Visões de São Paulo: a marca urbana segundo Luiz Gê

Abstract

This research intends to reflect about the comics of Luiz Gê about Avenida Paulista, considering the dialogue between the discourses of paulistanity and the ideals of Brazilian modernity. The goal is to investigate how the comics artist builds, through his narrative, representations of São Paulo that establish critics and, simultaneously, reiterate the symbols of industrial development, technological modernization and main financial, economic and industrial center of the country. Luiz Gê sought to set many of his stories in the city of São Paulo throughout his career, making the capital city more than just a scenario for his entanglements. São Paulo is present both literally, with its urban landscape and its architectural landmarks - as the 9 de Julho avenue, the building of Banespa or the Avenida Paulista - as indirect, through metaphors - as the parody of the Grito do Ipiranga episode. We will try to understand his comics as part of a process of change of power axes in Brazil using the concept of “cultural horizon” proposed by Feenberg (2010), taking into account its relation with the questions of hegemony pertinent to the moment in which Fragmentos completos (Complete Fragments), the story of Avenida Paulista in comics, is produced. Another aspect to be analyzed is Luiz Gê’s approach to Avenida Paulista on the occasion of its centenary, in 1991: an urban landmark of the city that materializes at the same time that it represents many of São Paulo’s yearnings and contradictions.