The architecture, landscape and gardens are all the very best of everything and wonderful to behold.
There seem to be eight buildings mostly connected by flyovers. Some buildings are for conservation, teaching and other professional matters. But the galleries themselves are surely about the most beautiful ever created.
The walls are not painted. They are hung with custom made and dyed fabrics, with each room in a different colour. The effect on the art is stunning. Nothing can be adequately said about the collection itself. It contains so many truly invaluable works of art as to be overwhelming. I was in one room with a large and great Turner landscape, which (oddly for reasons I could not understand) had a great, but small Caspar David Friedrich next to it, and then every other large painting in the room was by history's greatest artists and some of their finest works.
In the center of the room, there are always several great marble or bronze statues. The two-headed woman I have shown above was copied from an ancient marble in Rome. Michelangelo was said to have called it the most beautiful statue he ever saw. I agree. The statue was bought from the estate of Yves St. Laurent.
How did all this come about? Getty was the Minneapolis-born son of a rich oil man who said several times that boy Paul was useless and destined to be a failure. But in the 50s, he purchased a 60 year lease on a tract of land near Kuwait, from the Saudi king, which to that time, had never had oil discovered upon it. He spent $30 million - imagine, in the 50s- before he hit the oil that ultimately made much of his fortune.
It is confusing the normal humans like me that he was so incredibly frugal in his private life and yet amassed such a high level collection of art at such grand prices.
He died in England, and his body was shipped to the Getty villa for burial there. When the body arrived, the addressees I guess, had to open the casket to be sure it was Paul hisself, and that he was sufficiently dead. They discovered that he was so cheap, he bought a casket way too small for his size, and as a result, his face was forever imprinted heavily into the inner lid of the casket.
I read that many years ago. When I arrived at the Getty Museum, I asked a girl at "Information" "So where is Paul buried?" Said girl, in shock, said "Do you mean MISTER Getty?" "Yes, that would be the one," said I in reply. She, in her most dour and nun like manner said, "MISTER Getty is buried at the Villa." Naturally, upon arriving at the Villa at opening time, and encountering one of the helpful smiling shirts, I asked where MISTER Getty was buried and he showed surprised and asked "How did you find out." He said they thought it was a secret for many years, but some people seem to know. It helps to read books - or even the internet today. He told me it was on site, but I could not go there and he could not say officially where it was. I replied that it had to be facing the Pacific and that did not leave many choices, so it must be up and back there. I asked if he had been there and he said that he had and that Paul has two relatives buried there with him and the place I pointed to, under a modest concrete slab.
When PG died in '76, there began a six year legal battle over his estate. I had asked if he really left sufficient money to actually maintain this astonishing museum and the villa. They said he left $750 million in Getty oil shares (which at today's costs would cover three year's costs). But while the court battle went on, the value of those shares rose to $2 billion. They said I could look on line at "The Getty trust" financial statements, which of course, I did. Incredibly, the worth of the endowment by 2011 was $12 billion. Mind you, this was after the Getty was on a buying spree that drove art ,market prices sky high as they were so aggressive at spending freely. They paid something in the range of $50 million for Van Gogh's Irises and that was only one of dozens of huge expenditures.
I am not really so interested in the prices of each work, but rather that most older public galleries cannot afford the prices of major works today. To spend $50 million - if they even have that - for a single work when they can buy 45 or maybe 90 or more important works of lesser fame, is regarded as irresponsible by most directors.
We travel so much to places to see ancient ruins and inevitably must some times be frustrated at imagining what the original structure must have been like. PG saw the ruins of a lava covered Villa in the south of Italy, and notified his architect that he wanted to duplicate it as it was when real people inhabited it. The architect had never heard of the villa, but discovered that there were ancient plans still in existence for the building of the actual buildings and site.
Now this incredibly detailed reproduction sits high on a Malibu hill looking out to the Pacific in a kind of glory you cannot imagine until you visit it. The 2nd storey is filled with valuable artifacts of the local and era - some of which were in the news for having to be returned to Italy as loot taken centuries ago. There is even a herb garden the inhabitants would have kept with even some of the odd plants of the time.
Whatever sensational details there might have been in Paul Getty's life - and there were many - he left an immense cultural treasure for all of us and probably more than doubled California's cultural standing with his great good taste and largess.
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