Paul Getty, the world's richest man in the '60s, once said, "A man who doesn't like art is a man who is not fully civilized." ”
In his view, only a person who truly loves art can be called a civilized person with culture. He devoted himself to classical art and sculpture, and has written several treatises on the history and theory of art.
Whether Or not Getty's views are extreme, looking at the aesthetic soft power of a country and a city depends on whether the local people respect art and know how to appreciate art.
Getty Center
In his later years, Getty even gave an astonishingly generous donation of 2.2 billion yuan to create a "Paul Getty Museum".
That's what is now the famous Getty Center, located at the foot of Santa Monica in Los Angeles.
Even if there are too many negative labels about Getty, it does not prevent him from becoming a veritable art lover and collector.
After his death, he also left a huge fortune to the museum to preserve his breathtaking art collection and was forever free to the public, claiming that anyone with shoes on their feet could come in and see it.
Pure and beautiful Getty Center
Every piece of art in the Getty Center is full of Getty's love for art.
Although the collection is only about 50,000 pieces, the quality is really superior.
Among them, the 19th century Impressionist Exhibition Hall contains the original works of many painters, including Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Cézanne and other Impressionists.
Van Gogh's Iris
It was purchased by the Getty Foundation in 1988 for $53 million
The rich people of that era in the United States liked to spend money on art.
Another famous tycoon in American art history, the Rockefeller family, built a museum directly at home.
There is an old Chinese saying that "no rich is only three generations", starting from john Davidson Rockefeller, the founder of the Rockefeller family myth, this leading wealth family in the United States has flourished for six generations, and it is still as "rich" as day by day.
According to the New York Times, the Rockefeller family's art collection is trillions in size, including oil paintings and numerous antiques such as porcelain and furniture.
The third generation of the family's head, David Rockefeller, whose mother donated their manhattan mansion to support the family's artistic career, founded moMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
So within the Rockefeller family, it was also called "Mother's Museum."
Over the next decade, MoMA relocated three times until 10 May 1939, when it officially settled on its current site.
In the late 1940s, David replaced his mother as a member of MoMA's board of directors and eventually became chairman of the board.
The museum has also gradually flourished, from only 9 pieces in the beginning to more than 200,000 pieces.
Friends who have been to MoMA will know that the famous works of art collected and exhibited in the museum include:
Van Gogh's "Starry Sky", Dalí's "The Eternity of Memory", Picasso's "The Maiden of Avignon", Matisse's "Dance" and so on.
Van Gogh, Starry Sky, 1889
Dalí, The Eternity of Memory, 1931
Matisse, Dance, 1910
In 2007, David sold his 47-year-old Rothko's 1950 work White Center (Yellow, Pink, and Lavender on Rose) for $72.84 million at Sotheby's in New York.
On May 9, 2018, Mr. and Mrs. David commissioned Christie's to bid on 44 of the family's fine works, all of which were 100% sold, with a total transaction value of US$646,133,594 (equivalent to about RMB4.37 billion).
David Rockefeller's study at the 65th Street mansion in New York hangs Picasso's "The Girl with the Flower Basket"
After visiting MoMA, how can you miss the largest art museum in the United States, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Originally built in 1872 and expanded several times, the Costume Institute is the largest in the world, collecting more than 15,000 pieces of clothing from various ethnic groups on five continents over the past four centuries, and has become a mecca for fashion lovers.
Today, Vogue magazine's annual charity fundraising party, Met Gala, at the museum, has become an annual event.
Let's switch the location to France
If you were given a day,
How would you choose to spend your time in Paris?
Do you stroll alone on the romantic left bank of the Seine, or ascend montmartre overlooking all of Paris?
No matter how you choose, many art lovers will not miss the famous Musée de l Orangerie.
In 1918, Monet decided to donate his peace-symbolizing work, Water Lilies, to the French government as a signature exhibit of the Musée des Orangeries, hoping to bring a haven of tranquility to Parisians.
Every nerve that comes to the first floor of the orangery and is nervous by the work is relaxed after seeing Monet's paintings, as calm as the surface of the water, and people seem to be in the middle of the flower pond, meditating here.
These veritable artistic legacies of Monet constitute the final perfect chapter of his life.
The Orangerie Museum has two floors, and on the first floor there are two galleries dedicated to Monet's work. There are also many works by masters from the end of the Impressionist period to the Second World War, such as Cézanne, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin and others.
Before Picasso became famous, he also lived in a broken wooden house in Montmartre for 5 years, transitioning from the melancholy "blue period" to the bright "pink period", and finally founded Cubism, a pioneer in modern art.
During his period of poverty, he often went to the "Cunning Rabbit Bar" to draw credit, and by the time he left Montmartre in 1911, he was already famous and sought after.
Half a century later, a painting Picasso exchanged for wine at the Cunning Rabbit Bar sold for more than $40 million at the Sotheby's auction site.
That year (July 1956), Chinese masters such as Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong also came to Paris, and the former also visited Picasso.
Zhang Daqian later recalled that Picasso praised the art of painting in the East: "When it comes to world art, the first is China, the second is Japan, and the third is black. ”
Zhang Daqian and Picasso
There was also a person who graciously invited Picasso to Come to China, but he politely refused, "I dare not go to your China, because China has a Qi Baishi." ”
Picasso said that if Chinese art is compared to bread, then European art is nothing more than breadcrumbs.
Although it is a bit exaggerated, the Chinese paintings that have been passed down for thousands of years are pure and exquisite.
Qi Baishi's shrimp
Many Western artists of Picasso's generation liked to draw inspiration from the art of painting in the East, such as Chinese landscape painting and Japanese ukiyo-e, and many Japanese cultures also originated from China.
Qi Baishi's shrimp, Xu Beihong's horse, Li Kejian's cattle, Zheng Banqiao's bamboo... One by one, they are fascinating and vivid, and they are undoubtedly the treasures of world culture.
Zheng Banqiao", "Ink Bamboo"
For Westerners in the 18th and 19th centuries, owning a famous painting from China's collection is a kind of pride and a thing worth showing off to others.
Want to see the world's famous paintings from the East and the West at once?
Taking the four seasons as a clue, we have selected 52 masterpieces from a large number of works of art to form this set of "Four Seasons of Life".