Komar and Melamid created canvases to represent the most wanted (and unwanted) visual imagery for different countries. The results were telling, and hilarious. More»
Antoine Watteau is famous for his theatrical pictures of the 18th-century French megarich at their elegant balls and fêtes galantes. Theater of a different kind figures in The Italian Comedians, a beautiful and poignant painting that has just joined the… More»
It is now possible to zoom in to the intricate, breathtaking details of one of the most important works of art in the world, thanks to a newly completed website focused on the Ghent Altarpiece. A stunning and highly complex… More»
Just in time for New Year’s Eve, the unruly figures in James Ensor’s massive painting Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 have sneaked off the canvas and into bottles across Los Angeles. They’re the cast of characters in a new… More»
Starting tomorrow, a golden Virgin and Child from Duccio di Buoninsegna’s workshop will be adorning the Getty Center paintings galleries (North Pavilion, Gallery 201). Paintings by Duccio are astoundingly rare—there are fewer than 15 in existence, the Maestà in Siena… More»
Museum-quality paintings by Édouard Manet still remaining in private hands are exceptionally rare, and the Getty Museum is extremely fortunate in its most recent addition to the paintings collection: Manet’s Portrait of Madame Brunet, which goes on view at the… More»
In George Stubbs’s Brood Mares and Foals, which arrived at the Museum in October as a temporary anonymous loan, horses are sympathetically portrayed within the bucolic landscape of the English countryside. The overriding mood is idyllic, as a small coterie… More»
In March, one of the most elegant women at the Museum was forcibly escorted out of the galleries. I was there and saw the whole thing. Princess Leonilla, who’d been on constant view since the Getty Center opened in 1997,… More»
Artists’ studios aren’t generally thought of as meditative places. The stereotype is one of disarray—an image comes to mind of paintbrushes, sculpting tools, or other instruments of the trade strewn about a room, as if to signal an unruly creative… More»
The life of a painting can be pretty unpredictable. Some are constantly on the move, reaching different parts of the world as they travel through time. When I started at the Getty as an intern, I had only recently returned… More»
Echo Park in 1895: Snow-capped peaks in the distance and rolling countryside all around