DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - U.S. Bank Tower is Los Angeles’ tallest skyscraper. Its tenants include white-collar law firms and the L.A. offices of its namesake, the fifth-largest bank in the country.
So of course there’s irony in the fact that its lobby temporarily holds an artwork from Banksy, the notoriously anti-establishment street artist who has gained fame satirizing capitalism, government and other societal structures.
It’s odd to see the artwork in such an environment, cordoned off past a bank of elevators and illuminated by the soft glow of incandescent lights. The image depicts a human-sized rat, its tail curled into a perky “S,” looking up while spraying a can of red paint. On its head is a military beret with a single small star, an accessory made famous by socialist revolutionary Che Guevara.
The rat scurried into Downtown thanks to the efforts of Brian Greif and Eva Boros. The duo are producing a documentary, Saving Banksy, chronicling the task of taking the piece known as “Haight Street Rat” off the side of a San Francisco inn and preserving it through professional art restoration processes.
Greif was initially hesitant to show the piece at the Downtown high-rise, as several art centers had approached him about exhibiting the rat. In the end, however, he was convinced that it was “too easy” to display it in a gallery alongside other street art.
“Putting it in the U.S. Bank Tower was an amazing opportunity to expose people who aren’t familiar with street art,” he said. “This is a great tool for education in that way.”
“Haight Street Rat” will remain on view to the public, free of charge, at U.S. Bank Tower (at 633 W. Fifth St.) until the end of November.
Escape From the Bay Area
The rat appeared on the historic Red Victorian hotel in the spring of 2010, around the time that Banksy’s documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop hit theaters. A new Banksy piece would pop up somewhere in San Francisco seemingly every night, Greif said, so he, like many others, went out hunting for fresh works.
“What was really disturbing to me was that they came down as fast as they went up,” Greif said of Banksy’s pieces.
San Francisco’s anti-graffiti ordinance put pressure on building owners to whitewash the work or get fined. It took about six months to negotiate with the owner of the Red Victorian to remove the rat, Greif said.
The artwork was sprayed on redwood siding, so each panel needed to be cut and pried off the building. The panels were then shipped to Santa Barbara’s Fine Arts Conservation Lab, which did restoration work and applied a coating to protect the piece from factors such as humidity and temperature.
Boros and Greif raised nearly $11,000 on Kickstarter for the project. Then came the task of finding an exhibitor. The U.S. Bank Tower connection happened over the summer, when Boros visited L.A. and met with an old friend, Anastasiya Plotina, who is part of the building management team at the skyscraper.
For Plotina, it was a chance to do something different.
“Prior to the Banksy display, we have been renting pieces from an art curator,” she said in an email. “We were not in the habit of charging for any of our other pieces and we had no intention of making a profit off this display.”
Boros and Greif had some demands: The Banksy piece had to be displayed free to the public and accessible at all times. A slide show of street art from around the world also needed to accompany the piece. That wasn’t an issue for Singapore-based OUE Limited, which bought U.S. Bank Tower last year for $367.5 million. OUE also paid for the transport and mounting of the work, which Greif estimates at about $6,000.
Boros said the process went smoothly, and she’s pleased with the tongue-in-cheek dichotomy of having a Banksy in such an unexpected place.
“To have Banksy’s rat hung up at the tower, the base of a financial institution, and to have his work presented for free, it’s almost like setting up a camp in enemy territory, if you will,” Boros said.
What happens after the rat’s two-month Downtown run is unknown. Boros and Greif are considering taking the work and the slideshow on a tour across the country. Another possibility is that an art institution will take the piece.
Also unknown is what Banksy thinks of their efforts. Greif and Boros reached out to his team, but have never spoken with the artist.
What’s clear to them, however, is the need to preserve some noteworthy examples of street art.
“Most street artists say 99% of their works are gone,” Grief said. “At some point, people are going to look back and say, ‘We should’ve saved some of this.’”
© Los Angeles Downtown News 2014
