”How much, like 25 bucks? Sweet! I’m getting this” an overly excited Chris Namon,  babbled to us, inexplicably waving an idol of some kind at our head. “This is TIGHT! Its Bonnie..Bonaparte, and he’s awesome and I’m getting it.” Seems after emptying his ubiquitous flask and pounding the last of the cocktails poured in the piazza of the J. Paul Getty Museum, LegmanLA’s music editor-at-large, who tagged along as a carbon emission cutting third wheel on a recent date (on the free parking day) got all consumerist, spotting a nicely crafted figurine of Napoleon in the Getty’s gift shop.

Now the Getty is a wonderous feature of  LA; if the trek there was as casual as our walk across Central Park to hit up the Met was, we’d be there every week. But this is LA and getting there demands enduring the 405 ( BQE + LIE West) followed by a Grand Theft Auto-like descent into parking structure hell. Now it doesn’t matter what’s showing, the spectacular campus is the reason to visit-and again, it’s a cheap date. So we didn’t think twice before heading to the current exhibition, a baffling show of Beaux Arts hack painter and even worse sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme, sort of the Leroy Neiman of 19th century France. Gerome (1824 – 1904) realizing he had no game gave up his dreams of winning the Prix de Rome, stuck to painting what sold to the suits-plum assed naked chicks in exotic locals, gladiators, and idealized Napoleonic combat images- in a dead illustrative style while Realism, Impressionism and the foundation of Modernism emerged around him. And now we know why he gets a show here; to sell freaking little statues you couldn’t give away to sucker tourists anywhere else. At any rate we credit the man for inspiring Frank Frazetta who in our teenage years propelled our penchant for applying paint to canvas, and William Randolph Hearst was a fan, once owning the Napoleon meets the Sphinx canvas in the show, which remains up through 12 September.

Top: Jean-Léon Gérome, Pygmallion and Galatea, 1890,  detail.

Center: Gérome, Napoleon and the Sphinx, 1868

Bottom: A Man and his Idol