Art & Creativity Quote by Gordon Getty

Claiming "19th-century ideals" in the 21st century is a provocation disguised as a polite self-description. Gordon Getty, a billionaire heir who writes classical-leaning music, isn’t just talking about melody or form; he’s arguing for a whole moral atmosphere. The phrase "idealistic human personality" feels deliberately old-fashioned, a rebuttal to the modern posture that treats sincerity as naive and the self as mostly a bundle of incentives and trauma. He’s pitching music as a character project: art that presumes people can be elevated, refined, even improved.

The subtext is also about legitimacy. A businessman entering a tradition-heavy art world has to answer the unspoken charge that his compositions are hobbyist indulgence. By invoking the 19th century, Getty aligns himself with the era when art was allowed to be earnest, narrative, and frankly emotional without needing an ironic alibi. It’s a way of saying: judge me by the standards of craft and aspiration, not by today’s suspicion of grand statements.

Context matters: 19th-century ideals carry baggage - romantic individualism, faith in progress, a belief in beauty as a civilizing force - and, yes, the class privilege that funded concert halls and patronage. Getty’s quote flirts with that tension. It suggests a desire to recover art’s uplift while sidestepping the century’s darker realities. Still, the line works because it’s unapologetic: an elite figure admitting he wants music that believes in the human, not just observes it.