A Visit to Getty Center

The Getty Center has a maze garden down below

This morning we visited the Getty Center, which houses a large collection of art, from the Middle Ages to the Impressionists and contemporary photography that are constantly rotated on show.

It's free admission as long as you register online, and if you are vaccinated then you don't need to wear masks in the museum, but a must on the tram that takes visitors on a short ride up to the museum made up of a few buildings.

The museum celebrates its 25th anniversary

Each has different themed works, from paintings and sculptures, to photography and furniture. While the exterior of the buildings is very contemporary, inside the rooms match the different themes and all are furnished with beautiful wood floors. 

Early on I stepped too close to a painting and a security guard came over to quietly whisper in my ear to stand a bit further away next time. The staff also seem to be quite knowledgeable of the collections too, not just on directions to get from one place to another.

Some of the highlights we saw:

We were lucky to catch a small show on the Impressionists, and there were famous paintings by Claude Monet, including The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light. In the description, the cathedral was less important as a religious symbol than as a richly textured surface on which light could play with colourful variation. 

Another was Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning, where he painted wheatstacks near his garden at Giverny during different times of day and seasons in the year. He captured light on the wheatstacks using different colours.

Thrilled to be able to see this painting in person

One painting I hadn't seen before was Paul Cezanne's Young Italian Woman at the Table. A young peasant woman in plain clothes looks reflective as she rests her elbow and arm on a richly colourful and textured piece of fabric. It's an interesting contrast between her and the fabric.

The absolute highlight is Vincent Van Gogh's Irises. A few years ago I traveled to Saint-Remy, where we saw the sanitarium where he stayed for several months. I also saw the stunning film Loving Vincent, which is completely animated in the style of his paintings. It was gobsmacking amazing to watch and the storyline interesting too.

Then last year my good friend treated me to tickets to a one-man play called Vincent, based on the letters between the artist and his brother Theo, that reveal some interesting personal information about Van Gogh that I didn't know before. He had studied to become a priest and at one point was in love with his cousin but her family did not approve.

Cunningham famous for calla lilies

The Irises painting is colourful and textured; the leaves are undulating, while there are various shades of blue and purple contrasting with green, yellow and orange.

In another building we saw a retrospective on photographer Imogen Cunningham, quite the trailblazer from 1913 till her death in 1976. She photographed almost all her images in black and white, focusing on contrast and composition. 

She is best known for her calla lily pictures, as well as magnolias, focusing on the flowers in her garden in the mid to late 1920s. Cunningham also extended to shapes of the naked body, as well as portraits of people for her commercial work. 

One picture is of her father at the age of 90 posing with his cane next to a pile of wood he had just chopped. He had a large mane of silver white hair neatly combed and he seems bemused that his daughter would want to take a picture of him.

J Paul Getty collected a lot of French Roccoco furniture, and one of the first items he bought was the portrait of King Louis XIV. Some of the furniture included a very elaborate looking desk and writing stand.

Innovative uses of Chinese bowls!

Another called Lidded Bowl, where two Chinese bowls from Kangxi's reign are placed with one inverted over the other to form a lid. Then the two bowls are decorated with gilt bronze mounts to create a very expensive potpourri vessel, where flower petals and spices were placed in there to create a pleasing scene in the room as people during the 18th century didn't bathe much...

The Getty Center is also a nice place to just sit around outside and have coffee, lunch or snacks. We had a substantial lunch of sandwiches, a large garden salad filled with greens, fennel, tomatoes, pistachios, and farrow. 

The museum even offers umbrellas for people to use to shade themselves from the direct sun when moving from one building to the other and leave the umbrella outside before going into the next building.

We didn't make it down to the maze garden with the hot temperatures near 30 degrees, but it's a wonderful place to wander around, see some fantastic works of art and enjoy the scenery at the same time.

Getty Center

1200 Getty Center Drive

Los Angeles, CA 90049