TAIPEI, 14 September 2003 — Taiwanese artist Wu A-Sun’s latest sculpture was supposed to decorate the front of a new Taipei skyscraper touted as the world’s tallest building.

But the piece offended politicians, caused fears that it would bring bad luck for businesses and was finally dumped as trash.

The sculpture, “New New Hope,” was a highly abstract work of art inspired by aboriginal and primitive designs. The four-story piece had three tree-like legs and was painted with green, yellow and blue Picasso-like shapes of fish and birds outlined in thick black lines.

“The piece symbolizes people coming together for the good of society,” said the 60-year-old Wu, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated contemporary painters and sculptors.

It was a prestigious project because the developers of the nearly complete Taipei 101 skyscraper say the building will have the world’s tallest structural top at 508 meters (1,667 feet). The title now belongs to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which rises to 452 meters (1,483 feet).

Wu seemed like the perfect artist for the project, which was supposed to have an international flavor. He received his master’s from the University of Madrid. He has traveled widely in Africa. And he has held numerous exhibits in America, Japan and Europe.

He finished the sculpture in 1998 and designed it to withstand strong winds during Taiwan’s typhoon season. But it wasn’t a typhoon that eventually felled the statue.

The initial problems were caused by the vivid colors Wu painted on the artwork’s white background.

The sculpture first found a temporary home on one of downtown Taipei’s largest open spaces, popularly known as the Jen’ai Circle, just a month before the December 1998 mayoral elections.

The three political parties that ran candidates in that election had green, blue, and yellow as their main colors.

“My sculpture only had green and yellow, so I had to add blue to please the third candidate,” Wu said.

There were also doubts about whether his sculpture was suitable to put in front of a building originally named the International Financial Center, Wu said.

The top of his monument showed one straight line with a fish head at either side. Wu thought this would be appropriate for a business building. In Chinese culture, fish represent wealth because the words for fish and abundance sound similar, he said.

But the straight line did not sit well with everyone. Wu said the company managing the Taipei 101 project — the Taipei Financial Center Corp. — consulted an expert in fengshui, the ancient Chinese method of determining the most appropriate locations for a harmonious life.

The expert didn’t like Wu’s monument. “He wanted me to rework the piece and make the top rounder because in Chinese tradition, if the top of a building is round, and the bottom square, it can make money,” Wu said. The artist agreed to make changes, bending the straight line linking the fish into a curve. But that was not enough, Wu said.

In the end, both sides agreed to cut their losses and stop the project. “I received half the original fee of 6 million New Taiwan dollars ($175,000),” Wu said.

The Taipei Financial Center Corp. put out a statement saying it had hired Wu to produce “New New Hope” in 1998, but the firm would not provide any comment about why Wu’s statue did not end up at its building.

“We are leaving it up to the public arts world to judge,” the statement said.

Wu expressed amazement at how the project could have ended that way. “This sculpture had been approved by an opinion poll and by a city committee of 16 design and architecture specialists,” Wu said.

But the cancellation of the Taipei 101 plan was not the end of the suffering for “New New Hope.” A few months ago, the 16-meter (52.8-foot) structure was dismantled and moved to a plot of land Wu owns.

Then, the local government wanted the artist to pay a garbage tax. Later, the monument was moved next door to the local garbage dump.

In his Taipei studio, Wu showed the official apology he received from the local government. But “New New Hope” now belongs in the past. All that’s left of “New New Hope” now is a model of the sculpture that sits behind a corner at Wu’s basement studio in Taipei.