Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty

Departures chronicles the exhibition of specially commissioned works produced by eleven acclaimed artists as each responds to an object in the Getty Museum. Using the Getty collections as a point of departure, the artists create new works spanning a broad spectrum of media including painting, sculpture, photography, film, and video. Conceptual artist John Baldessari enlarges Albrecht Durer's diminutive drawing tag Beetle (1505) to a mural held in place by a gigantic specimen pin, while ceramicist Adrian Saxe creates a porcelain and stoneware centerpiece designed especially for an eighteenth-century French table in the collection.
Other participating artists include Uta Barth, Sharon Ellis, Judy Fiskin, Martin Kersels, John M. Miller, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, Lari Pittman, Stephen Prina, and Alison Saar. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum from February 29 through May 7, 2000, this book provides a rare glimpse at these artists, including their past work, the objects they created for this unusual exhibition, and their studios. Essays on each artist's commissioned work along with Grant Mumford's photographs of the artists and the artwok provide a thought-provoking exploration of the potent and surprising ways in which the art of the past can inform the art of today.