The residents of the city’s neighborhoods and outskirts of Los Angeles fled before the fire, unable to save their most precious possessions. The houses of collectors, artist studios and galleries were reduced to rubble and ashes, as reported by The Art Newspaper. The fire consumed rare and valuable artworks, with losses already confirmed to be irreparable. The newspaper describes:
“The first to see the smoke rising from the hills were the residents of the upscale coastal area of Pacific Palisades. Ron Rivlin, a collector living there, publicly lamented his losses. He told The New York Times that when he saw the fire, he decided to flee and take as many of Andy Warhol’s works as he could transport. Two dozen more works by the leading artist of Pop Art, as well as works by John Baldessari, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst and Kenny Scharf, fell victim to the fire. When Rivlin returned to the site of his former home, he found ruins and ash, as well as the unscathed Edelstahl sculpture by Michael Benisty – two human figures holding hands.”
As the fires raged, everyone was following the fate of the Getty collection, which, however, survived, thanks to a unique architectural design. Architect Richard Meier ensured that the exterior walls of the building were clad in Travertin, a special fire-resistant tuff stone and the interior was reinforced with concrete. The rich collections, including works by Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Rembrandt, Auguste Renoir and many others, remained unharmed. The Arnold Schönberg Library, on the other hand, had much less luck.
The art newspaper, The Art Newspaper, laments with regret:
“In Pacific Palisades, the 83-year-old Larry Schönberg, son of the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg, the inventor of the dodecaphony, also lived, with an archive building next to his house, connected to his father’s name. Although the most valuable documents, including original manuscripts, had already been transferred to the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, the fire destroyed photographs, letters, books and about 10,000 scores that Larry Schönberg had sold and rented out. Without this archive, future performances of the composer’s works would be difficult to stage.”
Not everyone dares to reveal what exactly was lost from their collections, as they fear complications in filing insurance claims, the newspaper says. It is, however, already clear that the art loss caused by the fires is in the millions of dollars.