Tag: prints and drawings

Like Being in Love

my name is: Lala Ragimov

i make: Drawings, paintings, gem engravings, jewellery, sculpture, prints

i’m sharing: A copy after Boucher and two copies after Rubens done with the help of the Getty’s database of high-resolution images of the collection. It’s an invaluable resource for my own studies and for art classes I teach.

what inspires me about the getty is: The art collection, the wonderful, thoughtfully curated shows, but also the unique atmosphere that feels removed from the hurried everyday reality. It feels like a better, more refined, cultured and inspired world. The curator and restorer tours, rare or non-existent at other museums and regular at the Getty, also provide important inspiration as a chance to ask those experts questions and hear their opinions.

Last but not least, the Getty has an amazing research library that I have been using for the past ten years to study the techniques of the masters and simply to look through good art books, old and new, to get further inspired.

to me, inspiration is: A feeling of a rush, a sharp longing to create something that has certain characteristics of the object, person or environment I am looking at or thinking about. It can also come as a wish to possess the object/characteristic that is fulfilled by creating its copy; or to “talk” to it by creating an artistic response. It feels very similar or even equivalent to being in love.

I find inspiration in old art and in the spirit of learning and research that exists in museums. I am also inspired by nature as I see it in life, as it is described by modern science, and of course as it is shown in art from ancient to modern.

See more of Lala’s Getty-inspired drawings here »

Everything Will Be Perfect

my name is: Mónica Bachué

i make: Clothing, and am a boutique owner

i’m sharing: A fashion design inspired by French prints from the era of Louis XIV.

what inspires me about the getty: The potential to make memories. I’m from Columbia and I didn’t grow up with the opportunity to visit museums, so when I finally was able to do it, I was always pushing myself to visit the most amazing museums. I’ve been able to take my parents to the Getty; we celebrated Mother’s Day there. Actually, I took my boyfriend there to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and that night he proposed to me. We are really connected to the Getty because it’s where we’ve been creating the most important memories in our life.

to me, inspiration is: When you’re sitting in front of the ocean and you have a lot of problems, but then finally you kind of realize that nothing is really important, and everything is going to be okay. That’s what inspiration feels like to me. When you’re free. That sensation that everything will be perfect.

When you can’t seem to find inspiration, it’s the struggle that is most beautiful part of the process. If you feel like you’re struggling, know that you are at the moment where anything is possible and you have no limits.

A Poem for Moreau

A poet and librarian in Hollywood, Michalle Gould contacted us on Twitter to share her poem “I Spit in the Lock and the Knob Turns,” inspired by Gustave Moreau’s watercolor Diomedes Devoured by Horses.

She accepted our invitation to visit the Getty and record her poem for #GettyInspired. (That’s her in the sound booth.)

LISTEN on Soundcloud

I Spit in the Lock and the Knob Turns

I spit in the lock and the knob turns.
A wire stretches between two towers,
but is it before the walk, or just after
a person has fallen? In a painting,
a man is devoured by his own horses,
after teaching them to love the taste
of human flesh. I was once told that
being shot feels just like being slapped.
I never felt the needle going in, but now
my jaw aches at the site of the injection.
The artist’s signature is neat in the corner,
impassive to the horror his brush has
depicted; the man’s body surprisingly white
and clean, as if he had turned to statue
when the mares’ jaws clamped down on him.
His blood streaks instead over his violated cloak,
down to where a hoof still tramples it,
a quite delicate pink turning red, like the flesh
of a fish where it is caught up against a wire net.
“A shame,” says the woman behind me.
“It was once such a beautiful piece of fabric.”

Title and first line from Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency.”