gategrrl

Last week I busted out and went to the Getty Museum AND the Getty Villa in the same week! The Getty on Wednesday, and the Villa on Friday.

Goes without saying that both places are the bomb when it comes to artwork, and settings, and fountains. Fountains are immensely relaxing. At the Getty I bought a little notebook and started scribbling down notes about specific paintings that really caught my eye. Oh, and the French Tapestry room? Holy cows, talk about impressive. The woman gaurding the tapestry room told me that yes, the wall coverings were real silk papers imported from France, specifically for those rooms. Incredible jewel-toned walls. In fact, the rooms were so impressive, the actual tapestries and home objects in it were secondary.

Here are the paintings that wowed me to bits:

Titian: Penitent Magdelene (1560) 

  This doesn't capture the subtlities of the painting by a long shot. You don't see the tear rolling out of her eye. It's *beautiful* - and I happen to ignore the text behind the picture. Looked at that way (or not) it's a wonderful rendition of a spiritual moment. You don't have to follow the bible to see that.

Dosso Dossi: St George (1513-1315)

 I nearly fell over when I saw this incredibe psychological painting. You only see the head of the dragon poking into the frame, presumably with George holding it up. The modeling on the face is sensitive, subtle, and complex, and George's expression is one that shows a very complex mix of relief, exhaustion, WTFness (if that existed by in the late middle ages) and anything but Heroic. Note the date - I had to look more than once at it because, art background or not, I wasn't aware that this kind of subtle intimate painting, of such realism, was done during that time period. The painting itself is relatively small. If it's related to any other painting, I'd say the Mona Lisa is in the same ball park. Big wow.

Giovanni Savoldo: Shepard with Flute ~(1525)

 Only copy of this I could find on the internet. It's much larger on the wall, of course. I'd say about five feet high by four feet wide. This one caught my attention because it looked for ALL the world like old fashioned day-for-night in the movies - you know, when John Wayne would be doing action at "night" but it was really during the day, and during processing, they'd darken the film with a dark blue filter? Yeah, like that. Everything had a blue cast on it, which made the red fabric treatment pop out. I spent some time perusing this painting, but other than the color technique, it didn't have too much else to offer, other than strong composition and very neat detailing in the pastoral background. Nice clouds, too.

Ercole de Roberti: St. Jerome in the Wilderness ~(1470)

 Now, this baby is about the size of a poster board poster a teenager might hang up in their room. You can't see it here on this reproduction, but the virtue in this painting is in the surrealistic detailing. There's a small dog/cat/lion by his feet, in the cave. It's hard to tell exactly what it is, but that's not really the point of this painting. I wish I could blow it up so y'all could see it close up (I was afraid one of the gaurds was going to tell me to back away slowly from it). The color scheme reminds me a lot of seventies (1970s) fantasy paintings, as well, with the blue-green skies, the buildings in ruins, sparse trees...very Frazetta. To me, that is. Of course, if it were Frazetta painting this, there's be a hunky muscled man posed there, with a slinky barely dressed babe where the cat is positioned. Again, it's hard to believe that this was painted in the middle ages. I suppose it's the great circle of art life? There really is nothing new in art. 

Now, I am NOT a religious person, in that I do not adhere to any organized religion or their tenets. But it should be obvious that the reason so many religious paintings do speak to the universal in us (or some of us, I make no claims to vouch for everyone) is that human emotion isn't limited to one religion. Having said that, here's the one painting, beside the Magadalene by Titian, that really blew my socks off.

 Coreggio, Head of Christ. (1525-1530)

Small painting, about life-sized, I'd guess, or slightly smaller. Like the St George painting, a masterpiece in subtle modeling of emotion. Again, in reproduction, it misses a lot of the intent and detail and lighting. There are shadows you can see in the painting that are simply so gradual that it's easy to miss them if you aren't standing right there in front of it. There's plenty of drama here, but like the other paintings that stood out for me, this takes place during a quiet moment in a very momentus occasion (to say the *least*). God, they say, is in the details (yet again). A woman in the crowd has given Christ a white veil to help cool him off, and you can see the fringing in the lower right corner. The veil also gives Coreggio a nice monotoned background, so he doesn't have to deal with extraneous detail behind Jesus, giving the face and hair and thorns all the detail he can muster. It's as heroic and exhausted as St George, but with the same quality of personal connection to God as the Magadelene painting. I wonder if Titian examined this painting in any way. I don't know too much about this period - considering how wonderful these paintings are, I'm probably going to check out the history in more depth.

So. Have YOU been to an art museum lately? Modern, ancient, whatever school of art? Talk about it!