any type. Two works of art are able to make commentary on each other, absorb and play off of each other’s meanings, and create entirely new implications simply by being close to one another; that’s what makes this kind of artwork important.