The J. Paul Getty Museum Shows Los Angeles Photography 1945 -1980

Los Angeles, California.- As part of the region-wide ‘Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980’ initiative, The J. Paul Getty Museum is pleased to present “In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945–1980”, an exhibition of photographs from the permanent collection made by artists whose time in Los Angeles inspired them to create memorable images of the city, on view at the Getty Center through May 6th. The photographs are loosely grouped around the themes of experimentation, street photography, architectural depictions, and the film and entertainment industry. Works featured in the exhibition are from artists such as Jo Ann Callis, Robert Cumming, Joe Deal, Judy Fiskin, Anthony Friedkin, Robert Heinecken, Anthony Hernandez, Man Ray, Edmund Teske, William Wegman, Garry Winogrand, and Max Yavno.

Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, including several recent acquisitions inspired by the Pacific Standard Time initiative, the exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a broad range of approaches to the city of Los Angeles as a subject and to the photographic medium itself. One of the most well-known works in the exhibition is Garry Winogrand’s photograph of two women walking towards the landmark theme building designed by Charles Luckman and William Pereira that has come to symbolize both Los Angeles International Airport and midcentury modern architecture in popular culture. Though a quintessential New Yorker, Winogrand made some of his most memorable photographs in Los Angeles, where he chose to settle in the final years of his life. Also included in the exhibition is Diane Arbus’ dreamily lit photograph of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland park in Anaheim. Although technically not located in either the city or the county of Los Angeles, Disneyland—and Arbus’ photograph—continues to capture the notion of entertainment and fantasy that has come to be so intrinsically associated with the city.

Other photographers in the “In Focus: Los Angeles” exhibition who produced the majority of their most creative work in the city include Edmund Teske, with his experimentation in the darkroom and his complex double solarization process; Robert Heinecken, with images that are equally complex but often incorporate existing printed materials, such as negatives; Anthony Hernandez, whose portraits of Angelenos on the street emphasize the isolation of the individual in an urban environment; and Anthony Friedkin, who combines his passions for surfing and the Southland beaches in his photographs. The inclusion of three photographs from Judy Fiskin’s earliest photographic series, Stucco (1973–76), provided the impetus for a monographic presentation of the artist’s complete photographic work by Getty Publications. Entitled Some Aesthetic Decisions: The Photographs of Judy Fiskin and featuring an introductory essay by curator Virginia Heckert, the book will be published concurrently with this exhibition. “In Focus: Los Angeles” is the tenth installation of the ongoing In Focus series of exhibitions, thematic presentations of photographs from the Getty’s permanent collection.

The J. Paul Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The Center sits atop a hill, connected to a visitor’s parking garage at the bottom by a three-car, cable-pulled tram. With more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the Getty Museum is one of the most visited art museums in the USA. It is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the second being the ‘J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in Malibu’, dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The ‘J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Centre’ is the branch of the museum specializing in “pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs”. Besides the Museum, the Center’s buildings house the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which owns and operates the Center. The Center was designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Meier and includes a central garden designed by artist Robert Irwin. GRI’s separate building contains a research library with over 900,000 volumes and two million photographs of art and architecture. Originally, the Getty Museum started in J. Paul Getty’s house located in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, when in 1954, he expanded the house with a museum wing. In the 1970’s, Getty built a replica of an Italian villa on his property to better house his collection, which opened in 1974. After Getty’s death in 1976, the entire property was turned over to the Getty Trust for museum purposes. However, the collection outgrew the site, which has since been renamed the Getty Villa, and management sought a location more accessible to Los Angeles. The purchase of the land upon which the Center is located (a campus of 24 acres on a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by 600 acres kept in a natural state) was announced in 1983. The top of the hill is 900 feet (270 m) above Interstate 405, high enough that on a clear day it is possible to see not only the Los Angeles skyline but also the San Bernardino Mountains to the east as well as the Pacific Ocean to the west. The Center opened to the public on December 16, 1997. After the Center opened, the villa closed for extensive renovations, and reopened on January 28, 2006. The Center museum building consists of a three-level base building that is mostly closed to the public and provides staff workspace and storage areas. Five public, two-story towers on the base are called the North, East, South, West and the Exhibitions Pavilions. The Exhibitions Pavilion acts as the temporary residence for traveling art collections and the Foundation’s artwork for which the permanent pavilions have no room. The permanent collection is displayed throughout the other four pavilions chronologically. The first-floor galleries in each pavilion house light-sensitive art, such as illuminated manuscripts, furniture, or photography. Computer-controlled skylights on the second floor galleries allow paintings to be displayed in natural light. The second floors are connected by a series of glass-enclosed bridges and open terraces, both of which offer views of the surrounding hillsides and central plaza. Sculpture is also on display at various points outside the buildings, including on various terraces and balconies. The lower level (the highest of the floors in the base) includes a public cafeteria, the terrace cafe, and the photography galleries. Visit the museum’s website at … www.getty.edu/museum/