Lucia Auerbach
On The Passing of Frank Gehry
PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.
Frank Gehry bought the lot across the street from my childhood home the year after I was born. I had a back yard growing up and a front yard with grass that was replaced with concrete and a basketball hoop once I decided to transform into an athlete (short-lived). But the lot was massive. It could’ve fit my home three times. Once Gehry and his wife, Berta, bought the lot, they put up a chain-link fence around the property. That fence, along with two palm trees and a large Monterey pine, were the only things that occupied the property in my fifteen years of living across from the Gehry lot. Outside of the lot were the more interesting sights: a corroded boat with a green canvas cover attached to an unhitched trailer; a rusty red 1950s Chevrolet truck; and two large Ficus trees across the street that provided a dense, impenetrable canopy. Under its cover were little stuffed animals and dolls, among other trinkets, that made the tree-covered sidewalk feel more like a circus foyer. The man who lived in that house kept his motorcycle in between the trees and it was probably the only thing that was never robbed in our neighborhood. I wondered why people were scared of him, what he got up to. He would come out and tell stories about each of the animals hiding up in their branches. A large rock sat before the stop sign that was covered in ivy and I would rest there as he explained that the polar bear was actually a surfer who went to the beach every morning before I woke up to make sure that the current wasn’t too strong for the rest of us. The colony of Fisher-Price dolls went to school just like I did, and on my walk home they would get excited to hear about what I did that day, if we learned the same things.
I grew up always having three dogs at a time—Toby, Earl, Frank, Chichi, then Blu. One day, we noticed that there was a part of the fence protecting the Gehry lot that had been ripped open, offering just enough room to get the dogs and me in there to run around. In a city with such few green spaces for children, the lot served as an empty playground; it was anything we wanted. All I understood was that a very famous artist owned the lot and that one day, he was going to build art where we stood. I felt honored to be able to run around the foundation of what was going to become a Profound Experience of Art.[1] But the Gehrys never moved in. They started to have “doubts” about moving into our neighborhood. In the 2015 Gehry biography Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, architecture critic Paul Goldberger explained that:
During the extended period while they awaited planning approval, neighbors began to dump garbage on the empty lot; the Gehrys hired a gardener to landscape the property and keep it looking neat, and when that did not stem the flow of garbage, they surrounded the property with a fence and a locked gate. Vandals broke the lock repeatedly, and Berta began to have serious doubts as to whether she wanted to live in that neighborhood at all.[2]
Was I a vandal? Were my childhood desires to run with dogs in a wide open and empty lot a crime? We were not the ones to break the lock. We were not the ones to litter garbage around the property. Only footprints. But their reluctance to build on the Grand View property was not offensive to any of us. The vacant lot provided more access to inspiration than his private compound would have. We still marveled at the Binocular building on Main and went to the concert hall to listen to the LA Philharmonic, and everything was still okay. Everything was like a late afternoon—clear outside but not too bright and the UV had started to go down just enough that you didn’t have to worry about reapplying sunscreen. You could watch the sunset sitting down in the Gehry lot and it would always be pink.
It is not coincidental that Gehry’s death coincided with the announcement of the Warner Bros. acquisition by Netflix. His death has marked the end of Hollywood as I have known it. It’s not only my loss, or the Gehry family’s loss, or Los Angeles’ loss, but the loss of known artistic integrity. Gehry was not a perfect angel—his work was interpreted, if not transformed, into something that was not just art but a profit-making machine. He became a contractor for cities seeking an economic metamorphosis. Hollywood, because of the merger and all of the events that have led up to such a situation being able to proliferate, became a content-mining factory. Both mark the death of artistic vision, allowing financial success to prevail.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, claims that the merger will create more stories and strive to entertain the world,[3] but instead, he has slain every empty lot, every blueprint that could have sparked an individual moment of creativity, or a space to breathe when we are all on top of each other. He has taken old Hollywood hostage and will lock her away in the Cloud to be extracted from; her beauty and art poached and neglected. This monopoly is the death of cinema as we know it. With Gehry dead, any conception of my Hollywood is dead too. No one is grinning in Los Angeles. I want to go home.
“The combination of Netflix and Warner Bros. creates a better Netflix for the long term. It sets us up for success for decades to come,”[4] Sarandos said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts. The key here is that Sarandos is explicitly out to create a better Netflix, the company, reinforcing the idea that he cares more about the company than the art it channels from creators to consumers. Netflix’s approach to curating the content in its library reveals this priority through its increasing emphasis on quantitative content over recent years. Its original content has the capacity to be industry-changing, as seen with early hits like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards and more recent favorites such as Squid Game and Stranger Things. But for every groundbreaker, there are dozens of poorly received, if received at all, series and original movies. How many people remember The Witcher: Blood Origin or Mother of the Bride? It seems as though Netflix is more motivated to produce content that reaches a certain quota than because of an urgent need to create, and we know these facts because we were raised on the values of good cinema.
Warner Bros.' rejection of Paramount's offer[5] is further testament that maybe it's not just Netflix that is trying to break the bubble that is artistic Hollywood; this is equally Warner Bros.' doing. But would everything feel less disastrous if it were Paramount as the purchaser? Is the issue the idea of a monopoly or the fact that it is the behemoth that is Netflix holding the power of the purse?
When Sarandos became co-CEO in 2020, the world was experiencing a massive global change. The pandemic produced an unprecedented demand for content, and Sarandos really did try to provide that supply. That emergency response, to create more product without the necessary grueling hours to perfect it, created a profitable model for Netflix. We weren’t picky. Watching people in Oklahoma abusing tigers gave us something to do. But that response became the platform’s model, even after we settled into the routine of normalizing COVID-19. Now, algorithmic optimization reigns supreme over promoting quality stories.
Warner Bros. hasn’t made that same compromise. They were founded by risk-taking storytelling and continue to reinvent the mold to this day. The industry has been shaped single-handedly by the content that Warner Bros. has created since its founding in 1923: Casablanca, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, Goodfellas, Harry Potter, The Shawshank Redemption, and even recent hits like One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Superman have defined and continue to define what excellent cinema looks like. These films, whether adaptations or originals, were not produced because data dictated their success; they were made because artists had vision and studios trusted that vision, even when it meant financial uncertainty. Will Netflix be able to take these kinds of creative risks? Does Sarandos have the golden touch to know when a project will become part of the cultural zeitgeist? Is consolidation the way to produce more quality films, or is it just a way for Netflix to own a legacy it cannot create?
It seems as though my grief has nothing to do with the existence and proliferation of monopolies—I’ve never cried over Meta or US Steel or Kroger—but I am distraught at the disintegration of the bastion of cinema: the illusion that you can make a true, authentic living off of art has faded. This illusion may have never even existed; it may have just been a blueprint in which I could project my fantasy in which art is both meaningful and profitable. That the spectacle is considered for more than just its market value.
When Gehry built the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 1997, he was building a spectacle. Gehry had produced over 70 projects by the time he got to Bilbao, making him indisputably an artist with talent, and talent that is profitable.[6] Yet, he considered the success of Bilbao a surprise. “I went over the hill and saw it shining there,” Gehry said the month before the Guggenheim opened. “I thought: ‘What the fuck have I done to these people?’”[7] But the shining, silver titan brought about a new world for the Basque city. This visual cultural investment created a concrete economic uplift that transformed the economy and landscape of Bilbao. Welcome the Bilbao effect—defined as “architecture so spectacular it could transform neighborhoods, cities, and regions.”[8] Gehry’s investment in the spectacle birthed a real, tangible change for the people of Bilbao, proving that art can still be both admired and profitable.
This long-running craze of spectacular, oftentimes nonfunctional, architecture would have occurred regardless, but the Guggenheim Bilbao gave it fuel. This led to the proliferation of cities using the artistic spectacle in a way that is no longer prioritizing art but rather the economy. We fall into the pit yet again. The spectacle now can be interpreted as a distraction, a way to pretend that the world is getting what art provides without actually working for it. To step into a museum and pose with the art…
Like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Hollywood transformed the identity and economy of Los Angeles, moving the region beyond agricultural and oil-based industries. Because of the numerous spectacles that Hollywood produced, including true works of art like Rebel Without a Cause, La La Land, and Twin Peaks, Los Angeles became a place where people could come to be with art: to work on it, see it, be in close proximity. The proximity to art that Hollywood guaranteed to the individual is what made Los Angeles the second-best city in the US.[9] Prior to the erection of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Basque city struggled with the collapse of its industrial economy following the oil price shock of the 1970s, putting 25% of its population into unemployment. With the introduction of the museum came rapid changes in infrastructure, such as the addition of a city-wide Metro, and a boom in the need for hospitality and cultural projects.[10] Just like how the Guggenheim defined Bilbao, Hollywood defined LA.
Gehry’s brand was usurped by the Bilbao effect. Art critic Hal Foster once said that Gehry has “given his clients too much of what they want, a sublime space that overwhelms the viewer, a spectacular image that can circulate through the media and around the world as a brand.”[11] Gehry, with time, lost his ability to be defined as an artist and architect and was transformed, perhaps manipulated, perhaps passively complicit, into a contractor. Buildings were no longer created as art for art's sake; cities commissioned him and other architects because they relied on the idea of the spectacle to guarantee transformation through economic diversification and cultural tourism.
Bilbao wasn’t alone—LA embraced a different Gehry post-1997. Angelenos love Gehry for his functional absurdity, for materializing what the city stood for: creative exploration without judgment or limits. But that LA isn’t there anymore. I don’t know when she died. Maybe when Google took over the Chiat/Day Building in 2011 (more commonly referred to as the Binoculars Building on Main Street). The neighborhood that had been a hippie artistic paradise became Silicon Beach, with tech moguls pricing out the artists. Or maybe it was 2003, when I was born, when the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened downtown, but that would mean that I never knew her creativity. Certainly that couldn’t be the case—I had Gehry’s empty lot to run on. But the Concert Hall brought back the economic revitalization of Downtown Los Angeles rather than just pure artistic spirit, like the Chiat/Day building. LA now valued him for his art and the bulge in her wallet.
Is profit better than talent? Did Gehry die happy because of the 0s in his bank account? Or bitterly for the way that his art was interpreted? No longer given the opportunity of analysis sans numerical value? Gehry—regardless of intent—proliferated said system of the profitable spectacle, a world where greatness is measured rather than valued, where the impact of tourism is calculated rather than appreciated. Are views, both physical visits and digital metrics, more important than a lasting cultural impact?
When the critics of art are no longer concerned with integrity and value, that’s how we’ll know the world is just coal. We’re not there yet, but this merger is bringing us dangerously closer. Gehry’s architecture post-Bilbao became centered around guaranteed economic returns for governments and municipalities. They have provided a lot of good; these buildings still house and foster ideas that push and pry at what beauty means and what functionality is. But their purpose became double-sided—leaning more on the side of profit. Warner Bros. was victim to the same fate. What used to be a home of genre-bending films and art that pushed the limits of what we defined as fiction versus reality became a company that produced movies that made big numbers in movie theaters. But not big enough. They had to go ahead and duck and sell out. Netflix’s acquisition will only take this further; the empty lots that allowed creatives to experiment, to try, have been paved over by the need to monopolize and increase profit.
In an internal staff memo from 2021 addressing the controversial Dave Chappelle special The Closer, Sarandos was quoted saying that “content on screen doesn’t translate to real-world harm.”[12] Though is that not the goal of media? To be translated into real-world emotions and actions? For someone to be so overcome by a Profound Experience of Art that they drop to their knees on the marble flooring and weep and shake inconsolably?[13]
While the merger has not gone through, Gehry’s death is permanent. The wonder that generated magic and contentment in my childhood has been paved over and now there’s another compound sitting there. I wonder if they are artists, if they would find artistic exploration to be trespassing as well, if they still think the neighborhood we were eventually priced out of is too dangerous to live in. The monopolies pose the danger. Not the dreamers.
[1] A phrase borrowed from Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station
[2] Paul Goldberger, Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015); cited in Bianca Barragan, “Is Frank Gehry Finally Building His Dream Home?” Curbed LA, July 26, 2016.
[3] Meg James, “Netflix Agrees to Buy Warner Bros. in an $82.7-Billion Deal That Will Transform Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-12-05/netflix-prevails-in-warner-bros-discovery-bidding-opponents.
[4] James, “Netflix Prevails in Warner Bros. Discovery Bidding.”
[5] James, “Netflix Prevails in Warner Bros. Discovery Bidding.”
[6] “List of Works by Frank Gehry,” Wikipedia, last modified March 8, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Frank_Gehry.
[7] Rowan Moore, “The Bilbao Effect: How Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Started a Global Craze,” The Guardian, October 1, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/01/bilbao-effect-frank-gehry-guggenheim-global-craze.
[8]Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, “How Frank Gehry Delivers on Time and on Budget: Lessons from the Master Architect in Managing Big Projects,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2023, https://hbr.org/2023/01/how-frank-gehry-delivers-on-time-and-on-budget.
[9] Based on having grown up in Los Angeles and having spent five years living in New York City. Purely subjective.
[10] Sam Jones, “Guggenheim Effect: How the Museum Helped Transform Bilbao,” The Guardian, October 31, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/31/guggenheim-effect-how-the-museum-helped-transform-bilbao.
[11] Rowan Moore, “‘The Bilbao Effect’: How Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Started a Global Craze,” The Guardian, October 1, 2017 (quoting Hal Foster in Sketches of Frank Gehry), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/01/bilbao-effect-frank-gehry-guggenheim-global-craze.
[12] “‘Netflix trans walkout’: Netflix Employees Stage Walkout in Support of Transgender Staff,” CBC News, October 20, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/netflix-trans-walkout-1.6217870.
[13] Lerner, again.
Lucia Auerbach recently graduated from Columbia University and holds a bachelor’s degree in English. There she wrote a thesis on Margaret Atwood’s "The Edible Woman" and was an assistant in the Journalism School’s alumni and development office. She also attended the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford University. From 2020 to 2024, she ran an independent publication for female artists called SILLY GAL. Her writing has also appeared in the Columbia Undergraduate English Society Journal, the Columbia Daily Spectator, Byline, Spectra Poets, dream boy book club, and more. Lucia has been a translator for NPR, an art gallery assistant, a magazine editorial intern, and a bookseller. She enjoys greeting dogs in their native languages and is a certified bartender.