Getty Art + Ideas

Adolph Menzel was a 19th-century pioneer of German realism. His paintings, drawings, and prints capture reality with remarkable truth and atmosphere. In this episode, art historian Werner Busch discusses why there has been so little published about this important artist in English. He also examines the biographical and historical events that shaped Menzel’s work and the course it took. Busch is former professor of art history at Freie Universität Berlin and author of "Adolph Menzel: The Quest for Reality" (Getty Publications, 2017).

In this episode, an interview with German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer doesn’t go as planned. But all is not lost. Despite—or perhaps as a consequence of—the disruptions, a candid and thoughtful conversation ensues. Kiefer’s work confronts controversial issues from recent history, including the power of war and the cycle of destruction and renewal. He is co-recipient of the 2017 J. Paul Getty Medal, an award that honors extraordinary contributions to the practice, understanding, and support of the arts.

Gold nose adornments, feather paintings, and beaded shell collars. These are some of the objects featured in the Getty’s current exhibition, "Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas," which traces the development of luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity to the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. We visit the galleries with co-curators Joanne Pillsbury, Timothy Potts, and Kim Richter who discuss how the study of objects made of gold, jade, shell, feathers, and other stones from this region reveals different perspectives on value and luxury. Joanne Pillsbury is the Andrall E. Pearson Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Timothy Potts is director of the J. Paul Getty Museum; and Kim Richter is senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute.

In September 2017 the Getty launched Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a regional exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. In a three-part series, we hear about the development of one of the Getty exhibitions that is part of this initiative, "Making Art Concrete: Works from Argentina and Brazil in the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros." The exhibition is now open! In this final conversation, we meet the curatorial and conservation teams in the galleries to visit the show they’ve been working on for the past several years. We hear from the Getty Conservation Institute’s Tom Learner and Pia Gottschaller, the Getty Research Institute’s Andrew Perchuk and Zanna Gilbert, as well as the University of California, Riverside’s Aleca Le Blanc.

The year 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and the 55th anniversary of the opening of Dodger Stadium. Jerald Podair, author of "City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles," tells the story of the controversial construction of this famed stadium and its impact on the surrounding landscape. Podair is professor of history and the Robert S. French Professor of American Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Walter Hopps was a legendary curator of contemporary art who revolutionized the museum realm with radical exhibitions and an enduring support for contemporary art and artists. Published earlier this year, "The Dream Colony: A Life in Art," is an autobiographical account of Hopps’s life, compiled by Anne Doran, an arts writer, and edited by Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of "The New Yorker." The book includes an introduction by Ed Ruscha, who knew Hopps for many years. The authors visited the Getty earlier this year to talk about the book and Hopps’s lasting impact. This episode is a recording of that conversation.

In the galleries of the Getty Museum are two works of art with an interesting connection. The first, a magnificent cabinet with intricate stone inlay, gilded statuettes, and an array of compartments and hidden drawers. The second, a commanding portrait bust made of marble. At almost six feet tall, the Borghese-Windsor Cabinet, as it’s called, was originally commissioned for Pope Paul V, who is the subject of the marble portrait bust by the renowned sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. We visit the galleries to see and discuss these works with the Getty’s Anne-Lise Desmas, head of sculpture and decorative arts, and Arlen Heginbotham, decorative arts conservator.

The close relationships between artists and authors in 19th-century France is evidenced in the illustrious novels of Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, J. K. Huysmans, and Guy de Maupassant. These novelists wrote about painting, created painters as characters, and physically described characters in the vein of their painter-friends. Anka Muhlstein, author of "The Pen and The Brush: How Passion for Art Shaped Nineteenth-Century French Novels," discusses how the intimate exchange between authors and artists influenced the literary current of the time.

Although Jackson Pollock’s iconic "Mural" (1943) may appear to have been swiftly executed, close examination of the paint and archival photographs reveals otherwise. In the second half of a two-part conversation, Laura Rivers and Yvonne Szafran, conservators at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Alan Phenix and Tom Learner, scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute, and Andrew Perchuk, deputy director at the Getty Research Institute, focus on how conservation and scientific analysis enhance our art historical understanding of Pollock and his work.

Jackson Pollock’s "Mural" (1943) is a monumental eight-by-twenty foot work that marks a turning point in the artist’s career and the course of American art. In 2012, "Mural" traveled to the Getty for conservation, cleaning, and study, which revealed groundbreaking information about the work and its creator. In the first half of a two-part conversation, Laura Rivers and Yvonne Szafran, conservators at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Alan Phenix and Tom Learner, scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute, and Andrew Perchuk, deputy director at the Getty Research Institute, tell the story of this important work.

At age eighteen, Chris Killip saw an image by Henri Cartier-Bresson and decided to become a photographer. Killip, who grew up on the Isle of Man, documents social landscapes and is known for a series of powerful images of struggling industrial communities in North East England. We hear from Killip about his past working as an assistant to advertising photographer Adrian Flowers, his experience rediscovering images from work made decades ago, and his love for black-and-white photographs. Killip is professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University.

While working in Chandigarh, Le Corbusier also developed projects in Ahmedabad, the former capital of Gujarat, 740 miles southeast of Chandigarh. In the second of a two-part series on modern architecture in India, we hear from B. V. Doshi, Le Corbusier’s “man on the job” for his projects in Ahmedabad. Doshi shares his experiences as a young architect working with Le Corbusier in Paris and recounts various projects he managed in Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.

After the Partition of India in 1947, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier to build Chandigarh, a new capital city that would be, in Nehru’s words, “symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past.” In the first of a two-part series on modern architecture in India, Maristella Casciato reveals how Le Corbusier led a team of architects in the design and construction of Chandigarh’s urban plan and architecture. Casciato is senior curator of architectural collections at the Getty Research Institute and a leading authority on the work of Le Corbusier.

Season 2 launches on July 12, 2017.

Microchip processing plants, space training centers, and abandoned bunkers. These are just a few of the subjects represented in the work of British artists and twin sisters Jane and Louise Wilson. The Wilsons create captivating and ethereal photographs, videos, and installations of landscapes and architectural spaces that reveal layered narratives of history and mankind. In this episode, the Wilsons share how they began collaborating amidst an emerging London art scene and discuss significant works throughout their career. Jane and Louise Wilson were shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 and exhibit their work internationally.