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The Getty Museum - Brentwood, California
public domain photo |
The Getty Museum: Legacy of the
World’s Richest Man
non-fiction
by
Gregory E. Larson, AIA
At
the hilltop entrance plaza to the Getty Museum in Southern California, I
listened to the soft hum and flow of vehicles on the 405 freeway, some 800 feet
below. My eyes scanned the adjacent hillsides of Bel Air and Brentwood where
modern mansions perched on the edges and tops of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Farther out, the skylines of Hollywood and L.A., and the Pacific Coastline congealed
with the haze on the horizon. My first impressions of the museum were its size,
the modern design, and the unusual location. The complexities of the museum’s
history, its bigger-than-life benefactor J. Paul Getty, and the massive campus
designed by renowned architect Richard Meier, all seemed to melt away in the
warm sunlight and the cool breeze.
J. Paul Getty’s life (1892-1976) had
many phases and facets. Through cultivating his skills in the Oklahoma oil
patch, he became a millionaire at the age of twenty-three. He briefly tried retirement,
lived in Southern California and partied with the Hollywood set, becoming a
womanizer and a bored bachelor. Eventually, he turned his focus back to the oil
business in Southern California, where he began acquiring other oil companies. Unfortunately,
his business acumen didn’t translate well to his family life. He married and
divorced five times from 1923 to 1958. His focus was on the growing network of
oil companies, as well as chasing women, and he had little time for his
ex-wives and his children.
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View looking south from the entry plaza
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
The
three-quarter-mile-long funicular/tram ride from the valley removed me from the
mundane burdens of the work-a-day world below and delivered me into the heart
of the unusual campus. The building elements of canopies, stairways and
overhangs created interplay of sunlight and shadows. I sensed this was a place
of genuine cultural enlightenment, and quite possibly, a mecca for modern
architecture. As I walked up the steps of the plaza to the main entrance, I
felt I had been transported to a 21st century version of one of the
ancient hilltops of Rome.
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Entry to The Getty Museum
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
Getty’s interest in art began as a
method to shelter his growing wealth from taxes. It was a simple business
solution – not a deep love for the art. He acquired European antiquities of
pottery, furniture and tapestries. The thrill was to find quality items for a
bargain price using the same principles he used in growing the oil business.
The wealthier he became, the more time
and interest he gave to the purchase of art. He surrounded himself with art
critics, brokers and dealers, and absorbed as much information as he could
about the world of art. In his autobiography As I See It, he admits that he became an art addict:
“My
use of drugs doesn’t go beyond the aspirin and antibiotic level. Yet, I am an
apparently incurable art-collecting addict. The habitual narcotics user is said
to have a monkey on his back. I sometimes feel as though I had several dozen
gorillas riding on mine.”
A
journey to the Getty Museum is best described by the joy and energy seen on the
faces of the visitors. Many come to see the collections of art, but quickly become
enthralled with the experience of walking around the buildings, gardens,
sculptures and fountains. The visit is transformed into a restful walk and the
museum campus appeared as one giant piece of art. Couples and families picnic on the grassy hillside and school children laugh and play on the grassy slopes of the garden.
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Visitors relax and stroll at The Getty Museum
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
In his later years, Getty was shamed by
the movers and shakers of the art world to spend sizeable amounts of money on
significant works. Although Getty had become an expatriate U.S. citizen, living
in various places about Europe, he facilitated tours of his art collection at
his Malibu estate, which is a different location than the current Getty Museum.
In 1958, Fortune magazine listed him as
the richest man in the world, and he realized it was necessary to find a
permanent home in Europe which would provide a secure location and a place to
display some of the additional art he had acquired. In 1959, he purchased the
estate of The Duke of Sutherland, Sutton Place, in Surrey, England. Other than
brief travels in England and continental Europe, he stayed in Sutton Place for
the remainder of his life.
In the late 1960s, with growing demand
that he display more of his art collection, he bucked the art world and executed
his own idea for a museum, a recreation of a Roman Villa, built adjacent to his
former home in Malibu. The $17 million museum was the repository for art and
artifacts worth over $200 million ($1 billion in 2013 dollars). A $55 million
charitable trust supported the operation. The reviews of the controversial
museum, which opened in 1974, were mixed, making Getty feel that he had not yet
been embraced by the art world. He never made the trip from his English estate
to see his pet project first-hand.
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The Getty Villa in Malibu, California
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
Upon his death in June of 1976, the
wills of his personal fortune and the Sarah Getty Trust (named for his mother)
were read. The art world was rocked with the revelation that J. Paul Getty had
bequeathed the bulk of his personal estate, over $660 million, to the Getty
Museum. Overnight, the museum had become the wealthiest art institution in the
world. The intent of the $1.2 billion Sarah
Getty Trust was to provide for future generations of the family, but both wills
were contested and tied in litigation for years, due to the complex business
interests and the abstract family tree created by Getty and his wives.
The
visit began in the morning with an architectural walking tour led by one of the
docents. I shared that I was an architect, which caused her to add to the end
of her comments at each stop, “Does the architect have anything to add?” Each time I
tried to respond with something that sounded halfway intelligent.
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Impressionist gallery at The Getty Museum
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
After
lunch at the restaurant with a view of the adjacent hillside neighborhoods, I
visited the temporary exhibit “Overdrive,” which presented the Los Angeles architecture
and urban design of the 20th century. I wandered the fountain plaza
between museum buildings on the way to view the Van Gogh “Irises” painting and
the other impressionist works. The building shapes and textures revealed
themselves while I walked slowly outside. It was a veritable candy land of
modern architecture.
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The Getty Museum Courtyard
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
Once the litigation involving the Getty
Trust was complete in 1982, the board members of the trust determined that a
larger, new museum was necessary to support the collection and the ongoing
acquisitions.
The facts surrounding the design and
construction of the $1.3 billion Getty Center are staggering. It has been
called the “project of the century” and a project “bigger than life.” The 742
acre site in the Santa Monica Mountains in Brentwood was purchased in 1983 for
$25 million, and the board began a year-long process to select a design
architect. A beginning list of 110 architects was eventually pared to three:
Richard Meier, James Sterling, and Fumahiko Maki. Richard Meier, a modernist
architect who had gained international recognition was the final selection. It
was the commission of a lifetime, and it demanded the majority of Meier’s
attention for the next thirteen years.
After a thorough investigation of the
site, Meier decided to place the buildings on two intersecting ridges, one of
which paralleled the freeway below. According to Meier, his buildings embraced
the abstract and became forms in light, playing with volume and surface. He
believes good design must have a timeless look and feel. Meier is a true
modernist. His favorite architect was Le Corbusier, considered one of the
fathers of modern architecture.
As
I walked the plazas, balconies and stairs, many planned and unplanned vistas
and nodes came into view around the corners and spaces between the campus
buildings. At the extreme south end of the complex, I viewed a large, circular
cactus garden, a symbolic exclamation point where the ocean breeze was stiff
and the panoramic view displayed the freeway, the L.A. basin, and the ocean
beyond.
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South promontory - Cactus Garden
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
Two of the biggest design challenges to
the museum design came from the community of Brentwood. Residents of the toney
neighborhood had extreme concerns about the height and color of the proposed
museum. No building was allowed to be 64 feet higher than the hilltop, and the
nearby residents complained they did not want the color to be the stark white
used by Meier on most of his projects. Meier’s solution was to use both
travertine marble and enamel-coated aluminum panels of travertine color for the
building surfaces. When the campus design was unveiled, Meier’s solution
launched him to “rock star” status among the design world.
Construction began in 1989 and continued
beyond the grand opening in December of 1997. For years the daily commuters on
the freeway below watched the slow building progress. The mountaintop location
was formidable, and created havoc with the construction due to the limited
access. Steel, concrete, marble, and glass; all had to be transported up the
narrow road on the steep mountainside.
Over 16,000 tons of travertine marble
were quarried in Bagni di Tivoli, Italy, the same quarry used for the Coliseum
in Rome and for the Colonnade at St. Peter’s at the Vatican. The marble was
sliced and cut into 30” square panels, then shipped to California.
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View of The Getty Museum looking northwest from south promontory
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
I
touched both the rough and smooth travertine surfaces of the buildings,
inspecting the layers of sea floor created over millions of years. It was a
peek into the past, unlocked by the stone cutter. This was permanence –
somewhat different than the temporal feel of
L.A.’s urban landscape.
Meier’s design ego has caused him to
disagree with some decisions made by the museum board, most notably their
decision to hire Robert Irwin to design a garden/park for the south end of the
complex. Although Meier does not approve of the park design, he believes the
total museum experience is a success, creating “order out of chaos.”
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The Getty Museum Central Garden and Azalea Pool
photo by Gregory E. Larson, AIA |
The
walk through the garden was a fitting way to end the day at the museum. I sat
under the metal-sculptured trees, which were individual trellises for the crepe
myrtle. There were smiles on the faces of young and old as they passed. Most
had a peaceful, happy look, as if they knew this was a time of respite and a
place to forget about the daily world below, a place to appreciate art and
nature on the same day.
Robert Irwin, a modern artist, had
accomplished very few gardens when asked to design the garden space at the
Getty Center. The controversial garden, which included a pool with a maze of
azaleas has become a favorite spot for museum visitors. The stream begins with
a fountain at the edge of the entry plaza, and takes advantage of the natural
south slope of the space between the Getty Research Institute and the Getty
Museum buildings. The London Plane trees which line the stream create a
micro-climate through which the public passes several times on the path to the
azalea pool.
As
I walked the plaza steps to board the funicular/tram and exited the museum, I
realized that J. Paul Getty, a legendary tightwad and the world’s richest man,
had finally opened up his money bags one last time. The giving gesture at his
death was, in some way, a final attempt to be accepted by the art world. The
campus and museum, an enclave of enlightenment and a space free to the public,
is proof that his legacy will continue on much longer than his life.
Sources:
Getty,
J. Paul, autobiography, As I See It, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1976.
Lenzner,
Robert, The Great Getty – The Life and
Loves of J. PAUL GETTY – Richest Man in the World, New York, NY, Crown
Publishers, 1985.
Panich,
Paula, The California Garden – Robert Irwin
still marvels at Getty Gardens 10 years later, Los Angeles Times, style
section, July 24, 2008.
The
Getty Museum – Architecture Tour, June 19, 2013.
