Without the refined descriptors and pedestal of cultural knowledge to stand upon, one might feel dwarfed by the rock solid travertine spread of the Getty Center. The technical jargon used to describe the architectural elements handpicked and woven together by Pritzker Prize Winning Architect Richard Meier might be lost on you but the magnificence of the art center is not. And so you approach the organized assembly of confusingly curved tile and rough columns, stepping through glass doors into an atrium bathed in golden sunlight.

One by one, you let your feet wander the wooden flooring linking the galleries housed in the five pavilions. Tiny labels announcing the age of the work behind secure glass casing indicate dates primarily from before the 20th Century. The differing brush strokes leave marks of varying intensity as preferred by the artist to create replicas and caricatures of everyday objects and things found only in the mind of the painter. Rembrandt and Monet are brought back to life through the tinted oils on canvas. Seeing the pure indigo tracing the edges of drooping petals on Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises, you might be able to imagine the solitude being channeled through the colors. The confused spiral brush strokes appear to be a reflection of his isolation within a mental ward, labeled a senile with a broken mind.

In a separate room, you step into a room filled with chromatic print of points in history frozen on a printed frame. Neat print announces that this is the Center for Photography as evidenced by the collection exhibited. Staring into the interplay of shadows and light captured onto a 2D plane, you find yourself transported to the raucous streets of China or the menacing alleys in the bowels of Mexico. The collection numbers at 36, 500, brought out on rotations to preserve the photosensitive medium. Back in the baking heat of the outdoors, you marvel at the expression of art as an extension of nature. The Central Garden and the Cactus Garden at the southern end seem to be a collaboration of equal parts between the sculptor and the plants themselves, morphing even over the course of the day the appeal that it projects onto visitors. Without a single bone of an art connoisseur in your body, you can still be caught in an endless rapture down the corridors of the Getty Centre.