When I saw this

across the street from this

and considered this going on in the tower behind the sculpture, too, well, I couldn't help but email the artist of Hammering Man, Jonathan Borofsky, and he was quick and happy to respond.

The full Q&A will appear in this week's print edition, but here's a sneak preview of our conversation.

Right now there's a labor dispute across the street from Hammering Man at the new Four Seasons. A sign out front says, "SHAME ON FOUR SEASONS." Does Hammering Man take sides in labor disputes?

Well, I've got a few thoughts going through my head. As you were describing that, I was flashing back to when I was originally there and there was some kind of nudie palace across the street.

That's still there: the Lusty Lady. Next to the Four Seasons.

So you can eat at the Four Seasons and then go in for your massage? Okay, enough.

Does Hammering Man take sides? Well, you know, if he is a metaphor for me, I naturally would like for everybody to be treated fairly. In these bailouts, the banks are getting reimbursed and the factory workers such as at General Motors, the workers themselves are not. I try to keep Hammering Man on a different level.

I can't figure you out. Are you a capitalist? A Marxist?

None of those make sense to me. I'm just a humanist. That's the best I can give you and I'm not sure what that means except I'm really interested in human beings, how each of us can be happier, and what keeps us from being happy. One of the ways to be happy is work. It's like the famous Gauguin painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? As a child when I saw that painting, the painting was very pretty to look at with the colors of the tropics, but what really got me was the title. I was maybe 10, 12 years old and I thought, Ooh, artists can think like that. Maybe all those questions are more in the realm of philosophy and psychology, but I never quite bring it down to the Hammering Man as a protest for the underpaid worker.