Two Radically Different Exhibits at the Getty Museum Essay

Getty Museum

Before making plans to personally visit the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I spent an hour or so researching the museum, Mr. Getty, and some of the issues that this richest of all art museums had recently faced. The assignment calls for finding out what is available to see, and I also found out what was not available to see. One important statue that I would have liked to have viewed was the ancient Greek "goddess of love," Aphrodite, that that iconic statue had been repatriated back to Italy in 2011. My research also showed that the trend for museums that have antiquities on display is to return those art pieces to their rightful countries, if they were purchased from dealers who either stole them or bought them from thieves. In fact the Getty Museum has given back 47 pieces in the last few years (the Metropolitan Museum in New York has given back 21). This has enormous historical significance because these treasures belong to the countries and the people in those countries, and it is an international crime to smuggle them out, or to buy them from someone who did smuggle them or otherwise obtained them through illegal means.

My Visit to the Getty Museum

Meanwhile, on a recent Tuesday afternoon I rode the tram up the steep hill to the Getty, which is a shining building on top a hill overlooking the ocean to the west and the City of Los Angeles to the south.

I walked through the halls and into the large high ceiling rooms that were crowded with visitors, and viewed several works of art that I really was drawn to -- but they were created before 1600, so they didn't qualify for this paper. However, I do have to explain that I truly enjoyed a painting by Flemish artist Lieven van Lathen ("Romance of Gillion de Trazegnies"). Three friars are pointing to a passage in a book, perhaps a Bible, and a man with a red hat looking not at the friars but at something above them (1464). The impression a viewer gets is that the friars were trying to point out something important in that book (probably the Bible) but the man in the tall red hat had higher aspirations.

Another painting I was attracted to was "The Crucifixion," a beautiful, stunning painting of Christ on the cross that was painted by Giuliano Amadei in the 15th century. I don't generally like drawings or paintings of Jesus Christ being murdered on the cross, but this one was very interesting because at the bottom of the main picture there is another smaller painting of a group of people apparently carrying the deceased savior to what they apparently thought would be his final resting place. On either side of the main drawing are smaller images of people who might be his disciples except that there are just ten of them.

Exhibition -- The Scandalous Art of James Ensor

This Belgium painter had a wild imagination and was obviously going against the grain and marching to his own drummer because his paintings were radical and bizarre. The description of his life reflects that he was an international celebrity at the end of his career, but when he was younger he was provocative and created scandals. Looking at his art work one can easily see why he made waves and created scandals.

I spent perhaps twenty or thirty minutes looking at this exhibition. I had never seen art so gross and even scary. I guess the bold outrageousness of his work made me want to see more of it and…