Getty Art + Ideas

Technological advances in mid-19th century France saw a proliferation of black drawing media, which gave rise to unprecedented experimentation in drawing and printmaking. This episode explores the Getty exhibition "Noir: The Romance of Black in 19th-century French Drawings and Prints" with curator Lee Hendrix, who discusses how a group of artists drew inspiration from the color black, with all of its imaginative and narrative associations.

In a four-part series, we’ll explore architect Frank Gehry’s Los Angeles and how his practice has evolved during his seventy years as an Angeleno. We continue our conversation by delving into hallmark projects from the 1970s and ‘80s, including Gehry’s own provocative home, his first experiments in furniture design, and his work on two LA landmarks, the Hollywood Bowl and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The episode concludes with an account of Gehry’s trip to Japan to accept the Pritzker Prize in 1989.

The Mogao Grottoes are a series of 492 caves carved into a cliff face near the city of Dunhuang, a central stop along the fabled Silk Road in northwestern China. Since 1989, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and the Dunhuang Academy have worked together to preserve and protect these cave temples, which constitute one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. Neville Agnew, head of the GCI’s Dunhuang initiative; Lori Wong, principal project specialist at the GCI; Susan Whitfield, director of the International Dunhuang Project and curator of Central Asian manuscripts at the British Library; and Marcia Reed, chief curator at the Getty Research Institute, discuss the creation and preservation of the Dunhuang caves, as well as their historical importance.

Through remarkable archaeological excavations, Valerie Hansen, author of "The Silk Road: A New History," pieces together the dynamic and complicated history of the Silk Road. Hansen discusses the impact of micro exchanges along these prolific trade routes, the cultural and historical significance of coins, and what she refers to as the “time capsule of Silk Road history,” the Mogao caves at Dunhuang. Hansen is professor of history at Yale University, where she teaches Chinese and world history.

David Tudor (1926–1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music who was a leading interpreter of piano compositions by John Cage and musical director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Guided by Getty Research Institute (GRI) curator, Nancy Perloff, and deputy director, Andrew Perchuk, we dig into the GRI's David Tudor archives, a collection of scores, notes, preparatory performance materials, correspondence, printed matter, and more than 500 audiotapes.

We have an exclusive interview with a singer, poet, author, and artist whose work you probably know, but it’s only available online at www.getty.edu/ps.

How has Indian history been influenced by and in turn influenced civilizations around the globe? The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) museum in Mumbai, India, is working with the British Museum on a sweeping exhibition called "India in the World" that aims to address this question. Sabayaschi Mukherjee, director general of the CSMVS, and Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and advisor to the exhibition, discuss this seminal project. Last spring Jim Cuno travelled to India to meet with partners on a number of Getty-funded initiatives. He also spoke at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary event that draws over 250,000 attendees to hear author talks and musical performances. This episode is one of three “Postcards from India” Jim made during his trip.

If you spend your childhood visiting museums hoping that paintings could talk to you and tell you their secrets, and then if you grew up hearing stories about your family’s stolen art treasures, a fascinating story is bound to emerge. Author and filmmaker Hannah Rothschild recounts how her experiences inspired her new novel, "The Improbability of Love," a richly observed satire of the London art world. Last spring Jim Cuno travelled to India to meet with partners on a number of Getty-funded initiatives. He also spoke at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary event that draws over 250,000 attendees to hear author talks and musical performances. This episode is one of three “Postcards from India” Jim made during his trip.

Little was known about the subject of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s "Bust of Costanza Bonarelli" until author and art historian Sarah McPhee started digging in the Roman archives. Through groundbreaking research, McPhee reveals the identity of Costanza, and details her life as a young dowried woman, Bernini’s muse and lover, and wife and widow of Matteo Bonarelli, sculptor, collector, and Bernini’s studio assistant. McPhee is professor of art and architecture history at Emory University and author of "Bernini’s Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini." Last spring Jim Cuno travelled to India to meet with partners on a number of Getty-funded initiatives. He also spoke at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary event that draws over 250,000 attendees to hear author talks and musical performances. This episode is one of three “Postcards from India” Jim made during his trip.

“Once upon a time, Europe wasn’t the center of anything,” Peter Frankopan contends, placing Central Asia and its prolific Silk Roads at the center of world development. Frankopan tells us how the Silk Roads were more than just ancient trade routes—they were a network of arteries that connected continents and people by spreading economic, scientific, religious, and cultural goods and ideas. Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford; Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; and author of “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.”

Edmund de Waal, potter and author, chats about the life, legacy, and lore of porcelain. He takes us to porcelain's very beginnings in China, recounts its journey to Europe, layover in Tennessee, and expansion to the rest of the world. Edmund parallels this history with his own philosophy related in his most recent book, "The White Road: Journey into an Obsession"—a philosophy that speaks to the physical and spiritual journey of an artist, learning to reject more than one accepts and appreciating the various shades of white that appear as a story unfolds.

When art historian T. J. Clark visited the Getty Museum in 2000, he came upon a gallery that featured two paintings by seventeenth century French painter Nicolas Poussin (the National Gallery, London’s "Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake" and the Getty’s "Landscape with a Calm") and found himself returning over and over again. In 2008, Clark documented his reflections of the two landscapes, their opposing depictions of life and death, and exploration into the depths of visual complexity in his book, "The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing." Clark visits the Getty’s Poussin painting in the Getty’s galleries and discusses how his perspective of the painting has changed over the past decade.

It’s where John Cage staged his first Happening, Fridays were often dedicated to art classes, and all faculty, staff, and students participated in the college’s operations from farming to construction. Located in the mountains near Asheville, NC, Black Mountain College was an experimental school founded upon the idea of “learning by doing.” We stop by the Hammer Museum’s exhibition, "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957," to talk to Helen Molesworth, curator of the exhibition and chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

“He was always about the particular. The completely particular. This particular shape, this particular form, this particular color...everything is completely unique and particular.” So says Yve-Alain Bois, art historian and professor of art history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, about the celebrated, late artist Ellsworth Kelly. In this conversation, Bois shares what he learned about Kelly’s life, artistic process, and interest in the particular while working on the artist’s catalogue raisonné.

Weekend bike trips to visit Medieval churches of southern England with his father; an excavation digging in Roman Canterbury at age fourteen. And so Colin Renfrew’s lifelong fascination with the past began. Renfrew talks about his life and career of piecing together ancient fragments, how the field of archaeology has evolved, and what role governments play in this dynamic and political discipline. Renfrew is a retired professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy.

In a four-part series, we’ll explore architect Frank Gehry’s Los Angeles and how his practice has evolved during his seventy years as an Angeleno. In 1947, Frank Gehry boarded a train in Toronto bound for Los Angeles, his uncle picked him up from Union Station, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the first installment of the series, Gehry shares stories from his first years in the City of Angels and how his interest in architecture began.

Here’s a sneak peek of Art + Ideas, a podcast in which Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, talks with artists, writers, curators, and scholars about their work. The podcast launches on June 29, 2016. Stay tuned!