Cupid's Span

That enormous bow and arrow buried in the grass along the waterfront — sixty feet tall, with the arrow pointing skyward and the bow half-submerged in the earth — is Cupid's Span. And it has a stranger backstory than you'd guess from looking at it.

The sculpture was created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the husband-and-wife team famous for making monumental versions of everyday objects. You've probably seen their work without knowing it — the giant clothespin in Philadelphia, the spoonbridge and cherry in Minneapolis. They specialized in taking mundane things and scaling them up until they became surreal.

Cupid's Span was installed in two thousand and two, and it was funded by Donald and Doris Fisher — the founders of the Gap, which was born in San Francisco. The Fishers commissioned the piece specifically for this waterfront location.

Now, the design. Oldenburg and van Bruggen conceived San Francisco as the "home port of Eros" — a city of love, romance, and desire. The bow is Cupid's weapon, and it's planted in the ground as if the god of love shot an arrow into the earth right here at the water's edge. But look at the shape from the side. The artists designed it upside down so that the curve of the bow also resembles a ship's hull, connecting to San Francisco's maritime history. The waterfront, love, and ships — all in one shape.

The scale is what gets people. From across the Embarcadero, it reads as an elegant curve. Up close, you realize the bow is taller than a five-story building. Walk right up to where it enters the ground and look at the detail work — the tension in the bowstring, the feathering on the arrow shaft. It's playful and monumental at the same time, which is exactly what Oldenburg and van Bruggen always aimed for.