Art Edifice A Gleaming White Complex Overlooking L.A., The Getty Center Is An Audacious Monument To Culture

In 1985, architect Richard Meier assured nervous Brentwood neighbors that the Getty Center had no intention of creating a monument on the hilltop overlooking their homes.

Had they banked the promise, it would have bounced.

Meier’s thoroughly monumental Getty Center, which opened Tuesday, is a six-building complex sheathed in buff-colored marble slabs, white aluminum panels and endlessly open expanses of glass. It’s a billion-dollar art colossus, a strong punctuation point to the sentence that isn’t there, the unfocused cultural identity of Southern California.

Trying to make the money meaningful to his readers, L.A. art critic Peter Frank wrote that the Getty cost about as much as eight blockbuster films.

But money spent isn’t what makes the Getty so imposing. Neither is the size of the buildings. Thanks to a six-year battle with Brentwood, the buildings meet severe height restrictions, nothing taller than 65 feet.

It’s the sheer gorgeous audacity of the place that gives it authority. With its sweeping piano curves complemented by massive, blunt angles, its gracious sense of air and light, Meier’s monument glitters in the smoggy air like a modernist Shangri-La.

The neighbors also extracted from New York’s Meier a written promise that he’d use no white stone and no reflecting glass. They had done their homework and didn’t want the man known as the “white architect” to force them to wear shades in the glare of his ever-present handiwork.

Again, they were outmaneuvered. Ask anyone flying into LAX or inching along the perennially clogged freeways nearby the color of the massive complex on the hill, and most undoubtedly will respond “white.”

Meier’s team clings to the word buff, but even they concede the stone will fade in the relentless sun to something close to ivory. Ivory stone offset by gleaming white aluminum panels means the architect prevailed.

Those who weren’t in on the planning of the Getty might have difficulty understanding the emotions roused by the word white. Not just the neighbors but the Getty’s administrative and curatorial staff gave Meier many cautions against relying on his favorite color.

Were they afraid he’d build a beached white whale? Why did they hire him in the first place? In his unusually frank book on the subject, “Building the Getty,” Meier admits he asked himself if the answer isn’t that the Getty selection committee mistakenly thought he’d be malleable.

Even by his own account, he was dictatorial. But whatever arguments took place during 14 years of planning and construction, nearly all the major players were willing to join hands during recent previews of the complex.

One gap couldn’t be closed, the one between Meier and L.A. artist Robert Irwin. To Meier’s unending consternation, Irwin was tapped to design the Getty’s $8 million central garden, the largest public art project in the country.

Meier wanted the garden to serve as pedestal to his sculptural architecture and wasn’t pleased when Irwin pulled the pedestal out from under him. Meier represents Aristotelian order, and Irwin favors abundant, unpredictable disorder.

At the Getty, Irwin sought not to tame nature but to encourage it to show off. Instead of complementing the architecture, his garden presents its alternative. Instead of harmony, there’s heady riot and its remission.

In a seasonless city, Irwin planted a seasonal garden, one that observes a winter and is full of fluidity and unrest. Each time visitors come, they’ll see something different gracing the bowl-like space of gardens and coursing waterways. More than 450 kinds of plants join in this diffuse array, and that’s not counting the bulbs and annuals, many rising to brief bloom before dying away again.

Meanwhile, the buildings above are making an argument for stability, enduring values and deep-time cultural legacies. The gardens may not be imposing enough to help them, but the process of getting to the site certainly is.

Nobody cruising along Sunset Boulevard can pull into the center’s driveway on a whim. Drivers need reservations. Walkers don’t, but are there any in L.A.? On the appointed day, visitors park underground and then take a spanking white tram up the hillside. The trams are Tinkertoy dreams, too clean and airy to be real.

Arriving is decisive, with sweeping views all around: East to the San Gabriel Mountains, south to downtown L.A., and west to Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.

Up close, Meier’s stone is a marvel. It’s thick, rough-cut Italian travertine quarried from ancient lake beds: 250,000 stone tiles, each typically weighing 250 pounds and measuring 30 inches square. Across their surfaces are fractures and veins of colored light, yellowed cream to tan, ivory and white, with randomly scattered fossil remains from leaves, fish, snails and bird feathers.

Bracing the heaviness of the stone is the lightness of white enamel aluminum panels, as well as white enamel aluminum banisters used throughout, like railings on a luxury liner.

Across the 110-acre campus are six buildings, housing the museum and five institutes, including conservation, research, education, information, scholarship and grants. Not all areas are open to the public, but those that are couldn’t be more welcoming.

The museum is the top attraction, and one of its distinctions is to reverse expectations. Many museums are 18th- or 19th-century shells with modernist interiors. The Getty is a modernist shell with traditional insides.

Not that Meier wanted it that way. Left to his own devices, the galleries would be far sleeker, with bleached wood floors and impeccable white walls opening along a curving, central spine full of natural light.

Fearing he couldn’t move Meier from the lean-and-clean look, Getty director John Walsh led the successful effort to hire an interior decorator: French-born, New York-based Thierry Despont.

Walsh pressed the point because of the nature of the collections. Getty was no modernist. He collected statuary from the ancient world, 18th-century French furniture and, to a lesser extent, European painting and sculpture before the 20th century.

Since the Getty secured its endowment in 1982, six years after Getty’s death, the institution has built upon these somewhat eccentric and unrelated bases.

The Getty is a bastion of European historical art. It makes no forays into Asian, African or American culture and leaves the 20th century resolutely alone, with the exception of photography.

Walsh couldn’t envision these largely old world treasures in new world spaces. Hence the museum’s interior breaks dramatically from its exterior.

Meier’s contribution is natural light at the top floors and a healthy respect for choice of route. The galleries are intimate and comfortable, with ample seating in each room. The walls are covered in colored linens with wood trim and the floors are of dark brown travertine. Most successful are the 19 painting galleries and the impressively grand sculpture hall.

The decorative arts galleries are another matter. Grand epoch French furniture is dramatic enough. These gaudy interiors make their wares look vulgar.

When Getty was building his Malibu re-creation of an ancient Italian villa, craftsmen from all over the world pitched in, including members of the crew who built the movie set for “Cleopatra.” Somehow, the end results were delicate, understated and charming.

In contrast, the decorative arts galleries here look as if they’d been made by “Cleopatra” set workers. There is decorative detailing piled on decorative detailing, and the effect is claustrophobic.

The spaciousness of the exteriors and public areas of the institute doesn’t extend to the museum’s galleries. At best, they are wonderful little moments. At worst, they’re too small. The Getty’s great photography holdings get three tiny galleries, capable of displaying only a minute fraction of the riches in storage.

Even though the galleries are intimate and comfortable, every effort is made to combat the dreaded museum fatigue. Visitors can move in and out of the buildings, resting beside pools and fountains and enjoying the views.

In most major museums, once visitors go inside, they leave the world behind. Here, galleries open onto passageways that are picture windows on the grounds.

The buildings are designed for wandering guests. The problem is, it’s easy to become disoriented and miss important parts of the collection. While Meier claims to have designed a distinct character to each building, it isn’t true. And the Getty isn’t confining its art shows to the museum.

Anyone who wants to be sure and see both the opening exhibits and the permanent collection has to carry a list and ask directions. Going in one end of the museum and coming out another is no guarantee of success.

“There’s no glory in being remembered as an old moneybags,” said Getty. In fact, his reputation was worse than that. The rumor that he once installed a pay phone in his home for the use of family and friends is true.

And yet he cared about art and wanted to share the enjoyment it gave him with as many people as possible. He left the museum a fortune and no strings attached, trusting the trustees to map out the institution’s future.

While it’s unlikely he would have appreciated Meier’s efforts, he made them possible. When the endowment was announced in 1976 ($700 million that has grown to $4 billion), many feared the Getty would confine itself to treasure hunting.

Instead, it has become a first-class leader of scholarship, art education and conservation, funding projects and providing training and expertise around the world. The Getty Institute was the oil man’s gift, but it has also served him well, transforming his name into a symbol of enlightened philanthropy.