The Getty Legacy

 John Paul Getty was a wealthy – very wealthy – American industrialist. He was also a great collector of art and antiquities, with a deep interest in ancient times. He had a ranch in Malibu, perched up in a canyon looking down on what is now the Pacific Coast Highway. His collection grew so large that in 1954 he turned his ranch into a kind of house museum. The bright and beautiful of Los Angeles would put on their furs and trilbies and come to view the treasures, three afternoons a week, before cocktails.

The Outer Peristyle gardens at the Getty Villa

Then Mr Getty found that his collecting was getting out of hand, so he decided to build a special museum for his stuff. Like a true dilettante, he aimed to re-create the Villa de Papiri. Now, if you have been reading this blog closely – and of course you have! – you may recall mention of the Villa de Papiri (House of Papyrus) in this entry on the Naples Museum. This Villa, near Herculaneum, has only partly been excavated from under the lava spewed upon it by Vesuvius. But just in case you were wondering what it (or any typical Roman 1st century AD country villa) might have looked like, you need wonder no longer. You can go see it at the Getty Villa in Malibu!

Modern Roman?

I’m a bit ambivalent about this project. At first I thought it would be very exciting to see the re-creation. After stomping around a lot of ruins (as I have recently) I thought it would be particularly intriguing to see such a villa adorned with paintings and frescos, its columns unchipped and its roof intact. But having visited Getty Villa, I’m afraid it is not quite the success that its owner would have wanted (Mr Getty didn’t live to see the Villa completed – it was finished in 1974 and he died in 1973). I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think it is the use of so many modern materials, the over-use of trompe d’oeil, the roofing-in of the atrium that would have been open in a Roman villa...Still, whether the re-creation (renovated in 2006) works or not, it is a very apt building for displaying the very good collection of antiquities. Of course, the collection is not anything like the scale and depth of the treasure houses of those crumbling edifices, the archaeological museums of Athens and Naples, but for a private collection amassed outside of Europe in the 20^th century, it is pretty amazing.

The kouros - late archaic Greek?

The highlights are said to be the Hercules and the Kouros. Now, the Hercules is good – but I’ve recently been to the Vatican and the Palacio Farnese and Naples, and, well....The Kouros is a lot more interesting, because no one knows if it is a fake or not. This is discussed quite candidly on the audio guide, and it is most interesting to closely examine the statue (of a young man) with a view to deciding for yourself if it was carved by hand 2000 years ago, or whipped up in an Italian garage with power tools ten years ago. And they paid $7 million for it in 1985.

Is it real or fake....?

What do you think...?

But wait...there’s more, much more. The Getty Villa houses ‘only’ the antiquities from Mr Getty’s collection (of 44,000 – 1,200 on display). He was a very avid bower bird and the Getty Foundation has had to build an entire new building – actually a massive campus of buildings – to house the still-growing collection. Ten miles away, up on a hill above Pacific Palisades, sits the new Getty Center, worth visiting for the spectacular architecture as much as for the collection. 

The Getty Center

Approaching the Center

The architect is Richard Meier; the construction took nearly as long and was almost as over-budget at the Sydney Opera House – it finally opened in 1997 at a cost of $1.3 billion. The campus includes buildings housing the operations of the Getty Trust, as well as several galleries displaying European paintings, sculpture, furniture, photographs and temporary exhibitions. The gardens are a work of art in themselves (literally: the Central Garden is by artist Robert Irwin and is considered part of the Museum’s collection!) The whole thing sits beautifully on top of a ridge overlooking Los Angeles, and visitors approach on a little tram, after parking their cars at the bottom of the hill. I spent quite some time walking and sitting about absorbing the architecture and the views; but then...onwards– into the galleries.

The Robert Irwin Garden

The views of LA

Ah, yes! There's art as well...

With limited time and no desire to endure ‘museum overwhelm’, I chose my targets: Van Gogh’s “Irises”, Monet’s “Haystacks in Snow” and one of his 30 “Rouen Cathedral”s; a lovely display of Canaletto and his nephew Belotto and others who painted scenes of Venetian canals for English tourists to take home as souvenirs. Some nice Goya and Gainsborough and John Singer Sargent portraits. Very nice indeed. Of course I missed a lot – but it is always good to have a reason to return.

Meanwhile, the Getty Trust continues to expand the collection, run a conservation masters program, provide extensive educational facilities, and grants for art preservation projects all over the world. As far as I can make out, all of this is done on the proceeds of Mr Getty’s personal estate. No one charged me anything to see these collections and buildings (if you don’t count the parking fee – but hey!), and Wikipedia has some gossip about financial woes at the Trust in recent years; but it is undeniable that this legacy of one individual art-lover, J Paul Getty, is an extraordinary thing.

Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle

That's just a guest house

To visit Hearst Castle, you drive down the coast from Big Sur to San Simeon. At least, you do if the road is open. If it is closed by a rock slide, you drive back to Carmel (a great drive, I must say), across to Salinas (where John Steinbeck was born, so that’s interesting), then down 101 (boring but fast), back west across 49 (wine country, but you probably won’t have time to stop); then north again on Highway 1. *Whew* If, like me, you have a 2 pm booking for the Castle (tours must be booked), and you lingered too long over breakfast outdoors at the delightful Ventana Inn in Big Sur, you will be tired of driving and relieved to have made it in time for the tour, with about 30 seconds to spare.

Now, as to this Castle – you may be wondering. Is it a Castle? No, it’s a country villa (or ‘ranch’, as he called it) built by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper and mining billionaire in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It took him and his architect, Julia Morgan, 28 years to build the thing. It is said that Mr. Hearst (as he is always referred to at The Castle) changed his mind a lot. The general inspiration for the thing was a Spanish medieval cathedral, and that’s just what it looks like. Mr Hearst was fond of collecting, and he collected things like whole monasteries, massive stone fireplaces, convent doors, ancient Egyptian statuary...you get the drift? Hearst Castle is one of those things you should see if you are amazed by what man can produce – it’s in a similar category to, say, Venice or Disneyland.

Spanish church - told you....

The columns on the pavilion are 3rd Century - eek!

It also has the allure of the glamour years of Hollywood: the starlets and the leading men from Burbank and Hollywood would congregate here for country weekends. Mr Hearst built four special guest houses on the estate to accommodate them all. His ‘special friend’ (scandal!) was Miss Marion Davies, a 19 year old starlet when she met him, several decades her senior and married with a wife and five sons in New York to boot. All the great and glamorous gathered at Hearst Castle, and lolled around the pool, played tennis, drank martinis, smoked a lot of cigarettes and dressed for dinner. Winston Churchill stayed here; media barons and industrialists chewed on cigars while Bing Crosby played the piano. You get the idea.

Shall we dress?

It's as if Winston just left the room for a moment....

And what does it look like? Some bits are successfully beautiful; others step over that very fine line into kitsch and absurdity. The hilltop terraces with sweeping views (Hearst owned all the land you can see from up here – inherited from his father who bought it cheap during the gold rush years), the rather spectacular outdoor swimming pool, the overdone but magnificently proportioned drawing room – these worked for me. The facade that looks like a catholic church started to worry me; the dining room is ridiculous: carved choir stalls along the walls, a long refectory table set with six places and some ketchup in the middle, disparate objets like a silver mace and flags from the Sienna horse races – nope, the dining room crossed the line into rampant acquisitive tastelessness.

Ridiculous, now

My gawd.

The movie theatre was acceptable – at least it was true to its era, and we got to watch grainy black and white film of Charlie Chaplin hamming it up around the Castle. And the final piece de résistance was worth the price of admission – the indoor Roman Pool, with its exquisite reflections, gold leaf, marble ladders and copies of Roman tiles.

I left the bus, somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing, and headed to the fast food counter to munch on a beef sandwich – Hearst beef – the family trust still runs the property as a working beef farm. It is said that some zebra, descendants of Mr Hearst’s private zoo, still roam the property amongst the cattle. I kept an eye out, but can’t verify that story.

Paris in the Spring

Printemps

Yes, I had to get up early to catch the 6.22 am Eurostar train to Paris, but you lose one hour when travelling from the UK to Continental Europe, and I had a date. At 11 am, there I was on a corner somewhere in the 12th arrondissement, with my two Paris-based friends (they whose spare bedroom so generously makes a weekend in Paris do-able), and a dozen of their buddies, and a charming Frenchman named Claude. Not only is Claude charming, he is also trained in art history and the history of architecture, speaks many languages, and is one of Paris's top guides.

We assemble.

The walking tour commenced. Today, its goal was to follow what is called (in a rather pedestrian - in both senses - phrase)  la promenade plantee; or (more romantically) coulee verte. We began at a neat 19th century building with a stone-engraved moniker: Chemin de Fer Este - the Eastern Railway. It had once been a station for the railway line coming from the Bastille to Eastern Paris, an area which was once the factories and manufactories of Paris, stuffed with 'social housing' for the workers who kept the wheels of industry turning for the well-heeled of Western Paris.

Elevated garden walkways of the coulee verte

Behind the ex-station we joined the 4 km green belt of grass and parks and gardens known as the coulee verte, built along the route where the railway once ran. In the 1970s, the then-mayor of Paris - one Jacques Chirac - began the work which gave Paris many of its green spaces, including this innovative one.

Modern apartments along the coulee verte

Ateliers in the viaduct arches

Sometimes the coulee verte is at ground level, sometimes the ex-railway line disappears underground; but the most famous stretch is that which runs above the city streets perched on a long stretch of ex-railway viaduct. Below, the arches of the viaduct are filled today with the ateliers of artists and artisans. This is the arrondissement to come to if you need an old document restored, your antique furniture re-upholstered, or a wild, gilt Rococo mirror for your bathroom.


The architecture along the way features some of the original social housing dating from the early 1900s - so 'luxurious' that they rival the newer up-scale apartments. There is also the Gare de l'Est, and a very peculiar building from 1997-8, housing the Police Command and featuring poured concrete caryatids along the roofline in a bizarre chorus line.

A Chorus Line

Claude:
information extraordinaire

Eventually we reached the busy Place in front of the Opera Bastille, the imposing modern 'second' opera house of Paris, designed by the Canadian-Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott, and built 1983 - 1989. It now faces the site of the original Bastille, the notorious prison that was famously stormed on 14th July 1789, and dismantled the next day by the revolutionaries. In the Place, under the wheels of the many cars and buses and motorcycles, you can see the 2D outline in stones of two corner towers of the Bastille, and part of its outer wall. If you cross the road and walk inside the 'walls' you can stop for a beer at Cafe Francais, and sit under an umbrella in the sunshine right inside the site of the Bastille. So we did.

Site of the Bastille - now a civilised cafe.

Reflections in the Opera House

The 12th