The numbers are indeed startling. “About 50 to 60 percent” have been damaged, said Aaron Yu (游博霖), an account executive with Pilot Integrated Marketing (先勢公關), one of the Taiwanese firms organizing the event.
Qisada Design (佳世達設計團隊), an artist collective, affixed thousands of black and white keyboard keys to their cow to create The World in the Eyes of Technology (科技世界), which is located across from Taipei City Hall. Some of the keys have fallen off because parents encourage their children to climb the sculpture so they can snap photographs.
Artist Tsui Yung-yen’s (崔永嬿) creation, The Circus of Den-Den-Ciao-Jean (蹬蹬腳尖兒馬戲劇團之牛不懂馬戲), is located in the plaza outside a Fubon Bank branch on the intersection of Civil Boulevard (民大道) and Dunhua North Road (敦化北路). The cow is painted yellow with red flowers and topped with three circus performers. Tsui said the thumb of one character has been badly damaged and a decorative ring has gone missing. Twice. “I think it’s my design problem,” Tsui said. “It’s public art and artists should know that people are passionate and very excited about the cows ... It’s damage caused by excited children and parents wanting to take pictures.”
Tsui said she spent a lot of time looking at cows from other cities and discovered that Taiwanese artists have more of a tendency to embellish the three basic fiberglass templates — standing, reclining and grazing — with decorative details.
She thinks what makes the Taipei cows fine works of art is also what causes them to damage easily. “The cows in [Taipei] are more delicate because most ... are designed by artists,” she said. “Artists here look at [the cows] as works of fine art. We knew they were going to be put on the street but we didn’t imagine they would be damaged.”
Organizer Aaron Yu said Taipei residents, unlike the artists, see the cows as toys, not art. “They’re curious about the cows,” he said. “They rarely see this sort of [thing] and they think it’s an opportunity for them to play.”
However, he noted that “no cows have been stolen, lit on fire or seriously damaged,” and no act of vandalism has been reported.
And while CowParade Taipei doesn’t have its own “cow hospital,” there is a team of “doctors” who roam the city fixing damaged members of the herd.
RSS