© Herb Ritts
LOS ANGELES — The Getty Museum announces the acquisition of 69 photographs by famed fashion and celebrity photographer Herb Ritts. Consisting of photographs of nudes, portraits, and images made for high-fashion ad campaigns, this acquisition is the most significant body of the artist’s work on the West Coast. The majority of the acquisition comes in the form of a generous gift from the Herb Ritts Foundation.
“We are happy to have this opportunity to acquire an important selection of prints by Herb Ritts, whose work in fashion blurred the lines between art and commerce,” says Judith Keller, senior curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This acquisition not only helps build our collection of fashion photography, but also fulfills our commitment to collect bodies of works by Los Angeles-based artists.”
Other artists in the Getty’s collection who established a reputation for their fashion photographs include Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, William Klein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, and Louise Dahl Wolfe. Significant Los Angeles-based photographers include, Uta Barth, Jo Ann Callis, John Divola, Lauren Greenfield, Robert Heinecken, Catherine Opie, Paul Outerbridge, and Edward Weston.
“Herb Ritts embraced his life in Los Angeles in every aspect and that is evident in his photographs. You can feel the Southern California light and warmth in his work and, without question, it influenced his pictures” says Mark McKenna, director of the Herb Ritts Foundation. “It is an honor knowing that Herb Ritts’s prints will be included in the Getty Museum’s prestigious collection and at the same time find a home here in the city that he adored.”
Highlights from the acquisition include Richard Gere, San Bernardino (1977), a portrait that presents the budding actor as a new American hero; Greg Louganis, Hollywood (1985), a portrait of the American Olympic diver; Wrapped Torso, Los Angeles (1988), which shows off a dress by Japanese designer Issey Mikaye; Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood (1989), an iconic image that has come to define the era of the Supermodel; Veiled Dress, El Mirage (1990), a photograph first used in Versace’s couture catalogue; and a suite of photographs of the internationally recognized choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones. A number of the photographs in the acquisition have not been reproduced, exhibited, or seen outside of the Foundation’s archive.
“It’s exciting to have so many of Ritts’s best photographs become part of our collection,” adds Paul Martineau, associate curator in the Department of Photographs. “We are looking forward to displaying them in our galleries next spring for what will be the first significant exhibition on Ritts in over a decade.”
Selections from this acquisition will be featured in an upcoming exhibition and a related publication, opening at the Getty Center in April 2012.
Vignette © Herb Ritts