Uncommon Grounds

At the beginning of the 20th century, nature was so much everywhere, one couldn’t pinpoint it as existing anywhere in particular.

As the century crawls to a close, however, things have changed dramatically. Nature’s displays of power still have the last word--any Californian can attest to that--but in the short run, man has reduced the natural environment to something we preserve when we care to, destroy when we don’t. Nature itself seems to be becoming a hothouse flower, pulsating with the rarefied aura of an object in a vitrine.

Taking this cultural shift into account, the garden that Los Angeles artist Robert Irwin is creating for the new J. Paul Getty Center in Brentwood makes a lot of sense. Rather than transform the 134,000-square-foot parcel of land he’s been allotted into a pseudo-wilderness of drought-tolerant native plants, Irwin has conceived a highly controlled environment where he’s sculpting, essentially, with organic materials.

“Bob’s garden couldn’t pretend to be an early California garden of native foliage--that would be nonsense because it has nothing to do with the end of the 20th century,” says J. Paul Getty Museum Director John Walsh of the garden, which promises to be one of the highlights of the center, whose overall design is by architect Richard Meier. “Nor should it imitate anything Italian or French because this garden looks out over a city where everything is either man-made or is consciously preserved by man. Consequently, although Bob’s garden has lots to appreciate with your feet, nose, eyes and ears, it is ultimately a man-made garden about the man-made, and as such, it speaks to the mind.”

Irwin’s design for the garden has as its central element a descending canopy of trees that enclose a stream, with banks planted with flowering plants whose colors increase in intensity as one descends to the base of the hill. A zig-zagging path bridges back and forth over the stream that becomes a pool at the base of the hill, in the center of a kind of terraced amphitheater. Built into the shallow pool will be a geometric maze planted with flowering azaleas that will appear to be floating. Incorporating 500 species of plants, the garden will combine a severely geometric design with an explosion of flowers, including everything from tulips, irises and geraniums to nasturtiums, hydrangeas and sage.

The subject of a 1992 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Irwin has struggled throughout his career to liberate his art from the sequestered realm of museums and galleries and move it into the real world. It was, in fact, his effort to redesign the Miami International Airport--a project that took up a sizable chunk of his time during the 1980s but was never realized because of a change in leadership at the airport--that landed him this plum assignment, the invitation for which came in 1992 from Harold M. Williams, president and chief executive officer of the Getty Trust.

As to why he accepted the commission, Irwin recalls that “the person who initially [talked to me about the project], Kurt Forster [former director of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities], is an extremely intelligent, articulate man and I liked what I heard when he explained the desires of the Getty to me.

“When the Getty told me what they wanted, however, I told them that in order for their garden to be everything they envisioned, they’d have to make it bigger,” adds the 68-year-old artist during an interview in the room where the Getty’s model is housed, in the parking garage on the new site. “So, the first thing I did was enlarge the space by removing a [nonfunctional] wall, which created the scale it needed.

“The shape of this garden is determined by the architecture--essentially, this is the space that’s left over, so the garden wasn’t a conscious design element,” he continues. “I told them that to do an important garden--and there are maybe 30 of those in the world--the garden had to make some of the principal decisions of its own becoming. Toward that end, I transformed what was then a flat stretch of land back into a canyonthat was as steep as I could make it and still meet the requirements for handicapped access.”

Irwin believes that for a garden to be important, it must incorporate one or two dramatic gestures. Toward that end, his garden includes two major plantings of trees--London plane and crape myrtle--which will be carefully budded for five years, then shaped for five. The London planes will come together over the stream to form a canopy that will be geometrically shaped on the outside and left organic in the interior.

“California doesn’t get the cold snap needed to grow stately trees, and in my opinion, the London plane is the only local tree that has the stature of the great East Coast trees,” Irwin explains. “I juxtapose the London plane with the crape myrtle, which is a very sensuous tree, and surround them both with green grass that will be clipped very closely. Other parts of the garden will be planted with tall grass, though none of it will be near the buildings. One thing [architect] Richard Meier requested was that there be nothing but closely clipped grass up against his architecture, so that’s something we agreed on.

“Both of these trees have beautiful trunk structures, and ultimately they’re the most important element in the garden,” adds Irwin, who confers regularly with Richard Naranjo, manager of the grounds and gardens for the Getty Trust, whose ongoing responibility has been for the gardens of the museum in Malibu. “If we succeed in getting them to take the shape I envision them having, it will be something you’d come a thousand miles to see. All the major trees are deciduous, so in the winter these beautiful trunk structures will be visible and the garden will become quite severe--so severe that it will be clear that it’s not just untended, but that it’s meant to look that way.

“In the summer, the plants will ignore all boundaries and will transform the garden into a series of soft curves. In the wintertime, the opposite will happen--you’ll see the bones of the garden and all its structural, architectural elements--there’s much in this garden that is sculptural and geometric too. There’s a wall made of Cor-ten steel, which gets a gorgeous, satiny finish to it; the path cuts into the hill in an aggressively geometric fashion; the path is made of blue stone laid in a sort of herringbone pattern; and the bridges will be teak.”

At this point in the conversation, Irwin sounds as if he is talking about fashioning a site specific artwork rather than a garden; he confirms that what he’s doing is somewhere between the two.

“The Getty doesn’t have a contemporary collection because that’s not what J. Paul Getty liked,” he says. “But the people who run it now want some kind of presence that puts the Getty in the 20th century, and that’s partly why they brought me in to do the garden. I would also add that in hiring me rather than a landscape architect, they made an adventurous choice that most supposedly avant-garde places aren’t willing to make.”

Having made that adventurous choice, the Getty spent the next year and a half putting Irwin through his paces.

“It took me about 18 months to win the trust of the Getty people,” Irwin recalls. “Initially, they wanted Richard Meier and I to collaborate, but that was asking a great deal. Richard’s been working on this project for about 10 years and to a point has controlled everything. Suddenly I turn up and he’s informed I’m gonna paint on his canvas. I think I’m the right artist for this project, and that Meier had less to fear from me than he would with most artists, but he still found it simply wasn’t possible for him to work with me.”

Asked if Meier has finally become comfortable with Irwin having his plot of ground, he laughs and says: “Of course not. I have no idea what he thinks of the garden either, but I think it might scare him. I want the garden to be absolutely exuberant, so the planting plan has over 500 plants culled out on it.”

Meier could not be reached for comment.

“At the moment, people talk a lot about native plants as if it’s the only ethical way to make a garden,” Irwin continues, “but 99% of the California landscape is not native. Gardens are about another kind of experience--they’re about joy--and in order to have a really rich garden I needed some familiar flowers that are very successful. So I’ve included bougainvillea, which blossoms nine months of the year, a rose that flowers for five months, and of course, there will be seasonal plantings of flowers. When the plants aren’t flowering, the garden will be transformed into a shifting palette of greens.

“Plants are very fickle, so I have a planting ground in San Diego where I’m working with the plants I hope to use, and we’re also planting them here to see how they do--I’m pushing the envelope in terms of introducing plants that aren’t native to the region.

“I’ve structured the flowering plants so that the garden starts in the sunshine at the top of the hill with a simple geometry that compounds into pattern, then texture. There are a number of succulents in the first flower bed, which is the flattest area and the most low to the ground, and as you descend into the garden the plants get higher and less complex. I gave lots of thought to scent as well, and will include freesia, gardenias and many other fragrant flowers.”

Irwin also intends for the sound of his garden to be as delightful as its scent, and plans to build a kind of echo chamber into his stream “so people can hear it. Huge boulders will be set into the stream, and there will be sections of it that disappear underground, then it will spring back to the surface farther down the hill.”

If all this sounds a bit rich for the blood, Irwin stresses repeatedly that his intent is to create a comfortable garden people will want to use.

“People think of the Getty as some kind of private club, but in fact it’s a public trust and as such, it belongs to the public,” he says. “With that in mind, I felt the garden needed some kind of friendly, familiar invitation. Because this is a garden where things can be left out at night without being stolen, we’re going to ‘furnish’ the garden with French cafe chairs that won’t be secured in the ground, so people can move them to wherever they want to sit.”

Irwin’s final concern is for the future of his creation; this is an aspect of the Getty project that pleases him to no end.

“Not only does the Getty have the money to create an extravagant garden, they also have the funds and the willingness to maintain it. In 1990, I did a garden for the Pasadena Police Department that conformed exactly to what I was asked to do, yet they’ve never maintained it so now I’m embarrassed by it. I learned my lesson, and now when I get invited to do a project like this, one of the first things I ask is what’s the maintenance dollar? If I’m going to devote years of my life to creating a public work, I’ve got to know it’s going to be maintained or it could be a disaster.

“This is a huge project,” he says. “I have 14 consulting firms working for me, including a civil engineer, a structural engineer and a soils engineer. And now having been deeply involved with this for several years, I’m happy to say we’ve finally reached the stage where we’re actually starting to build things--they’re working on the main wall and on the plumbing,” says Irwin, who commutes to L.A. by air from his home in San Diego three days a week. With that, he races to gather up his visual aids and rushes off to the airport to catch his afternoon plane.