The Getty as a Villa Archaeology and Society 2012 Workshop Two The ethics and practice of antiquities collecting at the J. Paul Getty Museum

In my opinion, an individual without any love of the arts cannot be considered completely civilized. – J. Paul Getty

J. Paul Getty’s first “antiquity”

Getty’s Ranch House and first Museum

Getty’s Menagerie

the first Villa (1974)

The Villa dei Papyri For more on the Villa, you might start here. And check out the Museo Archeologico Virtuale site here (until you can go in person!)

The original Getty Villa

The new Getty Villa

I have often said that the collector frequently experiences thrills and sometimes savors triumphs. One of these exceptional triumphs was my success in obtaining the celebrated Landsdowne Herakles for my collection… It is enough for me to know that this magnificent marble statue, which once delighted the Emperor Hadrian and for a century and a half was a pride of Britain, is now completely “Americanized”--on view for all to see at the Getty Museum. (from Getty’s autobiography As I See it) – J. Paul Getty

The Temple of Herakles in the renovated Getty Villa

“I have built some new rooms in a little colonnade in my Tusculan Villa, and would like to decorate them.” --Cicero Collecting antiquities is a way to show intellectual interest, a refined aesthetic sense, wealth, and status. By filling a palace or grand country house with ancient statues, an aristocrat could imply a personal connection with the illustrious collectors of antiquity and with the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome.

The maritime theatre at Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli and the central garden at the Getty Center, Brentwood. 13

The Getty Kouros

Unknown Greek, about 530 B.C., or modern forgery Marble 81 1/8 x 21 1/2 in. 85.AA.40 A kouros is a statue of a standing nude youth that did not represent any one individual youth but the idea of youth. Used in Archaic Greece as both a dedication to the gods in sanctuaries and as a grave monument, the standard kouros stood with his left foot forward, arms at his sides, looking straight ahead. Carved in from four sides, the statue retained the general shape of the marble block. Archaic Greek sculptors reduced human anatomy and musculature in these statues to decorative patterning on the surface of the marble. The kouros embodies many of the ideals of the aristocratic culture of Archaic Greece. One such ideal of this period was arete, a combination of moral and physical beauty and nobility. Arete was closely connected with kalokagathia,literally a composite term for beautiful and good or noble. Writing in the mid 500s B.C., the Greek poet Theognis summed this idea up as "What is beautiful is loved, and what is not is unloved." In a society that emphasized youth and male beauty, the artistic manifestation of this world view was the kouros. Indeed, when the poet Simonides wrote about arete in the late 500s, he used a metaphor seemingly drawn from the kouros: "In hand and foot and mind alike foursquare/ fashioned without flaw." Neither art historians nor scientists have been able to completely resolve the issue of the Getty Museum kouros's authenticity. Certain elements of the statue have led to this questioning, especially a mixture of earlier and later stylistic traits and the use of marble from the island of Thasos at a date when its use is unexpected. Yet the anomalies of the Getty kouros may be due more to our limited knowledge of Greek sculpture in this period rather than to mistakes on the part of a forger.

Unique, striking and problematic cult statue: purchased for the Getty in 1988 for 18 million dollars.