Getty Center on Thursday

I arrived early at the Getty Center high above Brentwood, a neighborhood of L.A. West of the 405 Freeway.  The rains had stopped and the air was clear with the sun showing the city at it's best.

The first exhibit I visited was in the Getty Research Institute.  It is entitled "World War I:  War of Images, Images of War."  The description states that the exhibit examines the art and visual culture of the war which occurred 100 years ago.  It says that the war was a conflict of unprecedented mechanized slaughter as well as a struggle over the cultural dominance and direction of Europe.  "The exhibition juxtaposes the representation of the war in visual propaganda with depiction of artists who experienced the brutality firsthand."  It includes "trench art" made by soldiers.

Here is a sample of what I saw:

"Napoleon and Wilhelm" by Henri Zislin (French, 1875-1958)
Color Lithograph.  The French illustrator contrasts the "benevolent" worldview of Napoleon with the mass death wreaked by the Kaiser of Germany.

"British Sea Lion" by August Gaul (German, 1869-1921)
Lithograph.  The German journal Kreigszeit Kunstlerflugblatter  frequently satirized Great Beitain, here depicting the enemy as a sea lion balancing a globe on its nose.

Map of Europe in 1914 by Walter Trier (German, 1890-1951), color lithograph, November 1915.
The map presents a cartographic caricature of Europe's warring nations from a German perspective.  Germany and Austria-Hungary are shown defending themselves against the hostile maw of Russia to the east and a toppling France to the west.  Great Britain is pictured as a dour Scotsman with his gnarling British bulldog.

"The Way Home" by Thomas Theodor Heine (German, 1867-1948
Color lithograph, 1915.  This cover shows the way home to the Russian bear, bloodied and walking through the snow..

Le mot, a journal by artist Jean Cocteau and designer Paul Iribe launched this French cultural journal (The World) three and a half months into the war..  This one is entitled "The Good Cross" on the cover of the journal in January 1915.

"The Rose of France" February, 1915

"Our Toy:  The Villainous Kaiser Wilhelm,"  January 1915
Color woodcut and letterpress.

"The Sower of False News," by Eugen Damblans (French, 1865-1945)
Le petit journal, March 21, 1815

"For the Country, My Eyes! For Peace, Your Money," 1918 by Alfredo Ortelli (Italian, 1889-1963
Color lithograph.  This poster was issued to promote a national loan program enacted to help finance the war.  The figure is the blind Italian lieutenant Carlo Delcroix (1896-1877).  He was hailed a national hero.

"At the Marne:  Victory is Evanescent," June 25, 1918 cover by Thomas Theodor Heine
Color lithograph.

"Let there be war now/where and with whom one wants / and all German blades will be strongly and joyfully gleam in the sun." (Bismarck) by Max Frohlich (German), 1915

"Destroy this Mad Brute - Enlist," 1917 by Harry R. Hopps (American, 1869-1937), color lithograph.

"Wilhelm's Carousel," 1914 by Kazimir Malevich (Russian, 1878-1. 935)

"God Hands the Book with the Seven Seals to the Lamb," 1917 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German 1880-1938), pencil, ink and watercolor on cigarette pack.  Kirchner made this drawing while battling a nervous breakdown at a sanatorium in Switzerland.  His two months of military experience without serving in combat had left him terrified of being drafted into what he called a "bloody carnival."  This self portrait accompanied by Death was made on the back of a cigarette pack as he lacked any other resources. 

Map before the war

Europe after the war with a the number of war deaths from each country shown.  In addition, Canada  sent 13.5 percent of its male population of which half were killed or severely wounded..  The U.S. entered the war in April 1917, sent 4,355,000 to fight of which 323,000 were killed, wounded, or missing.

"The Way Home," 1919 by Max Beckmann (German, 1854-1950) Lithograph.  Beckmann condemned the war as a national disaster.  He was released from military service due to a nervous breakdown in 1915, but remained haunted by visions of the war for years.

"The Englishman and His Blove'Oh, dar, blood is more slippery than water after all.'" 1914 by Thomas Theodor Heine (1867-1948). The German journal represents an Englishman in a colonial pith helmet sliding off a globe covered in blood suggesting that the British empire has lost control of the world empire.

I then visited the "Spectacular Rubens, The Triumph of the Eucharist" exhibit.  In the early 1620 Peter Paul Rubens designed a series of monumental tapestries for the governor -general of the Netherlands, the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia.  This exhibit shows several of Rubens's preparatory oil sketches for four of the tapestries from the Madrid church for which they were made.  This Eucharist series, which celebrates the glory of the Roman Catholic Church, was presented in Madrid.

No photography was allowed, however, I have included copies of Rubens's paintings from the permanent collection of the Getty.

"The Entombment" 1612 by Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, 1577-1640

"The Calydonian Boar Hunt," 1611-1612 by Rubens

The final exhibited I visited is the photography of Josef Koudelka entitled "Nationality Doubtful."  Koudelka was born in 1938 in Czechoslovakia at about the time it was claimed by Germany.  He became interested in photographing gypsies in Romania but returned to Prague when the Warsaw Pact invaded to put down the "Prague Spring: in 1968.  His work made it to the western press as the "anonymous Czech photographer," and brought the atrocities of the invasion to the front pages of the western press.

Here are some of the photographs I found on the Getty Web site: