Hasta La Ideas

Was putting a photo of the famed Wall Street bull statue on the cover of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense a colossal failure of common sense? That’s the allegation of Arturo DiModica, the artist who created “Charging Bull,” installed the three-and-a-half ton bronze statue without permission in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 1989, and registered it with the copyright office nine years later. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, DiModica is seeking to have the photo of the statue (which now stands in Bowling Green Park) removed from the cover of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers, published earlier this month by Random House’s Crown Business division. The suit also seeks unspecified damages from Random House and the book’s authors, Lawrence McDonald and Patrick Robinson.

So what’s DiModica up to besides suing people? Plenty, at least according to his rather loopy website—chargingbull.org—which notes, “For New York City, Arturo is designing a grand fountain that will rival any of the great fountains around the world and be a fabulous work of sculpture in its own right, reflecting Arturo’s artistic vision.”

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