Getty Center

Earlier in the week before my birthday (way back in September), I also went to the Getty Center. It's one of my favorite places in L.A., after all. It's a bit of a drive, but it just means that I have more time to listen to Patti Digh's 'Life is a Verb' CDs.

I'll spare you the whole driving-there part.

If you haven't been to the Getty (along the 405): The gardens and architecture are stunning. The art collection is flat out mindboggling.

I was on a mission, though, since my favorite painting ever, Jean-Léon Gérôme's 'Pygmalion and Galatea' was on display. Click here to take a peek at the whole collection that was on display. The 'Pygmalion' painting is about third or fourth from the end.

There were rooms and rooms of paintings, reproductions and statues. I wasn't expecting that much work to be shown! I went speedwalking through the rooms - and through each new room, walking a little faster and with a steadily growing concern - trying to first find the 'Pygmalion' painting. I was a little panicked.

Wouldn't you know: This lovely painting was in the last room of the exhibit.

Whew.

Maybe it was the relief of finally finding it; getting to see a painting in person that I've admired for so very long was ... well, it was quite the moment.

I recall doing a paper on Gérôme in high school. He caused a bit of a controversy and still does. In a time when artistic movements were emerging and gaining great strength and acclaim (oh, Impressionism, for example), Gérôme was a hold-out, continuing to paint in a very realistic style. Also, he was criticized (quite sharply) that he chose his subjects for commercial gain, not necessarily for artistic expression. You could compare this to a great new musical artist that is edgy and uniquely experimental in the beginning, that in his/her second and third albums seems to play it far more 'safe' to cater to a wider, more lucrative mainstream audience. Even today, to imagine Gérôme creating his art at the same time as the other Impressionist paintings in the Getty, you can clearly sense that his work was more than just a bit out of place.

All the same, the paintings were spectacular, technically bursting with aching realism, and full of theatrical gestures. Woo!

After swooning over 'Pygmalion and Galatea' for a nice long while, I walked back to the beginning of the exhibit and took everything in, in proper order.

Afterwards, I had a little bit of time to pass before heading back home, so I thought I'd sit in the garden, which is just gorgeous and well worth a trip to the Getty, all on its own. While I was sitting there, contemplating doing a painting, a tour group passed by. The docent commented about the problem that the garden designers had with deer.The local deer, they were concerned, would come through and nom their way through this huge, well-tended feast of blossoms and greens.

[I mean, heck, wouldn't you?]

And the museum couldn't do anything to actively 'harrass' or harm the deer to deter them.

So the garden designers planted huge drifts of society garlic, to deter the deer using the pungent smell of garlic. 'Huge' as in 'On a HUGELY OVERWHELMING scale'. I'd heard this before and had dismissed it without trying to decide if it would be an effective strategy or not. It's one of those things that makes you go, "Heh. Interesting", and you keep walking along. But that particularly fine day in September, while I was sitting among all those dainty purple blooms ...

... waiting for the tour group to clear away so I could take this shot...



... I almost KEELED over from the fumes. The memory of it all lingers, violently! I was woozy for days afterwards.

Be glad - very glad - there's no more Smell-o-Vision.

Getty Villa

Since my birthday (the 13th) was on a Monday - - the first Monday of my Fall term, in fact - - we celebrated by going out the weekend before. J had never been to the Getty Villa, so we went there.

The Villa was closed in 1997 for renovations, which took quite some time.
J goes, "What do you mean, 'closed for quite some time'? How long can renovations take?"
Me: "Um, I think maybe 9 or 10 years. They moved the collection to the Getty Center."
Him: "Boy, maybe they weren't working very quickly."

All this construction skepticism faded away once we got there. The architecture is fantastic and lovely, and the gardens - like those at the Getty Center - are a joy to be in. You could spend more time wandering through the buildings and marveling at the details than actually looking (or poking, as the case might be) at the art.

We were deliberate in going through all the rooms, to make sure we didn't miss anything. The first room was the Family Forum. Normally we speed right through those - either too many screaming kids running around or just not quite engaging for people over the age of, let's say, 5. I was skeptical, ready to breeze through it.

I have to say that the Getty sure got it right, though.

From their website:

'Step into a scene from an ancient vase in the shadow-pose area, where you can transform yourself into an athlete, musician, or even a monster and act out your own original stories.
[We saw several groups of adults act out scenes with the props they had. What a hoot!]

Explore vase-painting techniques used by ancient craftsmen in the vase-decorating area, where you can rub patterns off designs inspired by ancient examples or draw on life-sized replicas of ancient vases.'

So they have dry erase markers and life-sized vases to draw on. Oh my. We plunked ourselves right down there on those teeny little chairs, not worrying about making all the precious antiquities in the other rooms wait (heck, they've been waiting a long time, being antiquities and all. Another 10 minutes wouldn't hurt) and drew:


Mine. Note that the guy stick figure has very hunky biceps. Yes, indeed.


J's.

He teaches calculus. Does it show?

Dreamy gardens

I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigor of spring, as well as an infinite variety of color that no artifact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival... each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday. -Bernard Berenson

I spent some time in the library this week to look for books with good reference images of plants, trees, shrubbery ("Bring me a shwubbery!"). To daydream about a future garden. Or to paint. But mostly to daydream (you can imagine this, yes?). Flipping through, I realized that I have gardening books with great photos. And then I realized that I have plenty of really super images (or, nice images of super memories) from a class I took in school. It was an elective, The History of Gardens. There were lectures, but the field trips were the real treat. We toured a number of local Southern California gardens, both private and public. It was just fantastic.

The Lummis Home / El Alisal
The Getty
Huntington Library
Norton Simon
Descanso
Lotusland
Hannah Carter Japanese Garden

One assignment of the class was to keep a garden notebook, with images, trimmings, thoughts from the gardens and notes on several of our design assignments. I found my notebook and flipped through the pictures, thinking, daydreamily, "Oh, now these are what I should paint."

I managed to find and salvage the digital photo files from archive CDs and lookit, it’s just so much fun and so much from a bright sunny Southern California summer, that I had to share.


Click here for the Flickr photo set.

Sending dreamy thoughts of the first bursts of color of spring and the warmth of summer to you all. Have a great weekend. xox -w

Eva Zeisel exhibit

When you hear people gush about industrial design, you’ll typically hear words like, “Cool! Juicy! Sexy! Aggressive!” Boy, I’ve just, uh, enhanced the traffic to my site from search engines. We all love the sleek, hip, new, crazy stuff, yup. I love to look at it all, too, but I also crave the soothing pause of very lovely and graceful design that doesn’t feel the need to smack you over your head.
Sunday, I went to see the Eva Zeisel exhibit at one of the smaller museums in Los Angeles, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, across the street from LACMA.

Seeing the work in person is much like seeing any other kind of classic work in person. You know how great it is from lecture slides and books. But in person, it’s just so much more lovely and so enchanting. Yes, it is so wonderful that you just wish you could pick up the pieces and hold them, as they were meant to be, in your hands. The quotes and video add layers of warmth to the exhibit.
One quote, up high on a wall, seemed to sum up the overall theme and tone quite nicely:
“Years ago, when I was asked about good design, I answered ‘Love is a very personal matter’ …”

I wish I could share it with you. Photos weren’t allowed in the gallery (yes, imagine my great sigh of disappointment!). If you’re in the area, stop by and see it. It continues through December 30th. Yes, it's a small museum. The exhibit is small enough that you don't mind sitting through the whole video, but not so small to be completely underwhelming. Maybe. It'd be a good pause for your day.

Getty Villa photos

This one is just a preview ...

Here's the link to the images from

the Getty Villa!