Thursday, December 28, 2006

Charging Bull: OMOM Essay 5




Like Liberty, this image is so familiar that I found it difficult to think what to say about it. I jump-started my brain by imagining it with a different texture, a different shape to the tail, a different setting. In "About the Sculpture" I introduce a key point for Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: the distinction between a sculpture's subject (the specific person, object or story shown) and its theme (the abstract meaning of the work).

"About the Subject" describes how the artist donated this piece to New York and what he intended it to represent.

I wanted to write about the origin of the stock-market term "bulls and bears," but was reminded that research on the Net is much more useful for recent events than for historical ones. All the citations of bulls and bears on the Net turned out to be extracts (usually unacknowledged) from the Oxford English Dictionary. I did finally find an interesting quote for the Sidebar on bulls and bears, printed in Harper's Weekly in 1860. (Harper's is a wonderful historical resource, but it's available on the Net by subscription only.)

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