out, a weblog by George Girton

Chilly Woman . . . . . dec 14 2003 — o36.dat

Today I nipped up to The Getty (www.getty.edu) to see Houdon's sculptures of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and as I discovered when I got there, John Paul Jones, Voltaire, Diderot, the emperor Napoleon and his wife Josephine, and many others, including the happy wife of Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Arriving in a rush at sunset, only an hour and a half before the museum's Sunday closing time of 6.00 p.m., I took the rain-soaked marble steps two at a time, quickly reaching the second level. I was guided by banner after banner of Houdon's sculpture of the handsome American steamship developer Robert Fulton, which has been chosen as the emblem of the exhibition.

The climate-controlled second level is an area normally devoted to the display of two-millenium-old fragile antiquities. Two sets of doors serve as an airlock against the changing Los Angeles climate, so there's a slight delay as you go in ... I strode purposefully towards Houdon's sculpture of Jefferson, and had almost reached it when I was brought up short by a hooded woman.

Crouched, hooded, perfectly formed, Houdon's sculpture in brass of La Frileuse ('Chilly woman') brought me to a halt, a complete stop, a full transport out of modern life.

And into winter.

At that moment, warmly dressed in Los Angeles, I stopped and I shivered.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at that statue, and others in the exhibit. If you don't plan to visit Los Angeles before January 25, 2004, you can still learn a great deal from the catalog of Houdon's exhibition, which has been published by the U. of Chicaga Press: Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment [buy at amazon] . by Anne L. Poulet.

If you ARE in Los Angeles, you must take the tram to Valhalla on the hill, and glimpse these three-dimensional portraits of our American founding fathers, who sat for Houdon, and by extension, since Houdon was the premiere sculptor of his age, for you.

Index of Previous Journal Entries

If you like what you read, click here to sign up for our mailing list and we'll notify you when we post new book reviews