Art through ages

Getty Centre in California is dedicated to study of the visual arts. Famous for its
architecture and gardens, it also has one of the most-visited museums in the United States.
It contains western art from the Middle Ages to the present, writes S. S. Bhatti

Set on about 750 acres, J. Paul Getty Centre has been designed by
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier

The first view of Getty Centre can be an unforgettable experience: at once entertaining, informing and uplifting. Nestling in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty centre is set on about 750 acres of undulating land. This unusual complex houses a museum, art galleries, picnic areas, restaurants and much more. Designed by the New York-based Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier, the centre famous for its architecture, gardens, and views (overlooking Los Angeles). It was opened to the public in December 1997.

Besides the museum, the vast complex houses the buildings of Getty Research Institute, Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation and the administrative offices of J. Paul Getty Trust, which owns and operates the center.

The exciting agglomerate of marvellous buildings crowns the hilltop. The three-car automated tram takes visitors three-quarters of a mile up the hill at a speed of 10 miles per hour. According to the architect, the five-minute ride to the summit, 881 feet above the sea level, is designed to give visitors a feeling of "being elevated out of their day-to-day experience". In my view, however, it gives them a psycho-emotional preparedness to look forward to a more exhilarating experience that awaits them in the many galleries set in the aesthetic ambience of an offbeat landscape.

Richard Meier has exploited the two naturally occurring ridges (which diverge at an angle of 22.5 degree) by overlaying two grids along these axes. These grids serve to define the space of the campus, while distinguishing the import of the buildings on it. Along one axis lies the four galleries; and along the other, the administrative buildings. The primary grid structure is a 30-inch square. Most wall and floor elements are 30-inch squares or some derivative thereof. Three of the most significant concepts of the architect’s work are light, colour, and space.

The museum’s permanent collection includes many pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs. Among the works on display, there are many famous paintings, including Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises and Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) by Paul Gauguin.

The display of objects d’ art is especially ingenious. In one section, where the bronze-casting procedure and process are on view, the general ambience is dark so that spotlights focus only on the careful step-by-step display, showing various stages of development of the art-object — beginning with the sketch, making of the armature, followed by modelled form until it reaches the finished polished state. The display is supported by video screening of the method in various stages of development.

In the sculpture section, the display is done as if it was in the studio of a great sculptor of the past. This effect is aesthetically enhanced by a skylight, set high up in the roof.

The gardens and landscaping at Getty Centre provide a counterpoint of colour and texture to the complex of buildings. Most notable is the Central Garden — a creation of artist Robert Irwin, who has called it "a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art". Getty Centre’s other gardens were designed by landscape architect Laurie Olin, in collaboration with Richard Meier. The architecture and garden tours are offered daily, lasting 30 to 45 minutes.

For a connoisseur of art and architecture, it will take at least one month to see all buildings of the complex, collections of art works inside the museums, the outdoor sculptures, various vistas, etc.

Getty Centre is grandeur of architecture; glorification of nature, and gratification of human culture. It would be no exaggeration to say that the centre can match great architecture and great architects anywhere in the world. For example, Le Corbusier’s Museum in Chandigarh is one of the greatest buildings of the modern world. But it is a mere building, an incomparable sculpture at that. All it does is to awe the visitor by creating a powerful visual impact — even at the cost of the art-works, which it houses. The display of objects inside does little to enhance the beauty of the exhibits, or to draw attention to their intrinsic aesthetic or historic value.

In sharp contrast, Richard Meier, far less known, inspired by the relationship among disparate aspects of Los Angeles’s landscape — the Pacific Ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains and the vast street-grid of the city, designed the complex to highlight both nature and culture.

Meier’s creation thus extends the scope of architecture to a multi-sensory ambience that makes the contemplation of the objets d’art a participatory and an uplifting experience that arouses your curiosity and inspires your creativity. A visitor is drawn into the heart of the creative process itself that extols nature as a setting for admiring human genius, which glows from its own inner illumination to cast a spell of joyous wonder as a consequence of exalted culture.

How true when we consider this subtle fact in the light of the architect’s own philosophy: "Places are goals or foci where we experience the meaningful events of our existence, but these are also points of departure from which we orient ourselves and take possession of the environment. A place is something that evokes a notion of permanence and stability in us." One distinguished author has succinctly observed, "Richard Meier has created a cultural acropolis for the 21st century, striking a balance between humanist, classical organisation and organic forms."

HOME