Reflections on a Biographical Approach to Contemporary Art Conservation. Proceedings of ICOM-CC 16th Triennial Conference. WG Theory and History in Conservation (original) (raw)
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Reflections on a biographical approach to contemporary art conservation
ICOM-CC: 16th Triennial Conference, Lisbon, 19–23 September 2011: preprints, 2011
Rather than preserving original objects, the conservation of contemporary art should be thought of as managing change. This raises the question of how to theoretically capture the variability of the work without losing the sense of its artistic identity. The researchers participating in the interdisciplinary project New strategies in the conservation of contemporary art propose to use a biographical approach to investigate and compare the histories of artworks, both before and after they enter museum collections. In this paper we claim that not only do decisive turning points in an artwork’s life occur at other moments than those conventionally recognised, but that, moreover, they are made up of various and diverging timelines, to be mapped as a river’s trajectory.
Rather than preserving original objects, the conservation of contemporary art should be thought of as managing change. This raises the question of how to theoretically capture the variability of the work without losing the sense of its artistic identity. The researchers participating in the interdisciplinary project New strategies in the conservation of contemporary art propose to use a biographical approach to investigate and compare the histories of artworks, both before and after they enter museum collections. In this paper the authors claim that not only do decisive turning points in an artwork’s life occur at other moments than those conventionally recognised, but moreover, that they are made up of various and diverging timelines, to be mapped as a river’s trajectory.
At the Well – Where art conservation meets investigation
ICAR – International Journal of Young Conservators and Restorers of Works of Art, No. 4, ISSN 2719-6852, s. 237-249, 2020
This case study focuses on a series of paintings in the collection of the Zamoyski Museum in Poland: The Meeting of Eliezer and Rebecca at the Well and its pendant Preaching of an Apostle; and Capriccio with Shepherd and its pendant The Finding of Moses. These were believed to have been made in the 17th–18th centuries and were attributed to Italian artists such as Giovanni Paolo Panini. This paper re-examines these attributions and provenances. The paper discusses various ways of collecting information on a painting’s history: analytical methods to obtain insight into the technique and technology of the painting, surveys on the painting’s condition and secondary marks such as wax seals, investigation of historic documents, and examination of stylistic features. It is emphasised that a painting does not hold only aesthetic value. Its history adds to its value, enriching and converting it into an important source of past information. ___ In summary, various approaches to investigating the paintings, including analytical methods, attribution and provenance research, surveys of historical documents and red seals, all overseen by a conservator, led to a new attribution proposal, locating them in the beginning of the 18th century and shedding new light on the Zamoyski collection. The set of paintings from the Zamoyski Museum can be linked to the Roman workshops or circles of Alberto Carlieri. This investigation emphasised that the paintings no longer hold only aesthetic value. The history they have been part of has added to their value, enriching and converting them into an important source of information about the past. The survey concluded that the lack of scholarly attention to the capriccio genre has created a gap that needs to be investigated. The absence of signatures as well as the existence of workshops and followers of capriccio painters hindered attempts to attribute the paintings. A wider research scope that combines different fields and emphasises conservation and art history is needed. Hopefully the publication of this study will ‘introduce new variables in the equation’ in the form of Kozłówka’s set of paintings available for comparison to wider audience. After all, ‘deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?' ___ Open-acces at https://icarthejournal.asp.waw.pl/
Artworks and their Conservation. A (Tentative) Philosophical Introduction
2019
What is it like to restore the works of art of the past? What principles, constrains and rules underpin our conservative practice? In this essay we will take a philosoph-ical look at the discipline of art conservation. Different philosophical positions that impact the aesthetic, ontological and conceptual arguments as to how restoration is to be conceived will be discussed, in the context of examples of artworks that have undergone restoration, de-restoration or re-restoration. This will lead us to address the following questions: Why do we feel compelled to conserve artworks? Which values should we abide by when it comes to restoring them? What role do the intentions of the original artist play? Finally, does current audience have a right to be involved in the matter?
Zero to Now: The Contemporary Art Conservation Problem
According to conservator and NYU professor Christine Frohnert, 95 percent of electronic artworks are in an unknown condition, which is an urgent issue for conservators and arts administrators. This paper explores conservation theory, contemporary art technical history, the interdisciplinary roles of art installers and audiovisual technicians, and current practices in installation documentation. Interviews with practicing conservators at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as laboratory visits at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art are primary sources of information for this study. The research also draws on the work of Salvador Muñoz Viñas, a major theorist of contemporary art conservation and NYU Judith Praska Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts in the spring of 2015. His lectures, along with Pip Laurenson’s published writings as the head conservator of time-based media art at the Tate Modern, lay a theoretical foundation. The aim of the research is to explore the knowledge gap between the conservator and the installation technician that emerges in various iterations of contemporary art and media art installations. I explain the need for better communication in these separate departments by dissecting the commonly accepted principles of conservation and the memory-based approach of installation technicians. By investigating a cross section of general documentation practices (or lack of) in these American art museums, it is apparent that the survival of contemporary art will depend on the amount and quality of information collected in the present day.
in: Heritage for Future, 1/2018: Conservation Ethics today: Are our Conservation-Restoration Theories and Practice ready for the 21th Century?; issue editors: Ursula Schädler-Saub, Bogusław Szmygin; International Scientific Committee for Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration-ICOMOS , 2018
Art historical research needs to consider the materiality of artefacts, but the character of the material and the state of preservation of any object change over time. Today’s restoration and conservation sciences provide the basis for present research in the field of history of art and architecture. Following this premises and with some examples from current research projects our contribution tries to show how much the contemporary academic Art History can benefit from the material and technical knowledge of conservators.
01/03/2018 - Conference: "Conservation Ethics Today", ICOMOS, Florence
Art historical research needs to consider the materiality of artefacts, but the character of the material and the state of preservation of any object change over time. Today‘s restoration and conservation sciences provide the basis for present research in the field of history of art and architecture. Following this premises and with some examples from current research projects our paper tries to show how much the contemporary academic Art History can benefit from the material and technical knowledge of conservators.
PhD thesis / University of Amsterdam / Faculty of Humanities (FGw) / Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies (AHM) Contemporary art challenges the traditional idea of a musealium as well as institutional procedures related to collection care and preservation. Conventionally, visual artworks have been perceived as fixed, unique, material entities created and finished at a particular time, and museum approaches to collecting and preserving them were established accordingly. Nevertheless, contemporary art often resists this definition and undermines dogmas of material authenticity and artist’s intent, as well as the conviction that an object’s integrity resides in its physical features. Taking as its focus the triangle of relationships between an artist, a museum and a contemporary artwork as collectible, this study investigates how contemporary artworks by Mirosław Bałka, Danh Vo and Barbara Kruger are collected, documented and conserved in today’s institutions. It looks at how (and whether) new methods developed in the field of contemporary art conservation, such as the artist’s interview, are adopted by museums, and attempts to identify factors undermining their effectiveness. By looking at contemporary art as a new paradigm of artistic practice and building on notions such as musealisation, art project as art form and art object as document, this study works towards a theoretical model that address the incompatibility between a traditional museum approach to collecting and preserving and the features of contemporary art. By employing and extending concepts introduced by conservation theorist Hanna Hölling and the notion of ‘anarchives’ by media theorist Siegfried Zielinski, this study adopts the model of the ‘artwork-as-(an)archive’. Starting from the premise that our future understanding of contemporary artworks can only be constructed through traces of documentation, this model grants documents a status equal to that of art objects and obliges institutions to care for them on a similar basis. Besides its capacity to facilitate conservation, the artwork-as-(an)archive model is here considered as a space for collaboration between artists and museums, a space to be collectively shaped, filled and nourished that fosters transparency and inclusiveness.