The Color of Life - at The Getty Villa

Has anyone checked out this exhibition yet? I went to the Getty Villa two weeks ago and just about had a heart attack. Unfortunetely, I didn't get to The Color of Life collection until about 20 minutes before the museum closed. For those of you who gag at the thought of ancient art, have no fear! There was a nice variety of different time periods (statues dating from Egypt's Old Kingdom to Contemporary).

Some artists took ancient Roman statues and painted replicas of them (there were a few examples for each piece) to get an idea of what they may have looked like at that time. The majority of them were pretty bright and gaudy, but it was amazing to see the existing pigment on the originals. There were a few polychromy (the use of multiple colors) statues in the exhibition, a reconstruction of the Augustus of Prima Porta (most definetely worth driving out there to see, lol), and an interesting wax sculpture called Anatomical Venus. I guess it was originally used for scientific study (it was like those HeShe plastic bodies you had in Jr. High science classes, you know, where you could take out all the organs?) and it was insanely realistic, and rather gruesome.



The exhibition continues on until the 23rd of June, so go see it!