CULTURED
Kendalle Getty’s first exposure to art was in kindergarten. She would draw beside her older sister and admire her sibling’s ease. She wanted that for herself. As a teenager, she would discover that she was the daughter of Gordon Getty, composer and an heir to one of the most significant American empires, when her mother Cynthia Beck went to court to petition for her daughters to share the family’s name.
More than two decades later, Kendalle harnesses the intensity of her history to make haunting and caustic sculptural, video, and audio interventions under the umbrella of “Hostile Home,” a multi-room installation. Several works from the collection will be included in a group show at Elijah Wheat Showroom this fall. The renegade artist also performs with Poetry Brothel, an immersive cabaret, and has worked on short films, including a recent music video for Glüme and Sean Ono Lennon.
As the notorious family returned to the news cycle with the second installment of her father and late stepmother’s collection, “The Ann and Gordon Getty Collection,” hitting Christie’s this month, Kendalle called CULTURED to talk about her love of theory, making messy work, and being a part-time Getty.
