The story behind Charlotte’s favorite fowl, the Firebird sculpture, as it turns 15
It’s been 15 years this month since a rare bird roosted at one edge of Charlotte’s dour financial cavern and unfurled its mesmerizing sparkle.
Landing with the coincidental rise of the now-ubiquitous camera phone, “The Firebird” has become the city’s favored selfie spot, patiently posing night and day for tourists, school groups, office workers and random passers-by.
Wee ballet dancers hug the big sculpture for photos after recitals at the nearby Knight Theater, people propose marriage in front of it (and then return for their wedding pictures) and museum-goers give it a gawk en route to other destinations at the Levine Center for the Arts campus.
“It’s fun to watch people take ownership of the work,” says Todd Smith, executive director of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. “You walk up and it puts you in a good mood.”
“Firebird” commands his museum’s South Tryon Street entrance, setting the tone for artistic treasures within, currently a survey of the surrealist movement and a wide-ranging exhibition of the work of Clare Rojas.
“Firebird” is both imposing — about 18 feet tall, nearly three quarters of a ton in weight — and a spectacle of airy whimsy, slathered with 7,500 mirrored tiles that make it retreat into the life around it.
Like many migrating species, “Firebird” has been on a long journey to its forever home.
Firebird hatched in the Southwest
“Firebird’s” creator was Niki de Saint Phalle, born in 1930 to a French aristocratic family that went broke in the Depression.
They moved to New York to stay with relatives. Later she returned to Europe as a young adult to pursue her artistic career and escape her dysfunctional home. She soon found herself under the bold modernist influence of Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau and Jackson Pollock.
Saint Phalle drew critical recognition in the 1960s with an avant-garde commentary on social violence she called “Tirs” (In English: “Shots”). She famously fired bullets into bags of paint, which then bled onto plaster in a dispersion of color mimicking a grisly crime scene.
She wed Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, who has a coincidental Charlotte connection — he was commissioned to create “Cascade,” the 40-foot motorized mobile in the Carillon building on West Trade Street across from First Presbyterian Church.
Later in her career, Saint Phalle shifted from themes of surprise and shock to creating large, playful sculptures that toyed with notions of joy.
In this artistic phase in 1991, while living in San Diego, she created “Firebird” — which she named “Le Grand Oiseau de Feu sur l’Arche,” or in English, “The Large Bird of Fire on an Arch.”
One of several similar sculptures she created, “Firebird” went on a years-long world tour. It drew cooing crowds in Bonn, Germany, Geneva and Basel, Switzerland, Paris, Atlanta and Chicago.
In the era of “the Kodak Moment,” it became an amateur photo backdrop everywhere it went.
Charlotte connections
Saint Phalle died of pneumonia in 2002 at age 71, hastened by years of respiratory distress caused by inhaling polyester fibers and chemicals used in her works.
Charlotte arts patron Andreas Bechtler, who knew Saint Phalle and had commissioned Tinguely to create the kinetic “Cascade,” saw “Firebird” when it was in Atlanta.
He was captivated by its crowd-pleasing impact. In 2006, he snapped it up from a Swiss collector, had it restored and shipped to Charlotte.
He thought its bold, artistic nature and uplifting appearance would be the perfect piece to welcome visitors to his namesake Charlotte modern art museum. It was installed on Oct. 24, 2009.
Two months before the Bechtler opened in January 2010, the “Firebird” was unveiled on South Tryon Street. In a city that had not always been kind to public art, “Firebird” did exactly what Bechtler hoped it would do: it intrigued, enchanted and plopped a beguiling happy spot into uptown’s button-down business district.
A few blocks north at the Bank of America Plaza is the bronze disc sculpture “Il Grande Disco,” created by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro to symbolize the potential and rising fortunes of Charlotte. It too celebrates an anniversary this month — its 50th.
But ask a passerby its name and expect a blank stare. In contrast, everyone seems to know “Firebird.”
Bumps and baths
“Firebird’s” early nesting days in Charlotte were not entirely stress-free.
Skateboarders knocked so many tiles out of the base in collisions that professional artistic restorations were needed twice a year. Small obstruction plates embedded in the pavement eventually shooed skateboarders away. Now “Firebird” just gets groomed for routine grime.
When installed, “Firebird’s” ballroom disco-ball skin would cast sun-sparkles on the exterior of its museum neighbors. But in the last 15 years, tall office towers have soared in the neighborhood, robbing the statue of celestial fire, except around noon when sunbeams can still crest the gulch, then radiate.
When racial unrest swept Charlotte in 2020 during Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a question arose about whether “Firebird” needed security against vandals. Smith wasn’t concerned. He knew “Firebird” had friends.
“People love it so much,” he says, “they protect it.”
So how much is it insured for? Sorry, Smith says. Museums never tell.
Eyes of the beholders
“Firebird’s” impact varies from observer to observer, as art should, Smith says. He gets an enticing, welcoming vibe from its slightly curved wings, a sense of quasi-ancient civilization from its ornamental headdress and fanciful humor from its elegant countenance.
“It’s reflective. It lets you see yourself in it,” he says. “And it changes as you go around it.”
It also pleases him that “Firebird” is a Facebook and Instagram favorite and visible on nearly every tourism site related to Charlotte.
“To say it’s iconic,” Smith says, “doesn’t even do it justice.”
Party with the bird
A 15th anniversary reception will be held for “Firebird” at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 420 S. Tryon St., 5-7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 29. Admission is free and includes museum admission. RSVP requested at bechtler.org/firebird15birthdaybash
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This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 6:00 AM.