Gaia is one of my favorite street artists because he con­sis­tently infuses his work with com­men­tary on the urban con­di­tion. While his work has always ques­tioned ideas of the pub­lic realm, it wasn’t until recently that his cri­tique was directed towards the form mak­ers them­selves, the archi­tects. This Fall, I started dis­cov­er­ing por­traits of Le Cor­busier, Mies Van Der Rohe, James Rouse and other icons of urban­ism plas­tered through­out the city — all beau­ti­fully ren­dered with a rec­og­niz­ably ele­gant yet loose line qual­ity. Gaia, the urban the­o­rists was born.

While his pre­vi­ous trips to San Fran­cisco were focused around shows at the quickly grow­ing Gallery Heist, Gaia, was finally able to develop a legal pub­lic com­mis­sion. The piece on the cor­ner of Polk St. and Eddy St. was made for Wall Space SF, who pro­vide street artists with legal walls to develop pieces that would oth­er­wise be exe­cuted in a more illu­sive man­ner. Wall Space elab­o­rates on their mis­sion; “By enabling the artists the time and free­dom of expres­sion Wall Space hopes that the com­mu­ni­ties where these murals are made will be enriched with color and thought pro­vok­ing imagery.”

Gaia shares the story behind the image — “The piece was com­pleted with spray paint, and rollers to cap off the ears, through­out three days of cool sun show­ers. The Lion/​Rabbit hybrid is a seem­ingly innocu­ous image but rep­re­sents the sub­ver­sion of the Urban Plan­ner. Le Cor­busier, one of the strongest iden­ti­ties in mod­ernist archi­tec­ture, took a pater­nal­ist approach to plan­ning with the notion that the lion is the archi­tect, the mas­ter, and the masses are the rab­bits. Rarely does the con­tem­po­rary urban land­scape develop organ­i­cally but is instead defined by the clamor of con­tend­ing agen­das and leg­is­la­tion. This image and its dis­sem­i­na­tion through­out neigh­bor­hoods all over the world is the embod­i­ment of the res­o­lu­tions and fail­ures of plan­ners to con­trol the incred­i­ble mess and nat­ural logic that is the city. (http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​w​a​l​l​s​p​a​ce/)”

Gaia’s argu­ment is par­tic­u­larly evi­dent when look­ing at Le Corbusier’s failed plan for La Villa Radiusse (The Radi­ant City). Le Corbusier’s plan inte­grated many ameni­ties, like a short­ened work day, and below-​ground facil­i­ties where select house­hold chores were del­e­gated in order to allow dwellers more time for leisure. How­ever, these designed free­doms, were not free­doms at all. They were too con­structed. Le Corbusier’s city had no room for irra­tional­ity. The uni­ver­sal approach, taken by Le Cor­busier didn’t pay heed to the idio­syn­crasies of inhab­it­ing the city.

In his mural Gaia is cham­pi­oning for a more crit­i­cal and humane archi­tec­ture. Le Cor­busier would argue that, “Author­ity must step in, patri­ar­chal author­ity, the author­ity of a father con­cerned for his chil­dren.” Gaia would argue that this approach to design­ing such a com­plex sys­tem is naïve. And, I’m sorry Corbu, but, I agree with my street art friend on this one.

Tags: architects, Gaia, GALLERY HEIST, Le Corbusier, public realm, Wall Space

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 at 1:03 am and is filed under Art, Mural, Street Art.
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