Los Angeles—where the nuts fell out of America’s tree

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 22

Los Angeles—where the nuts fell out of America’s tree

By

Susan Kurosawa

A Yankee friend of mine is fond of saying that when God shook the tree of America all the nuts landed in Los Angeles. The inhabitants of this big, brash southern Californian city are used to such jibes. Theirs is a temperamental, theatrical sort of place where out-of-work actors have themselves paged at exquisitely trendy watering holes, where there are boutiques so exclusive you need an appointment to buy a hundred-dollar pair of cashmere socks, and where you can loop around the freeways for days at a time before locating the right exit. It’s hardly the place for a fix of culture unless your idea of art runs to the ornately embellished superstar mansions of Beverly Hills or the plaster model of the shark from “Jaws” which lives in a pond on the backlot of Universal Studios. Given this upfront, over-the-top image of Tinsel Town, it comes as a bit of a jolt to discover that the world’s most important private collection of art is located some 40 kays west of downtown Los Angeles. The art treasures are contained in the J. Paul Getty Museum, a beautifully maintained, lavish series of buildings which have been styled after an ancient Roman villa. The original villa stood outside the city of Herculaneum overlooking the Bay of Naples but was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The remains were uncovered in the 18th century and detailed floor plans and notes were made; that information formed the blueprint for Getty’s museum. The millionaire was an ardent collector of antiquities and the exhibits are divided into five main areas: Greek and Roman statuary and artefacts, 18th century European decorative arts, West European paintings from the 13th and 19th centuries, drawings of the Old Masters, and illuminated medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.

The works of art are arranged in a series of cool, uncluttered rooms throughout the villa. The formal gardens are dotted with classical statues, fiercely clipped hedges and decorative fountains; there’s a tea-room in the grounds serving lunches and snacks, and plenty of benches where you can pause and soak up the palpable atmosphere of the ordered gardens, symmetrical colonnades and trim buildings. There’s no admission fee to the J. Paul Getty Museum but advance appointments must be made; it’s advisable to call from your Los Angeles hotel a few days in advance of your visit or, better still, write ahead from. Australia. I suggest you rent a car in Los Angeles (all major operators have desks at the main hotels) as the city is a great sprawl of a place and public transport is limited. To reach the J. Paul Getty Museum, drive down the Pacific Coast Highway and turn off just north of Sunset Boulevard and south of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Getty’s beautiful, hushed museum may appease your artistic cravings but if it’s a bit of pop culture you’re after then get on down to Venice Beach. Week-ends are the best times to sashay through this seaside slice of fun and sun; on Saturday and Sunday afternoons the whole place is on heat. Rapdancers strut their stuff to the strident accompaniment of boom boxes the size of coffee-tables. Rollerskating wizards weave through the crowds at turbo pace. Streetstall spruikers entice passersby to try on T-shirts and sunglasses, munch on chilli hotdogs and buy garish souvenirs patterned with big southern California palms. There are rugged muscle men pumping iron at outdoor gyms and solid, middle-aged broads walking poodles trussed up in gold lame saddles and sequinned sunglasses. Every blonde, suntanned beach girl that swivels past has legs like a front-line chorus dancer and more swinging hair than the entire cast of “Charlie’s Angels” put together. If there’s a slightly seedy, decadent air about Venice Beach then maybe it’s because the place was named after Italy’s shady lady, the canal-ribboned

city of Venice. The beach area was developed in the early 1900 s by Abbot Kinney, a tobacco magnate who had fallen in love with the shadowy canals, romantic gondolas and patrician buildings of Italy’s Venice. From 1910 to 1920, Kinney’s dream of a transplanted pocket of Italian style became a reality; the trolleys running from Los Angeles to Venice Beach were jampacked every week-end. Artists moved into beachfront ateliers, and canal-side plots of land were bagged by business bigwigs and silent movie stars such as Clara Bow, Rudolf Valentino and Charlie Chaplin. These heady days were shortlived. Poor engineering of the canals led to stagnant water and sewerage problems, harsh winter storms caused massive beach erosion, and the narrow streets were unable to cope with increased automobile traffic. After Kinney’s death in 1920, a fire destroyed Venice Pier, city officials ordered that the unsanitary canals be paved Over in the northern section of thfe beachside suburb, and the fashionable throngs no longer patronised the sidewalk cafes, smart shops and showy amusement stands. Travellers Checklist: The J. Paul Getty Museum is open from 9.45 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Tuesdays to Sundays. Orientation talks are conducted every 15 minutes between 9.30 a.m. and 3.15 p.m. at the ocean end of the Main Peristyle Garden. For an appointment contact: P.O. Box 2112, Santa Monica, California 90406. Tel: (213) 459 8402. Venice Beach is located south of Santa Monica, bordered by Marina del Rey. It’s a fast freeway hop from Los Angeles proper. Attempt the trip by

rental car rather than public transport as bus connections are quirky and confusing. Parking in and around Venice Beach is a problem but there are various car-parks where you pay an hourly rate. Saturday afternoons and Sundays are the best times to visit and get into the real feel of the place. By the 1960 s Venice was back on the wanted list. Beatniks and Bohemians were attracted by the eccentric and casual lifestyle and the place became a mecca for oddballs to rival even New York's Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s North Beach. Later that decade the hippies moved in with their Dylan and Donovan records, free love philosophy and idealistic flower power. In the 'Bos Venice Is just plain funky. Ocean Front Walk, the main drag, is where Los Angeles folk play and promenade, settle into an alfresco cafe with a strawberry daiquiri served in a glass the size of a decorator vase and watch the world’s biggest hams skate and saunter on by. And maybe take a moment to reflect that author Tom Wolfe once labelled southern California as the great cultural laboratory of America. At Los Angeles’ Venice Beach there’s some very advanced research going on.