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(** for some reason, the photos are all over the place in this entry - sorry about that! not sure there's much I can do about it, so please bear with it***)


Getty was an oligarch-turned-philanthropist, who invested an art trust fund with hugely valuable shares in his own company, for the establishment of an art museum and upon the condition that the art was free.

Two centres were set up: the Getty Villa in Malibu, which I saw on Wed 5 May and the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, which I actually saw on Tues 4 May.

THE GETTY VILLA

The Getty Villa was the first establishment. It's in the form of a Roman villa buried in Herculeneum, and stands on a hill in Malibu, with commanding views over the ocean and the surrounding land. Today it houses the Roman, Greek and Etruscan artefacts owned by the Getty foundation, and contains an impressive Aztec exhibition.

I tried to play 'spot the pot', using my amphora-guide printed in the museum's plan, but soon gave that up and tried to spot the hero/god instead. Sadly I didn't fare much better with that - I swear sometimes they label a statue as Venus just because she's naked. (Hillariously, there is a special touch and learn exhibit in the museum - a statue of Venus! The idea being a lesson in art as well as anatomy?)

The Aztec exhibit was very cool - and a little gruesome. The Aztec gods and goddesses are much creepier than the Greco-Roman pantheon. There was a strong theme of blood sacrifice - the gods' initial sacrifice to bring the Aztec people into being and the people's sacrifices to honour and emulate the gods.

Interestingly, one statue was of a dead goddess who rebelled against her mother, a goddess of creation who became pregnant by rescuing a bird and tucking it into her clothes (as you do). The goddess claimed that her mother's pregnancy was shameful and organised her brothers for an attack. The mother goddess gave birth at the opportune moment to a full-grown, fully-armoured warrior, who defeated the rebels. Strangely, the rebel-goddess wasn't reviled as a traitor, nor was her story a moral lesson on the virtues of fillial loyalty - rather her sacrifice is venerated, as it allowed the Aztec people to be born. The story turns our Western myths on their head.

Another part of the exhibit was the famous eagle-warrior statue, which was very beautiful. I always find it quite surreal looking at art that's world famous, as though it can't be real. Oh and the demon statues were terrifying. There was also an amazing screen mural of a conquistador battle, which was beautifully detailled and must have taken a painstakingly long time to paint.

Exhibits aside, the museum buildings and gardens were really nicely set out (I'd have loved to be the Roman daughter living in such a villa), with water integrated in clever ways. The roads leading up to the villa were also paved in Roman style, and looked great but were a little hard on car tyres.

My only disappointment with the villa was the fact that I was treated with suspicion and almost as a second-class citizen because I arrived by bus and on foot, rather than by car. That left a rather bad taste in my mouth and, in general, I found the staff at entrance to the Getty Villa stand-offish. I was probably more sensitive to this because I was tired and because the staff at the Getty Centre the day before had been so lovely. I'm told that the distrust of pedestrians is a Malibu things, as the local residents are suspicious of anyone who doesn't own a car.

THE GETTY CENTRE

This I visited on the Tuesday. It was built after the Villa, again on a hill, and was apparently hugely controviersial. The local residents resisted the edifice and imposed lots of restrictions. The architect was Meier - a New York born architect whose speciality is white-enamelled metal. He was forced by the local residents not to use his signature blinding white on the Getty Centre (for understandable reasons) and so settled for this really pretty sand-coloured limestone from Italy.

He still managed to sneak some white enammelled buildings into the complex, though, but fortunately not that many as, to me at least, they look like dental surgeries... That said, the centre itself is gorgeous - especially since Meier's buildings link into gardens designed as a 'living sculpture' (hmmm I wasn't convinced by that particular bit of sophistry) by an artist called Irwin, who was a California local.

In keeping with Getty's bequest, the art, tours and cable car to the centre are all free. I declined to take the cable car on the way up, choosing the path (yes, I know, I'm contrary - but I was told it was worth it. Turns out that was not entirely true, unless walking by the side of a road is your idea of worth it - but the views were good.)

The first thing I saw at the centre were Irwin's gardens, as I took a tour - the guide, a volunteer, was interesting but left most of the exploring to us. And, in fairness, the gardens do speak for themselves. You descend through a zig-zag pattern, which crosses and recrosses over a stream filled with boulders and rocks of decreasing size, which change the sound of the stream as you progress. The stream is borded by flower beds and shaded by trees, pruned so that they give a dappled light.

At the bottom of the stream, there are two sitting areas below metal tree-like structures with bougainvillea (as ever) in the 'branches', which look very effective. Then there's a waterfall down into a sunken lake with bushes (sadly no longer in flower) in spiral shapes. Around this basin there are three rings of flower beds, each at a higher level than the next, so you can follow them round and slowly descend towards the basin. The effect is of concentric circles, radiating out from the water. The gardens were beautiful and sounded peaceful, but, sadly, didn't smell at all, which was so disappointing given the promise of all those flowers. Still, smell aside, the gardens are still worth seeing, and at the bottom you have a view back over the gardens and up to the centre.

My next tour was of innovation and inspiration in Renaissance art, which was sadly not as interesting as it promised - partly because the exhibits themselves are quite small, although I'm told that permanent exhibits rotate regularly. The art that was on dsplay was beautiful - they had a particularly stunning Fra Angelico, whose colours were crystall clear.

One of the paintings we saw (an Allegory of Luck) had a story behind it: it was commissioned, painted and displayed in Italy (potentially by Isabelle d'Este for her son's wedding) then went missing and turned up however many hundreds of years later at a car boot sale in New York. One enterprising man recognised it as something of value and bought it for $1000. It was badly damaged, and had a whole chunk missing, still he sold it at auction for $4 million. The Getty Centre repurchased it from the original buyer and restored it - the Centre has a large academic centre, library and restoration facility, of which it is very proud - and to look at it now, you'd never know it had been in a lamentable state. Apparently, the missing parts were filled in in a water-soluble paint so that it can be easily removed by a later owner, should they ever want to see the original as it stands without modern restoration.

After the tour, I headed, inevitably, to the modern art gallery (they had some lovely examples of Manet, and I saw Monet's Impression of a Sunrise, which kicked the whole impressionism movement off - I was very excited to finally see it - although the Degas were disappointing), and finished the day with an architectural tour. The guide was a completely batty Englishwoman, who was very knowledgable and witty but kept losing her thread (I think it was the last tour of the day) and leaping all over the place. She pointed out that the limestone the Centre is made of contains fossilised remains in some places.

Then it was back to the cable car and off home.

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