Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Paleo Retiree’s swipe at Richard Meier reminds me that I’ve been meaning to share some photos of my trip to the Getty Center last month. Have you ever been there? It’s located in the hills overlooking Brentwood and has some wonderful panoramic views of the ocean, the Hollywood Hills, and downtown Los Angeles. The Getty, which Wikipedia tells me is the world’s richest art institution with an endowment of $5.6 billion (suck it Met and Loov-rah!), has an excellent collection that it’s rightly proud of. But the building itself, Meier’s “masterpiece”? Ummm, less successful, IMHO. Let’s take a look at what $1.3 billion gets you.
This first set is of the museum’s arrival plaza and entrance hall. Hope you like swoopy antiseptic white overlaid with an early 80s TRON-like grid.
Click on the images to enlarge.
The steps leading from the arrival plaza to the entrance hall. What’s that stupid thing suspended over the entryway?
Don’t really dig these louvered windows either.
The curving forms and grid does give it a sense of motion, I guess. I don’t know why someone would want a moving museum, though.
Question: is this a shot of the stairs leading down to the garden or a creepshot of the girl in the skirt? I’ll leave that one up to you.
Sorry, but that reads “fancy medical plaza” or “new airport terminal” to me.
The sunroof/rotunda of the entrance hall. Why put bars on the windows?
Glass, geometry, white, glass, geometry, white…
The floor of the entrance hall. The rough-hewn stone adds some much needed contrast.
Standing in the entrance hall, facing the main courtyard.
This next set is various vantage points from around the main courtyard.
Before we get to the courtyard, here’s the view looking west. That’s the museum’s highly refined garden, with Brentwood and the Pacific Ocean in the background.
The courtyard itself. From left to right are are the museum’s east, south, and west pavilions.
We’re having a drought, otherwise maybe these vines would be greener and give this place some much needed color.
Standing in the courtyard looking back towards the entrance hall.
A ground-level shot of the south pavilion on the left, east pavilion on the right. Did the glass grid! Wild, right?
The staircase outside the south pavilion. Looks like a fire escape to me.
This last set is from the area around the garden and exhibition hall. It’s the end of the day, golden hour, so thankfully the harsh whiteness is softened.
The structure on the right is the main exhibition hall with the Getty Research Institute complex in the background.
I guess the spindly stone supports are supposed to make the structure appear weightless, but it looks unbalanced to me.
Another view of the exhibition hall. Oh dear. Let’s just move on.
Looking east towards the main courtyard above.
Museum or prison?
Gah.
Okok, enough carping. Let’s look at some art. There are four pavilions containing pieces from 1600 to the present. (The Getty also has a world-class collection of antiquities, but they’re housed at the Getty Villa in Malibu. That’ll be a whole separate post.) I was there for about four hours or so and only visited the exhibition hall, north pavilion, and west pavilion. Here are some of my favorites of what I saw. (You can get more info about each of these pieces, including ultra-high res pics, at the Getty’s excellent website.)
Detail of cabinet, French, c. 1580
Attributed to Annibale Fontana, a pair of drug jars, Italian, c. 1580
Albert Jansz, Display cabinet, German, c. 1630
Joke glass, German or Dutch, 1600s
Attributed to Rinaldo da Siena, Initial G: The Stigmatization of St. Francis, Italian, c. 1275
After Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin and Child with St. Anne, Italian, c. 1508-1513
Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece, verso, The Assumption of the Virgin, Netherlandish, before 1480
Hans Holbein the Younger, An Allegory of Passion (“Desire Carries Me Along”), German, c. 1532-1536
Follower of Rogier van der Weyden, The Deposition, Netherlandish, c. 1490
Bernardo Daddi, Arrival of St. Ursula at Cologne, Italian, c. 1333
Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni, detail from Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints, Italian, c. 1390
Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni, detail from Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints, Italian, c. 1390
Charles-Joseph Natoire, Bacchante, French, 1741
Carle Vernet, detail from The Death of Hippolytus, French, 1800
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, The Vexed Man, German, Austria, 1771-1783
Joseph Nollekens, Minerva, British, 1775
Joseph Nollekens, Venus, British, 1773
Detail of Greek relief or pediment. Sorry, I didn’t write down the info and I couldn’t find it in their database.
Francis Harwood, Bust of a Man, English, 1758
Jean-Désiré Ringel d”Illzach, detail of vase, French, 1889
Jacques Joseph Tissot, Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née, Thérèse Feuillant, French, 1866
John William Godward, detail from Mischief and Repose, English, 1895
Adolphe William Bouguereau, A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros, French, c. 1880
Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Portrait of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, German, 1843
Théodore Géricault, Three Lovers, French, 1817-1820
Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, French, 1805-1806
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, detail from Spring, Dutch, 1836
Paul Gauguin, Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), French, Tahiti, 1892
Checking out the Monets. (Creepshot or Not?)
The Impressionist gallery: Monet, Gauguin, Pisarro, Van Gogh. The museum’s money shot.
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About Blowhard, Esq.
Amateur, dilettante, wannabe.
Blowhard, Esq.
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Uncouth Reflections 
Excellent photos. I’m keen to hit this place during my 31-hour stopover in LA.
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Terrific snaps. The complex looks more like a cancer-research facility than a museum, IMHO.
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Personally, I kind of like the building, but it doesn’t really strike me as a suitable art museum, unless the stuff exhibited was purely modern art.
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At least SoCal modernism is only bland and flaccid, not soul-draining and suicide-inducing.
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The Getty reminded me of what the future used to look like in old science fiction films.
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That gives me an excuse to link to this: http://www.uncouthreflections.com/2013/02/19/i-graduated-from-a-monkey-prison/
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Da Met? Da MAMA? Fugeddaboutit!
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Princess Leonilla is an A-1 fox.
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It was going to be even whiter, but the wealthy neighbors forced Meier to back down to a less shiny off-white.
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Didn’t know that, funny. I know the Disney Concert Hall was originally going to be white limestone but, after the success of Bilbao, the Powers That Be made Gehry change it to metal.
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