A Getty Against Establishment : Art: Aileen Getty opens her one-person show at Zero One Gallery. And her images attack ‘the system.’

The Getty name is a powerful one in the art world, conjuring up images of the wealthy J. Paul Getty Museum and its extensive holdings of rare antiquities and stately paintings. But now another Getty, J. Paul’s granddaughter, Aileen, has entered the art scene, bringing with her images that attack the heart of her family’s Establishment world.

“Quite frankly, most of the family’s not aware of what I’m doing, so it hasn’t become an issue yet, but I imagine there will be a bit of a problem,” said Aileen Getty, 30, who has her first one-person show at Zero One Gallery on Melrose Avenue through June 15. In the show are images attacking “the system,” including a series of wooden planks with photos of graffiti reflecting such themes as blood and murder, works incorporating memos from the FBI, and several works showing the American flag as “a deceitful image.”

“I would imagine that it will make my family uncomfortable,” Getty said. “We’re certainly one of the more established, respected, corporate members of this system. And as a corporate member you really are part of the system . . . so therefore what I’m doing is dangerous (to the family).”

Getty, a self-taught artist who has been making art steadily for the last two years, said she hadn’t wanted to show her works in the past, but finally “broke down” when she included some of her works in a group show at Zero One a couple of months ago.

“There is a degree of danger for me--in my coming out,” the self-proclaimed “black sheep” of the Gettys noted. “In my family, it’s just not the done thing. It’s kind of like a kid from a Mafia family all of a sudden turning around.”

But because of her family’s position, Getty--who speaks boldly and refers to herself as an underground artist--says her works may be taken more seriously than that of other artists working with similar themes.

“I think that perhaps as a member of a loud, powerful, respected corporation, my opinion is given some kind of verification . . . because I’ve seen the other side,” she said. “I have a clearer view of how important the corporate are to our system; how powerfully money speaks for them. But for the rest of the people, through my eyes, I’ve never seen money speak well.”

Getty says her works are representative of what she sees as the “global breakdown” of our times. For instance, several pieces repeatedly use the words “Death Row,” which Getty sees as “not necessarily being about just one death sentence, but death sentences on a global level. I find that we’re all sentenced to death at this time. And we should become more in touch with that--not just with our own future, because it doesn’t seem we really care about it--but at least with our children’s future,” she said.

Through her works, Getty hopes to show her viewers “how ignorant we are . . . how responsible we all are for this global sentence.”

In “Even Our Flag Fooled Us,” for instance, Getty has painted a large wooden pallet with the image of the American flag. The flag’s stars, however, are blue on a white background instead of white on a blue background.

“Most people don’t even notice it (the reversed colors) until I point it out to them, and that just shows how much we have been deceived and how much denial there is,” Getty said. “The flag, to me, is one of the most powerful--not only image, but also statement, promise and belief--that we have. And ‘fooled’ is really a nice way of putting it. It has really taken us all for a ride. It’s a very deceitful image.”

Getty was the most talkative, however, about her series of graffiti photographs on found wooden planks.

“My work takes the people’s image and makes it accessible to those that don’t think of it, that don’t see it, or don’t usually give it the time of day,” she said, noting that she shot about 50 rolls of film a week for six months before settling on the images used in the works.

“I shoot what seems politically appropriate--things that show where we stand, not just as a nation, but globally, at this time in history. Because history could stop here,” the philosophical Getty said. “The photos are all from various areas of Los Angeles. They are a reflection and image of the vision everyone holds for their environment. I wanted to show . . . a people’s reality through using a people’s work (the graffiti).

“I like to reflect feelings from the people--honest images,” she continued. “And I really do believe they are honest images. It’s amazing--I’ll find the same colors and the same images one morning in South Central Los Angeles and the next morning in Beverly Hills. In totally different areas, people are feeling the same things. You find the exact same sort of symbolic language throughout the city. In a city as big as this, thousands of people are making the same words. I think that we all have basically the same rights, and the same beliefs, and the same requirements . . . and it’s very clear through the graffiti.”

Getty, who admitted to being very nervous during one of her first interviews as an artist, said she first began making art when she was undergoing therapy almost a decade ago.

“I never drew or painted or did any sort of art as a child. Probably, the competition was way too stiff,” she said with a laugh. “So the first thing I did was a face, just a round circle with slits for the eyes, for the nose and for the mouth. It didn’t even have ears or hair. But slowly I taught myself detail--and a little perspective.”

Getty gave up her new-found art, however, when she had her two sons (by then-husband Christopher Wilding, the son of Elizabeth Taylor), who are now 7 and 5 1/2. Then two years ago, she once again began to draw, paint and photograph, she said.

“I had no sort of training, and at first I had fear,” she remembers. “The fear was strictly because I’m not trained and I don’t have the basic skills. I had to develop them on my own, slowly but surely,through trial and error--and through thought.”

Getty notes, however, that she is still learning in her art making, and vows: “I have a lot more that I will do as time goes by. My passion is really being a student of the system; a researcher. My goal is to find out what is really going on. . . . I don’t have all the answers yet, but at this time, this is the best I can do. Hopefully I can make people think when they see (my art and) hopefully it will consciously or unconsciously trigger some sort of discomfort.”