J. Paul Getty's Motivations for Collecting Antiquities (original) (raw)

Antiquities allowed twentieth century American collectors to forge new identities for themselves, as sophisticated connoisseurs with spiritual connections to Europe. This marks a striking change from the conflicted attitude towards classical antiquity held by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who drew from antiquity to provide prototypes for desired political changes, but also generally refused to form large-scale collections of antiquities, feeling that it would be incongruous to do so in a nation founded on the belief that America was capable of producing all that it needed, without assistance from the Old World or its claims of superior culture. The article examines the oilman and collector J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) as a turning point in American collecting, one of the first American collectors to regard as a positive trait the imperial and elitist qualities associated with classical antiquities. Getty was a self-made billionaire, and spent much of his fortune on art and the foundation of the Getty Museum and Foundation in Los Angeles, California. He also wrote frequently and self-analytically about his collecting, which began in earnest when he was able to take advantage of European collectors selling their collections for low prices during the Great Depression and World War II. He evolved a philosophy of collecting that inextricably linked art to business and business to immortality, believing that exposure to art would both increase the “imagination” needed for success in business and give American businessmen the cultural fluency necessary to negotiate business transactions with foreign partners. After exercising his imagination to find investment opportunities, the truly great businessman would not, Getty thought, rest content to have made his own fortune. Instead, a businessman should continue to expand his existing enterprises and create new ones in order to create jobs for as many people as possible, which would render him as famous as a Caesar. However, Getty’s philosophical beliefs in the importance of antiquities left him vulnerable to purchasing forgeries, if the story offered by the dealer was attractive to him, since, for Getty, the most important thing about a potential purchase was that it could be connected to an eminent former owner. Getty above all preferred to acquire antiquities previously owned by the emperor Hadrian or by eighteenth century English aristocrats – or, ideally, by both, as he believed was the case for the Lansdowne Hercules. Getty modeled his life on Roman and European aristocracy not only through the power of his rule over the Getty Empire, but also by activities characteristic of the leisure time interests of these aristocrats, including his extensive travels, the construction of the Getty villa, and, most importantly, his art collecting.