By Melonie Magruder
Lookout Staff

November 14, 2011 -- In 1974, oil billionaire and philanthropist J. Paul Getty opened his Getty Villa adjacent to Pacific Palisades as a repository for his extensive collection of ancient art from Greece, Rome and Etruria. This month, Getty curators have opened an exhibit that turns the concept of antiquities on its head with “Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Léger and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique.”

Claiming that “classicism became contemporary in the early 20th century” organizers of the exhibit aim to juxtapose works of modern masters – who effectively redefined the concept of art 100 years ago – with ancient works by artists dead some 2000 years.

“We chose these pieces because they represent what those modern artists found interesting, arresting, appealing and curious in ancient art and what they relate it to in the 20th century,” said Jens Daehner, assistant curator of antiquities at the Getty who was co-curator of the exhibit.

Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia all painted and exhibited in the heady world of early 20th century Paris, at a time when art was vaulting from figurative impressionism to abstract ideas of what constituted art. Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism challenged art viewers with new ideas of perception, metaphor and value.

But the 20th century masters believed profound affinities existed between ancient and modern works. Picasso illustrated Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” in 1931 and featured Greek mythological figures, like the Minotaur, in plenty of his work. De Chirico’s painted nine different townscapes centered on a renowned ancient statue in the Vatican Museums of the goddess Ariadne sleeping.

The exhibit, co-curated by Daehner and Christopher Green, of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, shows how these avant-garde artists transformed and reinvented antiquity, making it alive in the present.

The modern works of the four artists are displayed alongside antique pieces primarily from the Getty collection – many of them unknown to the modern artists – setting up a dialogue between ancient objects and modern paintings.

Picasso, whose work after World War 1 were said to recall that of the 16th century painter Raphael and the 19th century painter Ingres, frequently paid tribute to masters who came before him. It is said that, after viewing Stone Age wall paintings in the caves of Lascaux, Picasso said, “We have invented nothing new.”

Daehner said that the curators did not try to pair shadow images of one subject or image, but rather a concept. So a 4th century bas relief is displayed with a bronze of Picasso’s mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Many of the paintings of Léger included classically sculpted busts or heads – a visual juxtaposition of ancient elements in a modern context.

“The idea is that several conversations can be generated on an individual and aesthetic level,” Daehner said. “There is more than one possibility.”

Surprisingly, the pairing of the modern and ancient works was not so immediately obvious. Though the curators had a working list of the four modern artists, they had a fairly large array of ancient works to consider. And, as Daehner pointed out, a lot of the fragmentation of ancient art (busts lacking noses, or torsos without arms) heavily influences how we look at antiquity today.

“There are modern qualities that we admire in ancient objects like the sculptured drapery that covers a woman, even though she has no arms,” Daehner said. “But it’s not that we are venerating the glorious past. We’re seeing relevant, modern qualities in a visual context.”

As co-curator Green said, “I hope (with this exhibit) the distance between us and that culture will somehow condense.”

Modern Antiquity runs at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, through January 16, 2012.