The Getty Villa is alot about being in Southern California. It is sunny and warm, the ocean light is magnificent.
There is a lightness of being just in California itself, its newness and lack of western history.
There is something of the contemporary shopping mall in the restoration. And the site also exudes the "faux" of the transporting of Greek and Roman culture to California and then presenting as Authentic.
I was amazed at realizing the bronze sculpture like I'd seen years ago in Naples Italy was unlabeled as reproduction.
Nothing has the weight to support say, the actual Greek sculpture, incidentally they now have to give back to Italy. This sculpture's head looks a bit out of kilter reattached. The body drapery classical like the Parthenon Sculptures in London.
I had a hard time telling if I thought the Greek sculpture was great? It all seems Hellenistic, I guess meaning late? Its all very clean and new looking.There is nothing to compare it to in California, except my minds memory of European Museums. The Naples Museum which I saw some time ago was dark and the sculpture stained and worn.
Malibu is already so much like the Pompeii of Rome and then to transport culture to its furthest western edge is breathtaking.
I later went to the Getty on the hill and stood in the sunset watching a traffic jam of hundreds of thousands of cars extending over southern California, all inching their ways home on a friday evening.
Yes, there was something of the apocalyptic in the scene. The conversation being the return of the Getty sculpture to it's rightful home.
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