Getty Art + Ideas

When Arthur Drexler retired in 1986 from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, he was the longest-serving curator and department head in the history of the Museum, a distinction he holds to this day. Hired in 1951 by Philip Johnson, the first director of the Museum’s groundbreaking Department of Architecture and Design, Drexler promoted a wide range of architects and saw great changes to architectural theory and practice during his thirty-five-year tenure. In this episode, historian Thomas Hines discusses the early history of the Department of Architecture and Design under Philip Johnson before delving into the background and career of Arthur Drexler. Hines is professor emeritus of history and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles and the author of the new book by Getty Publications Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art: The Arthur Drexler Years, 1951-1986.

Contemporary artist Tacita Dean works in many mediums to create a varied and compelling body of work, from collections of four-leaf clovers to chalk drawings to filmed portraits of artists. In 2018, a wide array of these works was on view during three simultaneous exhibitions in London: one at the National Portrait Gallery, one at the National Gallery, and one at the Royal Academy of Arts. Taking those exhibitions as a starting point, in this episode Dean discusses her working methods, her approach to her subjects, and the importance of language for artists and filmmakers.

Jackson Pollock’s Mural (1943) is a monumental eight-by-twenty foot work that marks a turning point in the artist’s career and in 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. During the month of January, we are rereleasing some of our most popular episodes of Art + Ideas. This episode was originally released in August 2017.  

Between 1910 and 1915, Russian painters and poets invented an experimental language called zaum, which emphasizes sound and is characterized by indeterminacy in meaning. These artists used zaum to create handmade artists’ books that are meant to be read, seen, and heard. Nancy Perloff, author of Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art, takes us to the archives at the Getty Research Institute to examine two fascinating zaum futurist books and to discuss a number of the visual and literary artists of this period. During the month of January, we are rereleasing some of our most popular episodes of Art + Ideas. This episode was originally released in April 2017.

In this episode, curator Scott Allan discusses a biography of Édouard Manet written by author and art critic Émile Zola. Édouard Manet was controversial during his lifetime, and the account discussed here, written by a critic and novelist he knew well, provides insight into his life and his art. This biography was published last year in a short book that is part of the Getty Publications Lives of the Artists series. During the month of January, we are rereleasing some of our most popular episodes of Art + Ideas. This episode was originally released in August 2018.

In 1947, Frank Gehry boarded a train in Toronto bound for Los Angeles, his uncle picked him up from Union Station, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the first installment of a four-part series, Gehry shares stories from his first years in Los Angeles and how his interest in architecture began. Later episodes in the series explore Frank Gehry’s Los Angeles and how his practice has evolved during his seventy years as an Angeleno. During the month of January, we are rereleasing some of our most popular episodes of Art + Ideas. This episode was originally released in June 2016.

Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang has spent decades using gunpowder as a medium for paintings and performances. Although the explosions are momentary and ephemeral, the records of these events are works of art collected by museums around the world. When Cai began to wonder about the longevity of this unusual material, he turned to the scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). In this episode, the artist discusses his relationship with this unorthodox medium and is joined by GCI scientists Rachel Rivenc and Tom Learner to talk about the research collaboration he is undertaking with the institute.

The nude human figure, both male and female, has been central to European art for centuries. During the Renaissance of the 1400s and 1500s, artists across Europe used the nude to explore religion, nature, human relationships, and beauty itself. But artists’ approach to the nude were not monolithic, nor were these works received without considerable controversy. Although created long ago, these works continue to inform contemporary attitudes toward the nude human figure in art. The exhibition The Renaissance Nude, on view first at the Getty before moving to the Royal Academy in London, explores the development and deployment of the naturalistic nude, as well as the contexts in which these works were created and received. In this episode, curator Thomas Kren discusses this incredible exhibition.

The Salk Institute opened in La Jolla, California, in 1963, with striking buildings of concrete and earthy wood lining a travertine plaza and overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But within a few years, the buildings began to weather badly, causing unsightly effects that led to inadequate conservation efforts. In 2013, fifty years after the Institute opened, the Getty Conservation Institute began a multi-year process to understand the challenges posed by aging, repair the damage, and plan for the future of the site. In this episode, Susan Macdonald, head of Getty Conservation Institute Field Projects, and Thomas Albright, Professor and Director of the Salk Institute’s Vision Center Laboratory, discuss the conservation of the Salk Institute and the architecture’s impact on the science performed there.

Shortly after inventing the polio vaccine, scientist Jonas Salk set his sights on another groundbreaking undertaking: creating an institute where science and art could meet and inform each other. In architect Louis Kahn, Salk found a man who not only shared this vision, but who was capable of designing the space to support it. The Salk Institute’s monumental modernist buildings and plaza, located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, are the result of this collaboration. In this episode, Jonathan Salk and Nathaniel Kahn, sons of Jonas Salk and Louis Kahn respectively, discuss their fathers’ relationship to each other and to the Salk Institute.

The exhibition India & the World: A History in Nine Stories has an ambitious goal: to use objects to chronicle cultural, economic, and artistic exchange and influence between India and the world. From four-thousand-year-old seals from the Indus Valley found thousands of miles from where they were created to contemporary works of art made out of money and concrete, the wide-ranging exhibition centers on India to address our shared human experiences. In this episode, Naman Ahuja, professor of the history of art at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, describes the curatorial process for this multi-venue, multilingual exhibition and touches on some of the key objects on display.

During its heyday from the first to third centuries CE, the ancient city of Palmyra flourished as a crossroads of Eastern and Western people, goods, and cultures. The unique blend of Eastern and Western influence on Palmyrene society remains visible in the elaborate funerary relief portraits carved to commemorate loved ones. In this episode, we tour an exhibition of Palmyrene funerary portraiture, on loan from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and Stanford University, with curator of antiquities Ken Lapatin and Getty guest scholar Rubina Raja, who is professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Before the Getty Center opened to the public in 1997, photographer Robert Polidori captured the half-installed galleries and impressive architecture of the museum while on an assignment from The New Yorker. With brilliant colors and beautiful light, these images provide striking behind-the-scenes views of the curatorial process. In this episode, Polidori discusses these photographs of the Getty, touching on his artistic philosophies, creative process, and career.

In the late 1990s, Old Master drawings expert Julien Stock made an incredible discovery—a previously unknown Michelangelo drawing. Hiding in an unmarked book at England’s Castle Howard, the study of a mourning woman from early in Michelangelo’s career had not been seen for generations. This drawing is now part of the Getty Museum’s collection. In this episode, Stock tells the story of this discovery and the process of verifying the authenticity of his remarkable find.

In this episode, curator Scott Allan discusses two artist biographies: one of Édouard Manet by author and art critic Émile Zola and the other of Vincent van Gogh written by his sister in law Jo van Gogh-Bonger. Both artists proved controversial or difficult during their lifetimes, and these accounts, written by people who knew them well, provide insight into their lives and their art. These texts have recently been published as short books as part of the Getty Publications Lives of the Artists series. Scott Allan is curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.